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LE JARDIN DES PLANTES.

Mrs. Watts’s charming Juvenile Annual, the New Year’s Gift, furnishes the following admirable model of a descriptive letter from the French capital.

“The day following the one on which we were at Versailles, we spent in visiting the Garden of Plants; this institution (if I may so call it) is a little on the same plan as our Zoological Garden, and is said to be quite unrivalled in the whole world.  It contains curiosities of every age, and from every quarter of the globe.  The gardens, which cover more than a hundred acres of ground, are filled with every plant that can be reared in France, either naturally or by artificial means, from the lordly palm to the humble potato.

“One enclosure is filled with every specimen of shrub that is capable of being made to form a fence, from the prickly holly, of forty feet high, to the dwarf-box, scarcely an inch above the ground.

“In another place, we see specimens of all the various modes of training fruit, and other kinds of trees, which the ingenuity of man has been able to accomplish—­this is peculiarly interesting.  Here, a tree is trained to resemble a large basin, another is made to look like a gigantic umbrella, and a third like a lady’s fan.

“In one enclosure are collected together all the various specimens of culinary vegetables that have usually been appropriated to the sustenance of mankind; these, you will readily believe, occupy no small space; and near them, are to be seen specimens of all the varieties of fruit trees of which France and its neighbouring kingdoms can boast.

“In addition to all this, there are extensive green-houses and hot-houses, filled with many thousand of the choicest plants, attached to each of which is its scientific and its common name.  Many of them were extremely curious; I tried to remember so many, that I find I confound one with another, and now I can scarcely recollect any, save the useful bread tree, the curious coffee plant, and the tempting sugar cane, all of which are to be seen here to great advantage.

“Attached to this beautiful garden, is a splendid museum, containing all sorts of treasures connected with natural history.  Here are to be seen more than two hundred varieties of monkeys only; of birds, there are myriads; and one or two species are shown, that are believed to be the only ones of the kind extant; these, of course, are not alive.  Here are also collected hundreds of bird’s nests, of all shapes, kinds and sizes, from one almost as large as a hand basin, to one about the size of a green gage plum:  most of these contain eggs of such kinds of birds as those to whom the nests belonged; and indeed the ingenuity with which many of these little houses are constructed, surprised me more than any thing I ever before witnessed.  The collection of butterflies too is most remarkable, from one the size of a plate, to those of the smallest size.