139 



with the care and climate necessary to their pre- 

 servation. The keeping of the botanic garden 

 having become every year more expensive, the 

 Marquis de Nava has ceded it to the govern- 

 ment. We found in it a well-informed gardener, 

 who had been brought up under Mr. Aiton, di- 

 rector of the royal garden at Kew. The earth 

 is raised in terraces, and watered by a natural 

 spring. It has a view of the island of Pal ma, 

 which appears like a castle in the midst of the 

 ocean. We found this establishment but little 

 stocked with plants, vacant places of genera 

 were filled up with thickets, the names of which 

 seemed to have been taken by chance, as they 

 were found in the systema vegetabilium of Lin- 

 naeus. This distribution of plants, after the 

 classes of the sexual system, which is unhappily 

 the case in several gardens in Europe, is very 

 hostile to their cultivation. At Durasno, the 

 protei, the psidium, the jam bos, the chirimoya 

 of Peru # , sensitive plants, and heliconias, flou- 

 rish in the open air. We gathered t^e ripened 

 seeds of several beautiful species of glycine from 

 New Holland, which the governor of Cumana, 

 Mr. Emparan, successfully cultivated, and which 

 since grow wild on the coasts of South America. 

 We arrived very late at the port of Orotava -f-, 



* Annona cherimolia. Lamarck. 



+ Puerto de la Cruz. The only fine port of the Canary 

 islands is that of St. Sebastien, in the isle of Gomera. 



