The seasons will come and go; the flowers will bud and blossom year after year, and the trees spread out their branches: they will be a continual reminder of the white-haired man who planted them for the sake of doing good to others. Harvard College received a valuable gift May, 1861, through the munificence of the late Benjamin Bussey of Roxbury, Mass., in property estimated at $413,092.80, "for a course of instruction in practical agriculture, and the various arts subservient thereto." The superb estate is near Jamaica Plain. The students of the Bussey Institute generally intend to become gardeners, florists, landscape-gardeners, and farmers. The Arnold Arboretum occupies a portion of the Bussey farm in West Roxbury. The fund given by the late James Arnold of New Bedford, Mass., for this purpose now amounts to $156,767.97. JAMES SMITHSON AND THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION. Another Englishman besides Henry Shaw to whom America is much indebted is James Smithson, the giver of the Smithsonian Institution at Washington. Born in 1765 in France, he was the natural son of Hugh, third Duke of Northumberland, and Mrs. Elizabeth Macie, heiress of the Hungerfords of Audley, and niece of Charles, Duke of Somerset. At Pembroke College, Oxford, he was devoted to science, especially chemistry, and spent his vacations in collecting minerals. He was graduated May 26, 1786, and thereafter gave his time to study and original research. In 1790 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and became the friend of many distinguished men, both in England and on the Continent, where he lived much of the time. Among his friends and correspondents, were Sir Humphry Davy, Berzelius (the noted chemist of Sweden), Gay-Lussac the chemist, Thomson, Wollaston, and others. [Illustration: JAMES SMITHSON.] He wrote and published in the _Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society_, and also in Thomson's _Annals of Philosophy_, many valuable papers on the "Composition of Zeolite," "On a Substance Procured from the Elm Tree, called Ulmine," "On a Saline Substance from Mount Vesuvius," "On Facts Relating to the Coloring Matter of Vegetables," etc. At his death he left about two hundred manuscripts. He was deeply interested in geology, and made copious notes in his journal on rocks and mining. His life seems to have been a quiet one, devoted to intellectual pursuits.