HAMLYN'S MENAGERIE MAGAZINE. 



Mr. Vice's letter is amusing and instructive. 

 He has my sympathy. If any of my readers can 

 identify the birds I shall be obliged. This being 

 the first consignment of Mogador birds in this 

 country they should command a ready sale. 



The Dromedaries are £65 each. 



JOHN D. HAMLYN. 



-@- 



The Jardin des Plantes. 



"The Times" correspondent in Paris sends a most 

 interesting article on the Jardin des Plantes. 



Few of the many English travellers who visit 

 Paris in pursuit of pleasure or bent on business 

 find their way toi the Jardin des Plantes. Yet 

 the old Zoological and Botanic Gardens, on the 

 left bank of the Seine opposite the Pont d'Aus- 

 terlitz, have a charm and a seclusion of their own 

 Avhich neither! the Regent's Park nor murky Kew 

 can exactly rival. 



To naturalists of all countries who visit Paris 

 the Jardin des Plantes is sacred ground, which 

 will ever be haunted by the shades of Buff on 

 and Cuvier. Old streets of 18th-century Paris 

 surround the old Jardin du Hoi, which Louis 

 XIII., about 1626, made over as a physic- 

 garden for herbalists. The name Jardin du Roi 

 was kept in use until the Revolution; and it 

 was not until the end of the Monarchy that 

 the Royal menageries from Versailles and else- 

 where were transported to the Republican 

 capital. Many an ornamental, exotic, and once 

 rare tree or shrub has been dispersed to other 

 countries from the Jardin des Plantes. Here 

 still grows, though it can hardly be said to 

 flourish, a venerable tree : the first acacia 

 (Robinia pseud-acacia), planted in Paris, by 

 Jean Robin himself so' long agoi as 1636 as the 

 memorial tablet records. On the other side of 

 the old garden is the first cedar of Lebanon 

 planted in France and given to de Jussieu, the 

 famous botanist, in 1734. 



The naturalist who enters the gardens from 

 the Place Valhubert and walks through the neat 

 square plots of the botanic garden, looks at the 

 formal alleys of limes and horse-chestnuts, and 

 finds himself ultimately in front of the old, 

 shuttered, decaying house in which Buffon lived, 

 may be forgiven if he finds, the surroundings 

 moving: Buffon, whose " Histoire Naturelle," in 

 44 quarto volumes, with pleasant coloured 

 plates, began to appear in 1749, and took over 

 50 years to complete. Those were times of leisure 

 and encyclopaedic scientific work. Buffon was 



made Intendant, or director, of the gardens in 

 1739, and in this house he died, April 16, 1788, 

 refusing obstinately to be operated on for the 

 stone which proved fatal to him. There is a 

 pleasing seated statue of the old zoologist not far 

 off, in his wig and armchair, looking benevolent 

 and courteous. The house occupied by Cuvier, 

 the father of comparative anatomy, stands 

 farther west, and is distinguished by a bust. 

 Cuvier lived till 1832, and had he survived a 

 little longer it was the intention of Louis Philippe 

 to make him Minister of the Interior. Truly few 

 naturalists have had greater escapes. 



The collection of animals in the Jardin des 

 Plantes is inferior to that in the other great 

 European towns, including even Amsterdam and 

 Copenhagen. But the gardens have suffered 

 severely from the war; less severely, perhaps, 

 than during the war of 1870, when 83 Prussian 

 shells fell among the greenhouses and the 

 plants; and the animals which survived were 

 killed to feed the besieged inhabitants. The 

 birds for the most part look healthier than the 

 quadrupeds; and the gardens, with their shady 

 alleys, form a retreat for many wild birds. Here 

 the blackcap may be heard in song; and the red- 

 start breeds in this leafy oasis. Both are des- 

 cendents, perhaps, of those that sang and nested 

 here in the days of Buffon and Cuvier. 



The visitor who is not of Gallic birth may be 

 pardoned for starting with surprise when he 

 reads the inscription beneath the statue of 

 Lamarck, which was erected by public subscrip- 

 tion in 1908 and forms a counterpart to that of 

 the Counte de Buffon. It is a worthy monument 

 to a great philosopher, but it bears upon the 

 pedestal the words: "Au fondateur de la doc- 

 trine de revolution." Foreign travellers may well 

 rub their eyes and will remember some other 

 evolutionists from the time of the Greeks down 

 to Darwin's day. France, truly,, has no need to 

 be ashamed of the names inscribed round the 

 frieze of the Musee de Zoologie : B. de S. Pierre, 

 Tournefort, S. Vaillant, Duverney, d'Azir, Vau- 

 quelin, Dumeril, Latreille, de Blainville, C. L. 

 Bernard, d'Orbigny. With such a famous fellow- 

 ship the preposterous claim advanced' on behalf of 

 Lamarck might well be gracefully abandoned. 

 He was a great man. 



Yet what is greatness? The vanity of human 

 ambition and the mutability of French Royal 

 houses was forcibly brought me upon the after- 

 noon of the same day that I was in the Jardin 

 des Plantes. I was seated on a bench in the 

 Place Vauban, gazing upwards at the Dome des 

 Invalides which surmounts the tomb of Napoleon. 

 A pair of kestrels had nested in the gilded spire. 

 To what has the Imperial eagle sunk? Hovering 

 above the Emperor's ashes was no Imperial bird, 



