Pot-pourri from a Surrey garden

Towards the end of the last century, in the midst of wars and revolutions, the crumbling of old methods of government and the change of social customs, an extraordinary band of able men all over Europe were quietly working in concert and with constant communication. Their object was to increase the knowledge of the science of botany by reproducing, with the greatest botanical exactness of detail, the plants imported from all parts of the world as they flowered in Europe for the first time in the various greenhouses and stoves. It is remarkable that the books of this period, even of different countries, very rarely illustrate the same plants. The botanical curiosity, the feeling of something new, rare, and not fully understood, which is such an MARCH 65 incentive to the human mind, has gone for ever as far as this kind of simple botany is concerned. Of these highly gifted men, who worked on lines which can no more be repeated than the missals of the sixteenth century in Italy, Jacquin, no doubt, was the most artist- ically interesting. No one who has not seen his works can realise the beauty, the delicacy, the truth, the detail to which flower-painting can be brought. None of the other flower-painters that I know show anything like the same talent of throwing the flower on to the paper with endless variety, and of adapting the design to the size and growth of the particular plant. This result seems produced by his botanical exactness, and not, apparently, by any intention to make a beautiful picture. No two pages are ever filled in the same way. This does away entirely with the ordinary wearisome monotony of turning over drawings one after the other, with the flower right in the middle of the page. His books fetch a considerable price, and are difficult to procure. The one I sometimes see in English catalogues is in my possession, five volumes of ' Collectanea ad Botanicam Chemiam et Historiam naturalem, 1786.' My copy was a surplus one at the British Museum, of which it bears the stamp and date of sale, 1831. The plates maintain their usual excellence and are nearly all coloured, with a brilliancy that has not suffered at all from time. Some are of wild flowers, mosses, Lycopodiums, insects, and serpents. All Jacquin's drawings stand out wonderfully on the paper, but there is no shading, except that the modelling is indicated by a stronger tone of the same colour ; and the relief and value, without any tinting of the background, are most effective. In the case of the bushy little Alpines the plant is spread out like seaweed and the root drawn, which gives the whole growth and proportion of the plant. 1793. ' Oxalis Monographia ' is an exquisite study of 66 POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN about a hundred Oxalises. Nearly all the plates are coloured. Most of these delicate little plants with their bulbous roots come from the Cape of Good Hope. Jacquin seems to have had a peculiar affection for them, as, besides this monograph, he constantly figures them in his mis- cellaneous works. I have often tried to procure his book on Stapelias, also a large family of Cape plants rather like small Cactuses, but have never been able to do so, and have only seen it at the Museum.