126 
THE FLORIST’S JOURNAL. 
and other gems of tropical botany, there is a scene and a subject 
for every grade of taste, the visitors, of what class or rank soever 
they may be, cannot fail in being gratified, and being so, they 
will return and bring others along with them. 
But though this has been one cause of an increase of visitors to 
the gardens, and as we may presume, a corresponding increase of 
the love and knowledge of plants, it lias not been the only cause, 
or perhaps the most powerful one. The attention which has been 
called to these gardens in parliament and by the press, and espe¬ 
cially the menace of their very existence as a place of public resort, 
have attracted the attention, and awakened the sympathy of the 
people; and these have only to be continued, in order to obtain, 
and that at no very distant period, that support out of the public 
revenue which these gardens so justly, and indeed so imperatively 
demand. Well informed people, especially those who are ac¬ 
quainted with public collections of plants abroad, or with private 
ones at home, will be startled as well as delighted upon visiting 
the gardens at Kew. In the arboretum they will find the timber 
trees of many lands, so ample in growth as would adorn the 
stateliest forest; and in the green-houses and stoves they will 
meet with serried ranks of natives of tropical climes, and of the 
opposite hemisphere, which furnish no bad examples of the groves 
and thickets of their native climates. In one place may be seen 
the hard and rugged trees of Australia, not telling the most favour¬ 
able tale of the general characters of the soil, the climate, and the 
seasons, of that wide, wild, and peculiar region of the world. In 
another there is a taste, and but a taste, of the ligneous vegetation 
of Japan, China, and the Oriental isles ; the bland delicacy of 
which contrasts strongly with the ruggedness of the former. 
Southern Africa and intertropical America have also their sections, 
though limited as compared with that of Australia. Nor is this 
scenic botany—for though there is not positively a scenic arrange¬ 
ment, and such an arrangement cannot well be obtained in an 
artificial collection, yet one who is fond of plants, and acquainted 
with the geography of their localities, can conjure up in his own 
mind the whole scene, by the sight of any one plant which is cha¬ 
racteristic of it;—nor is this index to foreign scenes confined to 
the forest alone, for we have here numerous and beautiful speci¬ 
mens of the characteristic vegetation of the arid waste which is all 
but desert, and the tropical marsh whose vapours are all but 
