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ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



to the advancement of botany in general, to offer students in 

 Medicine and Pharmacy sufficient materials for their studies in 

 this delightful science, and at the same time to diffuse information 

 on the subject to an educated and enlightened people. 



In these respects our botanical establishments leave much to be 

 desired. I'or example, we seldom find arrangements for displaying 

 medicinal plants and those which are among the most important 

 in an industrial point of view*. It ought not to be objected that 

 some of these are difficult of acquisition. Our relations and 

 communications at the present day with different parts of the 

 globe are too well-established to offer in this respect serious 

 difficulties. Moreover there is no work for the use of students to 

 instruct them respecting the plants contained in a botanic garden 

 — a serious inconvenience, the cause of which, in part, consists in 

 the rapid progress of science f. 



It is, then, essential to improve botanic gardens, so that studies 

 may not only be facilitated, but adapted to the demands and 

 high scientific position of our age. This is what we have attempted 

 to realize in the Botanic Garden of Brcslau, as is shown in the 

 following details. 



The Botanic Garden of Breslau, in an area of rather more than 

 fifteen acres and a half, contains about 12,000 plants, classed ac- 

 cording to their natural orders, habit, and aspect. We cannot, 

 indeed, approve of the method of arranging plants solely according 

 to the natural system, and placing for example side by side the her- 

 baceous Leguminosa? and Rosacea? with those which form trees 

 and bushes. "W e are content merely to plant representatives of 

 the different types, and to group them according to their size. 



To obtain, however, a general view of vegetation on the surface 

 of the earth, for the last nine years we have tried to group to- 

 gether in the open air plants which comprise a general conspectus 

 of vegetation, thus realizing one of the important ideas of our 

 immortal Von Humboldt, who attached so much importance to 

 the physiognomy of vegetation. We prepare, in fact, every summer 



* [It is scarcely needful to remark how much lias been done in this direction 

 at Kew, by the establishment of the noble Museum, and the appropriation of a 

 particular house to exotic plants used in medicine or the arts. A similar 

 collection of plants, or at least a very important contribution to one, is now in 

 the possession of the Horticultural Society ; and it is hoped that this will soon 

 form a very important feature. — Tr.] 



t [Lindley's ' Medical Botany ' will in this country afford the medical student 

 a good deal of assistance ; and if he wants to enter moreVleeply into the matter, 

 there are the admirable volumes of Pereira on ' Materia Medica.' — Ik.] 



