CURSORY REMARKS. 
187 
the plants. Where there are more compartments than are occupied with the pot- 
plants, if a layer of clean cinders is placed in the bottom for drainage, and the 
remainder filled up with a good soil, they will form excellent places for encouraging 
choicis plants for propagational purposes. In spring they will be useful for 
hardening off the plants required for the flower-beds, and may be provided with 
light moveable frame- work and coverings for the purpose. 
In the choice of a situation, a free play of air and full exposure to the sun 
should be secured. It is necessary also to have protection on all points from 
which strong or cutting winds are prevalent. The foot of an eminence and the 
neighbourhood of a stream or large surface of water, should be as much avoided as 
circumstances will admit, as plants in such places are more liable to be injured by 
mildew and frost. If they are screened from the violence of the storm, they will 
never be injured by exposure to a slight agitation of the atmosphere. 
These remarks may appear unseasonable at first sight, as it is now too late for 
their application during the present season. Nevertheless, we have judged it better 
to lay them before our readers now, whilst the evils we speak of are most apparent, 
and whilst there is yet time to make an effectual provision for avoiding . their 
recurrence another year. 
CURSORY REMARKS. 
Botanic Gardens. — Interesting accounts have lately been published in the Appendix to the 
" Botanical Magazine," of the Royal Botanic Garden of Kew, and the Imperial Botanic Garden 
at St. Petersburgh ; and a " notice respecting the present state of Botany and Botanic Gardens 
in Portugal," has been commenced. It is also proposed to furnish similar notices of other 
Botanico-Horticultural establishments. 
In furtherance of this proposal, Sir William Hooker writes, in the last Number of the work 
just mentioned : — " We should be glad to receive communications of this kind from the gentle- 
men under whose care they may be at present. We can hardly expect that accounts consuming 
much time and labour should be furnished, and our purpose would in fact be best served by 
enabling us to publish, in a short form, brief sketches of the principal botanic gardens in and out 
of Europe : a kind of synopsis of the history of botanical Horticulture. The details we should 
like to have furnished might, perhaps, be — 1. Date of first establishment. 2. Extent of ground. 
3. Number and kind of houses. 4. Annual expenditure, and source from whence derived. 
5. Names of eminent men connected at any time with the establishment. 6. Remarkable plants 
first cultivated, introduced, named, or now particularly conspicuous — and any other notice of 
striking importance. Such information, we hope, will be readily furnished, and we would have 
pleasure in publishing it. 
"It is satisfactory to state, that gentlemen connected with embassies and consulates are 
everywhere willing to forward papers concerning such matters, free of expense, which, as in days 
of yore, so even now, fair science can ill afford to defray." 
As, from Sir William Hooker's position in the botanical world, there is little doubt that this 
request will be ably responded to, when it becomes known, we may hope to see a vast accumu- 
lation of matter connected with these establishments, which will be mutually advantageous to all 
the parties concerned, severally, in conducting them, and also prove highly interesting to the 
general botanical reader, in exhibiting the relative state of the science in different parts of 
Europe, and other quarters of the globe. 
