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the Garden for these last twenty years, for the most part with M. Dufresne, the King's naturalist, chief director of the zoological department, and is consequently well acquainted with the management, both in its general spirit and most minute details.

The Garden of Plants is certainly a most interesting spot. What can be more delightful than to wander about in the twilight of a fine autumnal evening, beneath those magnificent rows of ancient lime-trees, when the air is perfumed by the balmy breath of many thousand flowers—to listen, amid such a scene of stillness and repose, to the multitudinous voice of a mighty city—or to contrast a sound composed of such discordant and tumultuous elements with the wild and plaintive cries of some solitary water-fowl, which inhabit the banks of a little lake, in the centre of this Garden of Paradise! On the other hand, during the day-time, if less interesting to your sentimentalist, it is certainly fully more amusing to the ordinary class of visitors. Great part of one side of the Garden is laid out as a Menagerie, in which all sorts of wild animals are confined, or, more properly speaking, detained—the extreme comfort and extent of the dwellings, with their beautiful conformability to the pursuits and manners of their inhabitants, almost entirely precluding the idea of anything so harsh and rigorous as confinement. There the elephant, "wisest of brutes," occupies, as he ought to do, a central and conspicuous situation. He is not lodged, as he is with us, in a gloomy crib, in which he can scarcely turn himself round with sufficient freedom to perform the little devices taught him by his keeper, and which one sees how much he despises by the calm melancholy expression of his eyes. He dwells in a large and lofty apartment, opening by means of broad folding-doors into a capacious area, which is all his own. In this he has dry smooth banks to repose upon, and a deep pond of water, into which, once a day, he sinks his enormous body, causing the waters to flow over every part, except his mouth and proboscis. Nothing can be more refreshing than to see him, after basking for some hours in the morning sun, till his skin becomes as parched and dry as the desert dust of Africa—to see him calmly sinking down amidst the clear, cool waters of his little lake, and reappearing again, all moist and black, protruding his huge round back, more like a floating island, or a Leviathan of the ocean, than an inhabitant of terra-firma.

In this neighbourhood, too, there are camels and dromedaries, the "ships of the desert," as they are so beautifully called in the figurative languages of the east, either standing upright, with their long, ghost-like necks, and amiable, though imbecile countenances, or couched on the grass, "and bedward ruminating," apparently well pleased to have exchanged the burning plains of Arabia for the refreshing shades of the Jardin des Plantes. No fear now of the blasting breath of the desert, or of those gigantic columns of moving sand which had so often threatened to overwhelm them, and the leaders of their tribe—no delusive mirage, tempting them still onwards, amongst those glaring, glittering wildernesses, "with show of waters mocking their distress." Even the wilder and more romantic animals seem here to have found a happy haven and a fit abode. The milk-white goat of Cachmire, with its long silky clothing, is seen reposing tranquilly, with half-closed eyes, upon some artificial ledge of rock, forming a beautiful and lively contrast to the dark green moss with which it is surrounded. Deers and antelopes repose upon the dappled ground, or are seen tripping about under the shade of the neighbouring lime-trees, while the enclosures, with their surrounding shrubbery, are so skilfully arranged, and so intermingled with each other, that every animal appears as if it enjoyed the free range of the whole encampment, instead of being confined to the vicinity of its own little hut. The walks are laid out somewhat in a labyrinthic form, so that every step a person takes he is delighted by the view of some fair or magnificent creature from "a far countrie." Birds of the most gorgeous and graceful plumage, peacocks, golden pheasants, and cranes from the Balearic Isles, solicit attention in every quarter, and are seen crossing your path in all the stateliness of conscious beauty, or gliding like sun-beams through groves of evergreen, "star bright, or brighter." In whatever direction you turn, you find the features of the scenery impressed with characters very different from