ACCLIMATIZATION. 
321 
which he seeks the retirement of the little reading-room, 
where, he says, we shall find books, treatises, and periodicals, 
bearing on acclimatization, and in there, sheltered from the 
glare of the sun without, we may glean something of the 
private history of a few great acclimatists, of whom a brief 
account is given by him; and he concludes his observa¬ 
tions as follows: 
“Such is a general outline of the Societe du Jardin 
d’Acclimatization. Thoughtful men of all nations have been 
keen observers of nature, and in the charmed circle of other 
thoughtful men they have received the full homage of 
respect; yet too often the result of their labours has been 
a new ponderous folio, or a learned abstract, destined to be 
decently interred in the annals of some privileged society. 
Books do not teach everybody—there is a class of mind (in 
itself both highly cultivated and intelligent) to which printed 
sentences are literally a dead letter. Many a man of great 
energy, passionately fond of enterprise, daring and successful 
in commercial speculation, is in himself a walking encyclo¬ 
paedia of general knowledge, and is yet incapable of clothing 
a single thought in appropriate written language, and hates 
the printer’s devil as orthodox Christians do the father of 
all evil. Shall we call him uneducated, and ignore his real 
practical learning ? Let us be more sensible, and at the 
same time more just —his literature is action. Now, a garden, 
such as the one described, appeals directly to sympathies 
like these. Here is a book in nature-printing, the type of 
which is never worn, and whose truths present the strange 
anomaly that they are both ever-changing and everlasting 
—a book wherein the most contemplative philosopher and 
the busiest mortal may delight to read ; and it is certainly 
worth while offering a fair field of study to meet the craving 
eagerness of many an adventurous spirit, who, though he 
may scarcely distinguish between an Elzevir and the printing 
of this journal, feels himself aggrieved because his merit is 
sometimes unfavorably contrasted with that of the man who 
can merely round a period or construct a phrase. 
“ Should it, moreover, be the fortune (good or ill) of any 
reader of these lines to be engaged on foreign service, he 
will assuredly thank the writer for having introduced the 
subject of acclimatization to his notice. 1 had a near and 
dear relative, of most companionable habits, stationed in the 
Havannah. Often have I listened to his sad recital of the 
blank routine monotony of that least enviable life. No 
wonder that in all that colony of disheartened Englishmen 
there was but one thought—to make money and retire. 
