tal, which he mistook for a piece of inoney. The cries of this poor being were heard distinctly during the stillness of the night by those who dwelt within the garden; but, as there was no reason to dread the possibility of such an accident occurring, no assist ance was offered. He was found by the guard who came to relieve him in the morning, lying dead beneath the paws of the bear, exhibiting, comparatively speaking, few marks of external violence, but almost all his bones broken to pieces. The bear retired at the voice of his keeper, and did not, in fact, seem to have been induced by any carnivorous propensity to attack the person whose death it had thus so miserably occasioned. It was rather what an old man in the garden characterized as a piece of mauvaise plaisanterie, for it appeared to derive amusement from lifting the body in its paws and rolling it along the ground, and shewed no symptom of fierceness or anger when driven into its interior cell.*

Turning to the right as you enter the lower gate of the Garden, opposite the Bridge of Austerlitz, now called the Pons du Jardin du Roi, you approach the dwellings of the more carnivorous animals, which are confined in cages with iron gratings, very similar to our travelling caravans. Here the lion is truly the king of beasts, being the oldest, the largest, and in all respects the most magnificent, I have ever seen. There is a melancholy grandeur about this creature in a state of captivity, which I can never witness without the truest commiseration. The elegant and playful attitudes of the smaller animals of the feline tribe being so expressive of happiness and contentment, prevent one from compassionating their misfortunes in a similar manner; while the fierce and cruel eye of the tiger, with his restless and impatient demeanour, produces rather the contrary feeling of satisfaction, that so savage an animal should be kept for ever in confinement. He appears to lament his loss of liberty, chiefly because he cannot satiate his thirst for blood by the sacrifice of those before him; his countenance glares as

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fiercely, and his breath comes as hot, as if he still couched among the burned-up grass of an Indian jungle. But his companion in adversity appears to suffer from a more kingly sorrow-the remembrance of his ancient woods and rivers, with all their wild magnificence, dingle and bushy dell," is visibly implanted in his recollection. Like the dying gladiator, he thinks only of “his young barbarians," and, when he paces around his cell, he does so with the same air of forlorn dignity as Regulus might have assumed in the prison of the Carthaginians.

But, while we are indulging our, selves in " a world of fond remembrances," we are forgetting Mr Royer's book, to which we had sat down with the intention of extracting an article. We shall therefore proceed in the first place to form a compendious sketch of the Garden and Cabinet, from the period of their origin to the close of last century, which we deem it the more necessary to do, as the subject has not yet found a place in English literature. We must, however, premise, that the nature and confined limits of our abstract will necessarily exclude a thou, sand interesting particulars regarding the history of individual plants and animals, for the elucidation of which we therefore refer our readers to the work itself, which is just about this time ready for delivery to the public.

The King's Garden in Paris, commonly called the Garden of Plants, was founded by Louis XIII., by an edict given and registered by the Parliament, in the month of May, 1635. Its direction was assigned to the first Physician Herouard, who chose as Intendant Guy de la Brosse. At first it consisted only of a single house, and twenty-four acres of land. Guy de la Brosse, during the first year of his management, formed a parterre 292 feet long, and 227 broad, composed of such plants as he could procure, the greater number of which were given him by John Robin, the father of Vespasian, the King's botanist. amounted, including varieties, to 1800. He then prepared the ground, procured new plants by correspondence, tra

These

ced the plan of the garden to the extent of ten acres, and opened it in 1640. It appears by the printed catalogue of the ensuing year, that the number of species and varieties had increased to 2360. De la Brosse died in 1643.

Such was the origin of an establishment which has since attained so high a degree of prosperity, and has become the first school of Natural History in the world. We shall not consider it necessary to mention each subsequent change in the management and superintendence, but shall rest satisfied with alluding only to the labours of those whose appointment may be regarded as a prosperous era in the history of the garden. About the year 1652, Fagon, grand-nephew of De la Brosse,

obtained a situation in the establishment, and travelled at his own expense through several provinces of France, and among the Alps and Pyrenees, and sent the fruit of his researches to the Garden. In 1665, the number of species and varieties amounted to 4000. In the meantime, Gaston D'Orleans, brother of Louis XIII., had established a botanical garden at his palace of Blois, which had acquired celebrity through the works of Morison, and by a collection of drawings of the most remarkable plants. These drawings were chiefly executed on vellum, by Robert, eminent for his great skill as a botanical painter. After the death of Gaston, in 1660, Colbert persuaded the King to purchase the whole collection; and Robert was appointed painter to the Museum, where he continued his labours till his death in 1684. Other eminent painters have continually succeeded to the situation, and it is thus that the magnificent collection of drawings of plants and animals has been formed, which was at first deposited in the King's library, and now forms the most valuable part of that of the Museum.

Vallot, the chief director, dying in 1671, Colbert united the superintendence of the Garden to that of the King's buildings, already held by himself, leaving to the first physician the title of Intendant only, with the direction of the cultivation. In the month of December he obtained a declaration from the King, regulating the administration of the Garden, and gave commissions to the Professors defining their duties. From this mo

ment the establishment assumed increasing importance, and it would have advanced still more rapidly, had the principal administration not been united with other offices. Fagon, who had for several years filled the botanical and chemical chairs with applause, being encumbered with other duties, meditated the resignation of his place, and, wishing to appoint a successor worthy of himself, he called, from a remote part of France, the afterwards so highly celebrated Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, then only twenty-six years of age, but who had already given promise of what he was one day to become. He was appointed to the chair of botany in 1683. Ten years after, Fagon became first physician. This appointment gave him the intendance of the Garden; and, from the singular respect in which he was held, the title of Superintendent was re-established in his favour.

The signal success of Tournefort in the cultivation of botanical science, is universally known. He was the first successfully to define the genera of plants, and the excellence of his groups exhibits the clearness of his concep tions, and ranks him as the father of that branch of the science. He died in 1708, in consequence of an injury received from a waggon in a narrow street of Paris, and left his collection of natural history, and herbarium, to the Garden. This herbarium is not extensive, but it is rendered valuable by the plants gathered in the Levant, and indicated in the Corollarium_of the Institutiones Rei Herbarium. was succeeded in the botanical chair by Danty D’Isnard.

He

D'Isnard retired after delivering a single course of lectures, and was suc ceeded by Antony de Jussieu, a name so justly celebrated in botany, in consequence of the impulse which his own labours, and those of his two brothers and nephew, have given to the science. In 1716, he visited Spain and Portugal, and brought back an immense accession to the Garden. It was this same Antony de Jussieu, who, in 1720, intrusted Declieux, a lieu tenant in the Royal Navy, with a young coffee tree, which, transported to Martinique, became the parent of the immense culture of the West Indies. Meanwhile, the cultivation of the Garden was confided to Sebastian Vaillant, who formed a very consider

able herbarium, the genera of which were methodically arranged, and the species accompanied by tickets, indicating all the synonyms then known. This herbarium, which, at his death in 1722, was purchased by order of the King, forms the basis of that of the Museum. What chiefly signalizes the name of Vaillant, is his first public discourse on assuming the functions of Assistant Professor, (in the absence of the Principal,) in which he demonstrates the existence of two sexes, and the phenomena of fecundation in vegetables. Thus it was in the King's Garden that this great discovery, which had been only hinted at before, and was not generally admitted, was first announced, and supported by irrefragable proofs.

We shall pass in silence the unprofitable period of Chirac's administration of the affairs of the Garden, and proceed to the appointment of Buffon in 1739, who was preferred to the situation in consequence of the dying request of Du Fay, his immediate predecessor. This illustrious writer was already distinguished by several memoirs on mathematics, natural philosophy, and rural economy, which had gained him admittance to the Academy of Sciences; but he was as yet unknown as a naturalist. Endowed with that power of attention which discovers the most distant relations of thought, and that brilliancy of imagination which commands the attention of others to the result of laborious investigations, he was equally fitted to succeed in different walks of genius. He had not yet decided to what objects he should devote his talents and acquirements, when his nomination to the place of Intendant of the King's Garden determined him to attach himself to natural history. As his reputation increased, he employed the advantages afforded by his credit and celebrity, to enrich the establishment to which he had allied himself; and to him are owing its growth and improvement till the period of its reorganization, and that extension and variety which rendered a reorganization necessary. If the Museum owes its splen

dour to Buffon,-to that magnificent establishment he, on the other hand, owes his fame. If he had not been placed in the midst of collections, furnished by Government with the means of augmenting them, and thus enabled by extensive correspondence to elicit information from all the naturalists of his day, he would never have conceived the plan of his natural history, or been able to carry it into exccution; for that genius which embraces a great variety of facts, in order to deduce from them general conclusions, is continually exposed to err, if it has not at hand all the elements of its speculations.

We may now be said to commence the second period of the history of the Royal Garden. When Buffon entered upon his office, the Cabinet consisted of two small rooms, and a third, containing the preparations of anatomy, which were not exposed to public view: the herbarium was in the apartment of the demonstrator of botany: the Garden, which was "mited to the present nursery on the eastern side, to the green house on the north, and the galleries of natural history on the west, still presented empty spaces, and contained neither avenues nor regular plantations.*

Buffon first directed his attention to the increasing of the collections, and to the providing of more commodious places for their reception. They were arranged in two large rooms of the building which contains the present galleries, and which was formerly the dwelling-house of the Intendant; and, soon after, were opened to the public on appointed days. He next occupied himself in the embellishment of the Garden. Having cut down an old avenue which did not correspond with the principal gate, he replaced it in 1740, by one of lime trees in the proper direction, and planted another parallel on the other side of the parterre. These avenues, which are now more, than eighty years old, terminate towards the extremity of the nursery, and mark the limits of the Garden at that period.

The care of the Cabinet was at this

time intrusted to Bernard de Jussieu, who had bestowed unceasing pains upon its arrangement and preservation. The extent of his knowledge, and the facility with which he seized the affinities of bodies, and classed them in their natural order, qualified him particularly for this task, rendered more difficult by the increase of the collections; but, being diverted by other occupations, and residing at some distance from the Garden, he expressed a desire to be relieved from an office which required unwearied activity and ceaseless assiduity. Buffon also felt that his researches in natural history needed the assistance of a man who had still all the ardour of youth, and who possessed, in a high degree, both the spirit of method, and a talent for observation. Gifted with that genius which seizes the principal characters of objects, and unites them in splendid combinations, he had neither time nor patience for the examination of details, to which the weakness of his sight was also an obstacle. He made choice of his countryman Daubenton, who was then twenty-nine years of age; and who, after studying botany under De Jussieu, and anatomy under Winslow and Duverney, had retired to Montbard, the place of his birth, to practise medicine. Buffon invited him to Paris, and, in 1745, procured him the place of keeper of the Cabinet, with a lodging in the Garden, and appointments which soon rose from 500 to 4000 francs per annum. He charged him with the arrangement of the Cabinet, and associated him to his own studies, in the descriptive part of his natural history, especially in the anatomy.

The first volumes of his great work on Natural History were published in 1749, and attracted the attention of all Europe. The subsequent labours of Linnæus, and the light which his classification threw upon the intricate and almost endless variety of subjects, no doubt contributed greatly to augment the number of zealous students, and to increase their confidence in the result of their labours; but the splendid writings of Buffon may be said to have been the first which excited a general interest in this delightful study. These two men may be looked upon as the great lights of the science of nature.

But to return to the history of the

Museum. In 1766, the collection had so greatly increased, that Buffon, who had previously given up a part of his dwelling house, which he occupied as Superintendent of the Garden, now resigned it entirely, and removed to No. 13, Rue des Fossés Saint-Victor. The Cabinet was then disposed in four large saloons, which contained the whole collection till the reorganization. These saloons were open to the public two days in each week, and the pupils had hours set apart for study. Daubenton was always present to give the necessary explanations; and foreign naturalists often resorted to him for instruction. His patience was inexhaustible, but the duties of his situation became too laborious for the exertions of a single individual, and his cousin, the younger Daubenton, was created assistant, with a salary of 2400 francs.

Antony de Jussieu, who still filled the chair of Botany, was no less assiduous in promoting the advancement of his peculiar department, not merely by delivering lectures, but by sending young men, at his own expense, to travel through the provinces, to collect seeds and plants. He formed a library of natural history and a considerable herbarium, which were of eminent service to his illustrious brother and nephew, and which have been always as much at the disposal of those who cultivate the sciences, as if they belonged to the establishment, with this advantage, that desired explanations are never withheld by the courtesy of the possessors. Antony de Jussieu died in 1758, and was succeeded by Lemonier, who being appointed first physician to the king in 1770, Antony Laurence de Jussieu, the present venerable Professor of Botany, succeeded to the chair. Sometime prior to this, J. A. Thouin, the head of a family since become distinguished by its services to the Garden, had obtained a situation as assistant cultivator in the establishment.

Buffon had now attained the meridian of his glory; his works, which assigned him the first rank amongst the authors of his time, had diffused a universal taste for the study of Natural History, while the collections he had formed facilitated the study of this science. In foreign countries, also, he enjoyed the highest reputation; and the authors of new observations,