returned to France with a great number of trees, which were planted in the gardens of M., Lemonnier, and of the Maréchal de Noailles, where they succeeded perfectly. He often used to take from these gardens a packet of grafts, and, going through the woods of Versailles, he would graft them on the trees already there. In 1780, he went to botanise on the mountains of Auvergne with several botanists, among whom were Lamarck and Thouin. Michaux was the most active of all of them; besides his musket, haversack, portfolio, and several specimen boxes, he carried in his pocket seeds of the cedar of Lebanon, which he sowed in favourable situations. Soon afterwards he went to the Pyrenees and travelled in Spain; and, in a short time, accompanied the nephew of the celebrated Rousseau to Persia, the latter being appointed consul to that country in 1782. He went to Aleppo, Bagdad, the Tigris, the Euphrates, Bassora, and many other places, sending home numerous seeds to Thouin, Malesherbes, and others. Persia at that time was a prey to civil wars, and Michaux, plundered of every thing by the Arabs, was supplied with the means of continuing his journey by M. de la Touche, the English consul at Bassora, though France and England were at that time at war; M. de la Touche, his biographer observes, thinking that a naturalist, who travelled for the good of humanity, ought to be protected by every nation. In this part of the world Michaux remained two years, traversing mountains and deserts from the Indian to the Caspian Sea, and proving that the provinces situated between 35° and 45° of latitude in the East have supplied most of our trees, exclusive of those which belong to America. He here verified the fact first noticed by Kæmpfer, that the male flowers of the date will keep during the year, and yet impregnate the female. He sent home sculptured ruins from the palace known as that of Semiramis, near the Tigris, and various other antiques, and objects of natural history. He returned to Paris in June, 1785, and was chosen soon after to go to the United States, to collect seeds of trees and shrubs; to establish an entrepôt for them in the neighbourhood of New York; and to get them sent from that to Rambouillet, which was destined to receive them. He was also commissioned to send home American game. He arrived at New York in October, 1785; established a garden there; traversed New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland; and, after the first year, he sent home twelve boxes of seeds, and 5000 young trees, together with some Canadian partridges, which afterwards bred at Versailles. In September, 1789, he went to Carolina, making Charleston his depôt; he traversed the Alleghany Mountains, and the whole country north and south, leaving his son at Charleston, in charge of the gardens there. From this place he sent home numerous seeds, and many hundreds of young trees. In April following, he set out to reconnoitre the sources of the Savannah; and there he discovered Magnòlia auriculata, Robínia viscòsa, Azàlea n. coccínea, a Kálmia, a Rhododendron, and many oaks and other trees not before known. The manner in which he travelled, his intercourse with the native Indians, and the accidents he met with, are extremely interesting. Whenever he discovered a new plant, it inspired him with such enthusiasm, that he no longer felt fatigue. The discovery of a new Pàvia, and of the Pinckneya pùbens, gave him great pleasure. He arrived at New Providence in February, 1799, and returned to Charleston in May of the same year. He afterwards visited the highest mountains of Carolina. The dangers he experienced there convinced him of the necessity of having two guides, because one might perish by the road by a thousand accidents, and it would be impossible for a European to find his way alone through the country. He found in these mountains vast tracts covered with rhododen drons, kalmias, and azaleas, and with forests of trees altogether impenetrable. War, at this time, was declared between France and England; and Michaux was afraid of being forced to leave America. He had been for a long time occupied with the idea of determining the native place of all the American trees; and also at what latitude they begin to grow rare, and where they disappear entirely in short, he wished to ascertain up to what height they are found on the mountains, and in what soil they prosper best. He con

sidered the native country of a tree to be that in which it is most numerous, and where it acquires the greatest height and thickness. Thus he fixed on Kentucky as the native country of the tulip tree, because it there forms vast forests, has a trunk commonly 7 ft. or 8 ft. in diameter, and grows 120 ft. high, thriving in a moist clayey soil, but not in one that is frequently inundated. In higher or lower ground, or in a different soil, these trees become smaller and more rare. It was with a view to trace in this manner the botanical topography of North America, that Michaux visited the Floridas, and went as far as Hudson's Bay. He left Charleston in April, 1792; arrived at Quebec in June of the same year; and reached Tadoussac, lat. 52°, in October, 160 leagues from any human habitation. He afterwards planned a journey to Mexico, for the benefit of the United States; but, after very many journeys, he returned to Paris by Amsterdam, where he arrived on the 3d of December 1796, after ten years' absence. He found his friends well, but was grieved beyond measure to learn that the beautiful plantations of Rambouillet, to which he had sent 60,000 young trees, had been destroyed during the revolution, and that but a very small number of the trees was remaining. Seeing that tranquillity was restored, he instantly thought of repairing the loss. After unsuccessfully endeavouring to get sent again to America, he was sent to New Holland. He stopped at the Isle of France, and was very desirous of going to Madagascar; in which island he was attacked by the fever, and he died there in November (an ix.), 1803; aged 57 years.

Michaux not only sent many new trees and shrubs into France, but he sent great quantities of the seeds of the more useful species; such as Juglans Páccan, used for making furniture, and which produces the nut oil; Taxòdium dístichum (the deciduous cypress), suitable for planting in very moist soil; Nýssa caroliniàna, useful for the naves of wheels; Quércus tinctòria, for tanning and dying; and Q. vìrens, which, he says, grows rapidly on the sandy beach, exposed to the stormy winds of the ocean, where scarcely any other tree can exist, and the wood of which is excellent for ship-building; to these may be added the caryas of Pennsylvania, the tulip trees, and the American ashes, maples, &c., which, in many parts of France, are preferable to the indigenous trees. The administration of the Museum, aware of the services rendered to natural history by Michaux, ordered his bust to be placed on the façade of the green-houses, along with those of Commerson, Dombey, and other travellers who had enriched their collection.

Michaux was too fully occupied in travelling to have much leisure to write; nevertheless, he is the author of Histoire des Chênes de l'Amérique Septentrionale, published in 1804; a North American Flora, and a Memoir on the Date Palm. The particulars of his life, at great length, and proportionately interesting, will be found in the Annales du Muséum, tom. iii. p. 191.; from which this notice of his life has been abridged.

F. A. Michaux, the author of Histoire des Arbres de l'Amérique, after his father's death, was sent to Charleston, by the French government, to bring over the trees collected in his father's nurseries, and supplies of seeds. During his stay in America, M. Vilmorin informs us that he sent to the Administration Forestière larger quantities of acorns and other seeds of foreign trees, than had ever before been sent over from that country. He took that opportunity of visiting Kentucky, the Tenessee, and of penetrating nearly a thousand miles beyond the Alleghany Mountains. On his return to Europe, he published his great work on the trees of North America, and other memoirs on relative subjects; particularly one Sur la Naturalisation des Arbres Forestières de l'Amérique, &c. He now resides in the neighbourhood of Paris, and appears to be as enthusiastically devoted to the study of trees and shrubs as his late father. We are much indebted to him for various useful communications having reference to the Arboretum Britannicum.

Georges Marie Louis Du Mont, Baron de Courset, author of the Botaniste Cultivateur, was the Du Hamel of his time; and, after the revolution, his example and exertions contributed, even more than the influence of the Em

press Josephine, to spread a taste for exotic trees and shrubs, and the formation of ornamental plantations. He was born in 1746, at the Château de Courset in the Haut Boulonnais. After having received an excellent education, he entered the army at the age of 17 years, and was soon after sent on duty to Languedoc, where the plants of the Pyrenees gave birth to his enthusiastic taste for botany. In 1784 he left the army, and devoted himself wholly to the improvement of his estate at Courset, where, in a short time, he formed by far the richest collection of plants in France, and created an establishment which ranked at that time with the gardens of Malmaison, Kew, &c. In an arid chalky soil, so unproductive as to be called a desert, M. Du Mont created an excellent kitchen-garden, a large orchard, and an ornamental garden devoted to the culture of foreign plants. These gardens will be found described in the Annales de la Société d'Horticulture de Paris, tom. xiv.; and in the Gardener's Magazine, vol. xii., from our personal inspection. It may be sufficient to state, that, though these gardens do not display fine turf, water, or fine gravel, yet they are of intense interest in point of culture; and that the collection of hardy trees and shrubs, which have attained a considerable size, is not surpassed by any in the neighbourhood of London, in regard to the number of species which it contains. The collection of herbaceous plants is formed into a series of concentric beds. The trees and shrubs are disposed in groups, according to the season of the year at which they flower, as suggested by Du Hamel; but these groups are so thinly planted that room is left for each tree and shrub to acquire its natural size and form. There is an extensive collection of fruit trees, including all the varieties that could be procured in Europe and America. The peat-earth plants are numerous, as are the hot-house and green-house plants. The hot-houses are 200 ft. and the pits 150 ft. in length. In the year 1789 M. Du Mont visited the principal gardens in the neighbourhood of London, and, on his return to his family, was immediately arrested and imprisoned by the government; but he was as promptly set at liberty through the influence with the Committee of Public Safety of his friend, the celebrated Professor Thouin. M. Du Mont published various articles in the public journals of his day; but his principal work is the Botaniste Cultivateur, or Description, Culture, and Use of the greater Part of the Plants, Foreign and Indigenous, which are cultivated in France and England, arranged according to the Method of Jussieu, which appeared in five volumes, 8vo, in 1802, and to which two supplementary volumes have since been added. This work has had the same celebrity in France that Miller's Dictionary has had in England. M. Du Mont died in June, 1824, at the age of 78 years; his estate is now the property of his daughter, Madame la Baronne Mallet de Coupigny, who has presented the green-house and hothouse plants (with the exception of the pelargoniums) to the Société d'Agriculture de Boulogne, but who cultivates the collection of hardy articles, and more especially the trees and shrubs, with the greatest care. The place is visited by gardeners, botanists, and naturalists from every part of the world; and no name in France is mentioned with greater respect than that of the patriarch De Courset.

SECT. II. Of the Indigenous and Foreign Trees and Shrubs of Holland and the Netherlands.

THE indigenous trees and shrubs of Belgium and Holland are very few, partly from the limited extent of territory, but chiefly from the great uniformity of the surface, the soil, and the climate. The only Flora which has been attempted of Belgium is that of Lejeune and Courtois (reviewed in Gard. Mag., vol. x. p. 449.), of which only a part has been published. Holland can hardly be said to have an indigenous ligneous flora; but into that country foreign trees and shrubs were introduced as soon as they were into any other in Europe. The botanic garden of Leyden, and its earliest catalogues, may be referred to as a proof of this; but for its history, and for various details re

lating to the subject, we must refer to the Encyclopædia of Gardening, edit. 1835, p. 69. M. E. de Wael, the director of the botanic garden at Antwerp, has furnished us with a list of the indigenous trees and shrubs of that neighbourhood, which is even more meagre than we had anticipated; and another correspondent has sent us the following remarks on the subject of the Dutch ligneous flora. Many causes combine to operate unfavourably on the growth of trees and shrubs in Holland; the numerous heavy winds in the neighbourhood of the sea, and more particularly the north-west wind, destroy the tops of the high-growing trees, break their branches, and, by shaking their trunks, loosen the roots in the soil, or blow the trees down. This is chiefly occasioned by the little depth to which the roots can penetrate into the ground; for, as soon as they reach the water, they are compelled to take a lateral direction, in consequence of which the trees soon become sickly, or are suddenly loosened from the soft, loose, humid soil by the wind. We have here much marsh and fen land. This soil, which is extremely well adapted for supplying turf or peat, is unfavourable to the growth of timber. Should much rain and strong winds occur, the trees on this soil cannot exist long enough to become old, nor even to have good trunks. In order, therefore, to prevent their being blown down, they must, from time to time, be tied or propped up but the trouble and expense of this operation cause it to be neglected; instead of it the trees are severely lopped, and this, by causing them to throw down a greater quantity of roots into the wet substratum, only renders them more sickly. The truth of this fact may be perceived in the trees in and about most of the Dutch cities.

"When these obstacles do not occur, the trees exhibit a better growth; for the elms on the embankments in Zealand, which have their roots in a good stiff clay soil, and stand high out of the water on the dykes, endure the sea winds without sustaining any injury; besides which, these trees are judiciously pruned, and this, of course, greatly contributes to their large growth and handsome appearance. Whenever the trees are on high ground, and grow in masses, so as to protect one another from the winds, the vegetation is luxuriant, as is the case at the Hague, and in the woods near the Loo. This strikes even a superficial observer at the first glance.

"Most of the country seats in Holland were formerly near Rotterdam, along the Gravenwej, for example; and at Amsterdam, in the neighbourhood of the Diemermeer: but, as all these seats have been demolished, and new ones formed in the high sandy grounds of the provinces of Guelderland and Utrecht, not many remarkable old trees remain in the former district. Those which time might have spared have been cut down in consequence of the removal of the country seats. The Pópulus canadensis [? monilífera] appears every where here in an excellent condition, and grows in places where no other tree will thrive, On the sites of some of the old country seats, especially where the ground is elevated, old tulip trees and catalpas are found, both of which bloom freely. The new country seats are laid out with much taste, in parks on a large scale, and on high grounds, in the provinces of Utrecht and Guelderland; and they are planted with exotic trees and shrubs, which afford very favourable expectations for the future.-W."

But, though Holland and the Netherlands are deficient in an indigenous flora, they are by no means so in collections of plants from other countries. This is ascertained from the early catalogues of the different botanic gardens, and from the magnificent publications on botany and gardening which issued from the press of Leyden, Amsterdam, and other Dutch or Flemish cities, in the 17th century. Great part of the Netherlands, from its moist peaty soil, is particularly adapted for the growth of American trees and shrubs; and these, especially all the more showy-flowering kinds, are in popular cultivation. (See Gard. Mag., vol. vii. p. 279., xi. p. 103. and p. 219.)

The best collections of foreign trees and shrubs, at present in the Low Countries, are in the different botanic gardens; in the garden of the Botanical and Horticultural Society of Ghent, in the garden of the King of the Bel

gians at Lacken, in the Duc d'Aremberg's seat at Enghien, and that of Sir Henry T. Oakes near Tournay. The nurseries of Holland are celebrated for their fruit trees, and those of the Netherlands for their magnolias and azaleas, and other peat-earth trees and shrubs. That of M. Parmentier at Enghien has long been remarkable for containing a great mauy species in a very limited space; and that of M. le Candele at Humbeque, near Brussels, contains the best collection of the genus Cratæ'gus in the Low Countries. Some account of this nursery, with notices of its more remarkable trees, will be found in the Gardener's Magazine, vol. xi. p. 537.

In the garden at Lacken there are a few fine specimens of foreign trees, particularly a tulip tree, which Mr. M'Intosh, the head gardener to the King of the Belgians, informs us, had, in 1834, a clear stem of 20 ft., the diameter of which at the surface of the ground was fully 3 ft., and at the height of 20 ft. about 2 ft.; the head was globular and compact. This tree flowered and ripened seeds every year. When Lacken belonged to France, the palace was occupied by the Empress Josephine, who brought her gardener from Paris to superintend the gardens; and the poor man, while he was gathering the seeds of this tulip tree, fell from it, and broke his neck. The trees and shrubs in the Brussels Botanic Garden have been planted within the last fifteen years: those in the Ghent Botanic Garden are much older; among them is a Pópulus canadensis, 100 ft. high, and upwards of 17 ft. in circumference at 1 ft. from the ground. There are, a Robínia Pseud-Acàcia, 60 ft. high; a Catálpa syringæfòlia, with a trunk between 8 ft. and 9 ft. in circumference; Vibúrnum O'pulus, 22 ft. high; two tulip trees, 70 ft. high; a Salisbùria, 23 ft. high; Gymnó cladus, 70 ft. high; lime trees, 60 ft high; and Magnòlia auriculàta, conspicua, and tripétala, from 20 ft. to 25 ft. high. In the grounds of Mr. Herry of Mariakirk is a Catálpa, 40 ft. high, with a trunk 6 ft. in circumference at 1 ft. from the ground. In the grounds of Baron le Norman, near the same town, there are, an Ailántus (there called the Virginian sumach), 30 years planted, and 45 ft. high; and a Juniperus virginiana, 40 years planted, and 30 ft. high. The largest salisburia in Holland is in the botanic garden at Utrecht, its height being nearly 50 ft.

In consequence of the present unfriendly feeling between Holland and Belgium, we have been unable to procure notices of the trees and shrubs of the more remarkable places of either country. We know, however, that there are many fine specimens, and that though the winters are colder than those of England, yet that the summers are warmer, and that the greater part of the deciduous American trees and shrubs thrive there as well as in England. Many of the finest azaleas in our nurseries, and some varieties of magnolia and rhododendron, have been raised from seed in the neighbourhood of Ghent. The winters, however, are unfavourable for evergreens, and but few of these are to be found in any part of the country. In Smith's Tour on the Continent, Neill's Horticultural Tour, and in various articles in the Gardener's Magazine, will be found descriptive sketches of many of the small gardens of Holland and the Netherlands, all more or less remarkable for their American trees and shrubs. Of large places which may be compared with the country seats of England, and which might be supposed to afford many examples of fine old trees, there are comparatively few, as has been already observed above by a correspondent, a native of the country.

SECT. III. Of the Indigenous and Foreign Trees and Shrubs of Germany, including Hungary.

THOUGH this portion of Europe is of great extent, yet its ligneous flora is much less varied and numerous than that of France. The reasons are, that it extends in longitude more than in latitude; that it contains few very lofty mountains, and embraces but a small latitudinal portion of the sea shore. It includes Hungary, however, which enjoys a greatly diversified surface, and an extensive range of mountains, with a ligneous flora which has furnished some