is the name Chinese rice-paper, half
true and half false — good for the China, but
bad for the rice. The last-mentioned discovery
is only one of the many instances
of the origin and history of commercial
vegetable products, of which we should yet have
remained in utter ignorance but for the
formation of this garden and the museum.

The Doum Palm of Upper Egypt,
remarkable for its singularly forked stems — other
palms have unbranched stems — resembles
that respected animal Saint Martin's donkey,
by gratuitously presenting us with gingerbreads.
The thought of gingerbread reminds
us that the gentry of Madeira and Rio de
Janeiro indulge in tooth-picks of orange-tree
wood, extending the use of the same to
walking-canes, both, which are displayed for
our admiration. Picture to yourself a village
urchin caught robbing an orange orchard,
and receiving his punishment in the shape of
whacks from a portion of the tree of evil!

Messrs. Fortnum and Mason, by their
collection of preserved fruits, make one envy
the young hero who, while he sate in a
corner, had full liberty to put in his thumb
and pull out a plum. But when
maid-servants or pages are incorrigible in tasting
the jam and honey with their fingers,
strong-minded mistresses often cure them by mixing
therewith a dust of jalap; accordingly, for
our rescue from temptation here we are
indebted to a religious sect in the United
States, denominated the United Society, or
more commonly, the Shakers. They have
sent an extensive collection of their native
and cultivated herbs, compressed into oblong
cakes; which preparations are highly valued
throughout the States, and constitute a great
export trade. Do we ever swallow, without
knowing it, anything made from these
vegetable cakes? Ignorance, perhaps, is bliss.
By the way, frugal housewives in Sumatra
use prepared coffee-leaves instead of the
berry; they really do contain caffeine, and
make a drink that is better than no coffee
at all. One would think that the great
object in knowing Cocculus Indicus, or
Indian berries, by sight, would be to avoid
them; but we don't avoid them. Two
thousand three hundred and fifty-nine bags,
each of one hundredweight, are
annually imported. What for? Cola-nuts, from
the west coast of Africa, have a pleasant,
bitter taste, and are much esteemed by the
negroes as promoting digestion; they also
prevent sleep, and are used by the native
watchmen to keep themselves awake. These
nuts are likely to come into general use on
occasions which it is needless to specify.
Finally, we have vegetable bellows made of
the leaves of a tree, besides lace-trees,
wax-trees, sack-trees, and cow-trees. There are
even drum-trees.

The happy Hookerian idea received a great
development, first from our Crystal Palace
Exhibition and still more from the Paris
Exposition last year. At the breaking up of
the former, the museum received numerous
additions; amongst others, the noble
collection of Scottish agricultural products,
formed at a vast expense by Messrs. Peter
Lawson and Company, of Edinburgh. At
Paris, one of the leading features were the
trophies, combining the productions of a
country into one artistic group. Thus, the
Low Countries built a trophy of native and
colonial produce on a pedestal of ornamental
bamboo-work. By far the most interesting
of these were the collections and the trophies
from Algeria. If England only had a colony
like Algeria, no further from her shores than
the breadth of the Mediterranean! That
Algeria should scarcely be better known to
Englishmen than the Mare Mortuum in the
moon! The multitude of the objects thence
derived precludes all attempt at selection.
There were models in wax of the fruits of
Algeria: Le vaquois, Pandanus odoratissimus;
the bread-fruit, Artocarpus integrifolia;
the anatomy and mode of germination
of the cocoa-nut, life-size. There were black
pepper, tamarinds, China guava, Savannah
guava, psidium pomiferum, and cloves;
quinces, almonds, cones of the Araucaria
excelsa, aubergines, or the edible fruits of
egg-plants, in varieties, tobacco, fruits of
opuntias, or prickly pears, in varieties,
madder-roots like worn-out whip-thongs,
cotton, glorious onions, Madagascar bamboos
grown at Bône, plums, apples (including a
quite white apple, the pomme d'Astracan),
sweet potatoes, pears, and pastèques, or
water-melons, grown with and without
irrigation. Other products of Algeria were,
paste for paper-making, from sundry native
textile plants; bullrush leaves, rubbed and
bruised so as to show their fibres, one leaf
making quite a web; Phormium tenax, or
New Zealand flax; paper made with
indigenous textile plants without the slightest
mixture of rags; dyers' carthamus; Chinese
rice, from the government nursery at Bône;
various grains; the Caladium esculentum of
Jamaica; lentils, sorghos, and silk; cloth
made of the fibres of Musa textilis; all sorts
of maize; an edible lichen, Lecanora esculenta,
and grey flour obtained from the same; the
wood of the Algerian cork-tree, polished;
Thuya articulata, a beautiful wood, giving a
resin called sandaraque, with dried specimens
of the foliage. Very instructive objects were
woods for building and other purposes,
exhibited with the bark on.

But, the great point is, that many of
these things are now our own to enjoy
and study, as will be seen from Sir William
Hooker's report. "The Museum had
already become, even before the close of
eighteen hundred and fifty-four, inconveniently
crowded by the accession of new
contributions, and a considerable amount of them
had to be temporarily accommodated in the
temples and in sheds. A vote for an additional