332 



Notices of Books. 



[April 



In them experiments, requiring years for their completion, can be 

 undertaken, and conducted through their whole course on the most phi- 

 losophical principles, not subject to the numerous accidents arid con- 

 tingencies to which individual enterprise is exposed, and at a cost, too, 

 which might for ever prove a bar to their being undertaken for personal 

 gratification, or even in the uncertain hope of their proving a lucrative 

 speculation. An example in point occurs to our memory — hitherto it 

 has been supposed, but without any proof, that the climate of Madras is 

 altogether unfavourable to the production of coffee, and that it never 

 can be grown to advantage here. The determination of this question, 

 appearing to the Society > in a commercial point of view, a matter of the 

 first importance, it has undertaken to set it at rest, by devoting a por- 

 tion of the garden to the formation of a coffee plantation. Other expe- 

 r iments of the same kind, and having similar objects in view, are now 

 either in progress, or in contemplation with the return of the season. 



In addition to these measures actually in progress, arrangements are 

 rhaking to carry into effect, on a scale commensurate with the Society's 

 means, the suggestions of Dr. Wight, published in the pages both of 

 this Journal and in the volume of transactions before us, for the accli- 

 mating of foreign fruit and timber trees, edible vegetables, &c. ; while it 

 is wished to devote a portion of the garden to the formation of a nursery, 

 for the introduction to the plains of the more valuable sorts of indige- 

 nous timber trees, hitherto scarcely known as living plants beyond the 

 precincts of their native jungles. These, in a ^public point of view, are 

 all important objects, for the attainment of which in Bengal the Botanic 

 Garden is maintained at the public expense ; but which in Madras 

 (where no establishment of the kind exists), unless the Society take them 

 in hand, must ever remain undone, for no private individual, however 

 zealous, or whatever may be his pecuniary resources, while subject to 

 all the uncertainties of removal, can be expected to engage in such end- 

 less and unrequited labours. Nor must we, in contemplating the gene- 

 ral advantages to be derived from such establishments, overlook the 

 local circumstances which render a garden, at whatever cost, almost 

 indispensable to the success of the Madras Society. Here we have not, 

 as in Calcutta, a large government garden, on which to fall back in a 

 case of necessity. There the talented and enthusiastic superintendent 

 of the noblest Botanic Garden in the world, has* hitherto, always been 

 able, when necessary, to appropriate a portion of its extensive grounds 

 to the furtherance of the useful objects of the Society. In Madras, 

 on the contrary, the government apply to the Society to aid its efforts 

 for the amelioration of the country. 



We have been induced to enter thus largely on the consideration of 

 the general subject of Horticultural Societies, and of the Madras one in 

 particular, not$ we trust, from having formed an exaggerated estimate 



