But this institution comprehends, in addition to the Botanical Garden, an extensive chemical laboratory, a cabinet of comparative anatomy, a cabinet of preparations in anatomy and natural history, a large library, a museum of natural history, and a menagérie well stocked. Besides the lectures delivered in the Amphitheatre, erected in these Gardens, the Professors of Botany give their peripatetic lessons, in good weather, to a numerous train of disciples. “When I have been seated at noon, on a fine day, in the month of August, or in the commencement of May, under one of the majestic ash of the Garden of Plants, with this Elysian scene before me, in the midst of a most profound silence, and of a solitude interrupted only by the occasional appearance of the Professor of Botany and his pupils, I have almost fancied myself,” says the writer of _Letters on France and England_—(see Am. Rev. No. ii.) “among the groves of the Athenian Academy, and could imagine that I heard the lessons of the “divine” Plato. Here, as well as in the spacious and noble works and gardens of Oxford, which are so admirably calculated for the exercises both of the mind and body, the fancy takes wing, and readily transports the student of antiquity to those venerable seats of knowledge, where the sublime Philosophy of the Greeks was taught, and the masters of human reason displayed their incomparable eloquence:”— ——“the green retreats Of Academus,[262b] and the thymy vale, Where, oft enchanted with Socratic sounds, Ilyssus,[262c] pure, devolv’d his tuneful stream In gentle murmur.” Akenside’s _Pleasures of Imagination_. The importance of establishing a Botanical Garden at Philadelphia is obvious: it has, in fact, become a necessary institution, towards completing a medical education; according to the system of teaching medicine, pursued in the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania. In this respect, New-York has taken the lead of Philadelphia. Dr. David Hosack, professor of botany in the Medical School of New-York, established a Botanic Garden of about twenty acres, called the Elgin Botanic Garden, in the vicinity of that city, in the year 1801. This Garden is skirted around by forest-trees and shrubs, within the substantial enclosure of a stone wall; and on these grounds are erected extensive, commodious, and well constructed conservatories and hot-houses, which are furnished with a variety of plants, exotic and indigenous. The whole of this establishment was purchased from Dr. Hosack, by the state, in the year 1810: It is now under the direction of the regents of the University of that state.