THE PARIS HERBAEIUM 181 
called. M. de Jussieu, son of the mighty Jussieu,^ does 
not really love Botany, but wears his father's shoes 
though they pinch him. Being clever, all that he does 
is good, but that is not much ; he is extremely kind and 
amiable, but close, and buys no books. He took me for 
five hours round the garden in the kindest manner, but 
never once opened his lips to ask about Botany in English 
gardens or plants ; he is the teacher of Botany. M. Brong- 
niart, a clever youngish man (he looks twenty-eight and 
is forty-eight), is the second head, and his department is 
to name the garden plants ; he is considered hardly a 
Botanist at all, but is fond of fossils though there he has 
done nothing lately. Mirbel is the third head, who cultivates 
the plants, and a pretty mess he makes of it, I assure you, 
for worse grown things I never saw ; in their best houses 
they look like our smoke stoves exactly. 
Now the great aim of every French man of Science is 
to become a member of the Institute, of whom there are but 
very few, and only added to by the death of one of the 
original members ; all having one aim and that being 
ambition, they quarrel like cat and dog, and excepting 
Brongniart and Jussieu there is not one who has not many 
enemies, as it is said these two would have did they study 
Botany and were they not members already, very much 
because they were their fathers' sons. 
To Us Father 
February 13, 1845. 
I have been very busy since I wrote last, chiefly in 
the Herbarium of the Jardin des Plantes, which grows in 
magnitude under my eyes ['though it must be confessed, 
he adds four days later, 'that the want of space and pro- 
portion of paper are enormous '] ; its riches are very great, 
and the persons connected with it are all so extremely kind 
to me that I can hardly thank them enough ; they have 
given me 300 species of New Zealand plants, chiefly from 
the Middle Island, and where they have duplicates of 
1 Adrien de Jussieu (1797-1853) succeeded his father as Professor of 
Botany at the Paris Botanical Garden in 1826. In addition to several 
important botanical memoirs, he wrote a very successful Cours Elementaire 
de Botanique, while many botanists of all nations were trained by him. 
His father, Antoine, Sir William's friend, wrote the Genera Plantarum, the 
principles of which were adopted and enlarged by De Candolle. 
VOL. I N 
