Book I. 



PUBLIC GARDENS. 



10.59 



7503. Giving the name and history of plants to all eager enquirers, in order to encourage a desire of 

 botanical knowledge : to induce a taste for botany and the vegetable kingdom, by pointing out striking 

 peculiarities of plants to superficial observers, in order to attract their attention ; trying to point out 

 things which may assimilate with the taste or foible of the person addressed ; recollecting that sexual 

 matters and matters bordering on the marvellous, are the most generally attractive to volatile or vacant 

 min^ : in this way " becoming all things to all men, in order, by all means, to gain some." 



7504. Disseimnating and disposing seeds and plants of scarce natives, or of foreign sorts not yet na- 

 turalised, by placing them in their proper soils and habitats. Thus, when the aquatic plants are reduced, 

 throw the parts taken from rare ones, into an adjoining ditch, lake, canal or river ; scatter the seeds, and 

 plant the roots of wood-plants in plantations ; arenarious plants on sandy soils or shores, and so on. 

 Curator Anderson of the'Chelsea garden scatters all his spare seeds on Battersea, Clapham, and Wandsworth 

 commons, and throws his spare aquatics into the Thames. The consequence is, that though only a few 

 years practised, some rather scarce plants seem already naturalised in these places. Dickson, an enthusi- 

 astic botanist, naturalised that beautiful plant, the fresh-water soldier, in the ponds about Croydon ; as 

 we have done the same plant, and several others, in the Serpentine canal in Hyde Park. Salisbury, one 

 of the first botanists of the age, and equally eminent as a horticulturist, thinking he could naturalise 

 on our sandy shores the pancratium maritimum, planted a bulb in the Isle of Wight, among chehdonium 

 corniculatum, and eryngium maritimum, with which he saw it growing wild below Montpelier {Hort. 

 Trans, vol. i. Ml.) ; " and when at school, in the neighborhood of Halifax, in 1769, he was flogged in the 

 Whitsuntide holidays, for helping to propagate the narcissus triandrus, and for running out of bounds to 

 know the name of it at North Bierly." 



7505. A catalogue of every botanic garden should be printed for exchange, distri- 

 bution, or sale. Very complete gardens, such as those of Kew, Cambridge, and 

 Liverpool, find it answ^er to publish printed catalogues, with a view to remuneration by 

 sale ; but the legitimate object of a botanic-garden catalogue is, to exchange it with that 

 of other botanic gardens, foreign and domestic ; in order, that by comparison of riches, 

 exchange may be made for mutual advantage. For this purpose, it seems desirable, 

 that every thriving establishment should print or prepare a catalogue once a-year, or 

 once every two or three years. To facilitate this, it might be printed by the lithographic 

 process, from a list written in a small hand on prepared paper. By printing only the 

 botanic names, each sheet M'ould contain nearly four thousand names, and consequently 

 three sheets, all the plants, native or introduced into Britain. This might be produced 

 stitched together, all expenses included, for a trifle ; and as the present law respecting 

 letters stands, might be franked in separate sheets. Thus a cheap communication be- 

 tween British botanic gardens might be formed, and tlirough our foreign ambassadors, 

 these catalogues might be distributed all over the world. 



7506. A catalogue may be formed of figures, where it is not convenient to form one of 

 printed names. Thus the possessed or desired plants might be indicated by putting down 

 the numbers placed against the names of the plants in some generally circulated botanical 

 catalogue. If, in the excellent catalogue of Sweet, the genera had been numbered as 

 in the synopsis of Persoon, it would have been the best ; in the mean time, Persoon's 

 work, as it is in the hands of most botanists, foreign and domestic, may be referred to ; 

 and as an example of the brevity of this kind of catalogue or reference, let us suppose 

 one curator wishes to write to another for Varronia crenata, lineata, bullata, and globosa ; 

 all he has to do is to write for Per. (^Persoon), 371 . (the number of the genus), and 1 . 4. 

 (tiie numbers of the species desired), and similarly as to all the plants described in 

 Persoon's Synojisis. Ten thousand plants would in this way be represented by about 

 11,500 figures, which might occupy one sheet of letter-paper. But our Encyclopaedia 

 cf Plants, and catalogue entitled Hortus Britanniciis, are numbered in such a way as to 

 render communication more facile than any mode of using Persoon, or any other spe- 

 cies plantarum or catalogue whatever. 



7507. The gardens of the horticultural societies, being at present in a state of embryo, 

 do not admit of description. The published plan of that of the London Society {Report 

 on the Formation of a Garden, &c. 1823), appears to us most defective in general arrange- 

 ment. It is in part executed ; and if completed according to that plan, there vi^ill be, 

 as we think, a want of grandeur and unity of effect as a whole, and of connection and 

 convenience in the parts. One obvious error that must strike every one tliat has had 

 no part in making it, is, the forming the arboretum in a large rectilinear clump ; and 

 another is scattering the hot-houses and other buildings here and there over the garden. 

 There should, in our opinion, have been three grand parts : a centre for all the buildings 

 of every description, with the exception of entrance-lodges and resting-seats, or shelters, 

 &c. ; a circumference, displaying the arboretum, fruticetum , and ornamental flowers ; 

 and the intermediate space laid out as culinary, dessert, floricultural, experimental, na- 

 turalisation, and nursery gardens. Tlie hot-houses requisite for these different depart- 

 ments might easily have been arranged so as to be included in each of them, and yet 

 forming with the other buildings a whole or connected chain round the central area, and 

 these might have been all heated from the same steam apparatus, and the sheds and 

 other parts and buildings lighted, if desired, by gas. The grand entrance should have 

 presented three carriage-roads : one to the centre, to which visitors could drive and inspect 

 the hot-houses of all the departments, and just take a coup d''a:il of the open gardens be- 

 longing to them ; the two others proceeding to the right and left, and forming a circum- 

 ferential one, along which visitors might drive round the whole arboretum or shrubbery, 

 and enter if they chose by six or eight communications, at different distances, the six or 



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