KEW GARDENS.

New Zealander, Volume 9, Issue 706, 19 January 1853, Page 2

KEW GARDENS.

[From the “ Quarterly Review."] The national value at this time attained by Kew must be at once admitted by whoever peruses the Director’s last report. The principal points, at least, shall be selected-—though for our own reasons not exactly in the order in which Sir William Hooker, for his, found it expedient to arrange it. “ The Garden is especially intended to he the means of introducing new, rare, and useful plants, and dispersing them through our own and other countries, and to give an impulse to nurseries and persons trading in exotic plants. Perhaps at no period has there been so great a stimulus given to the introduction of new, rare, but more especially useful plants, as during the last ten years ; and the Royal Gardens of Kew have contributed lar.ely on this head, partly by means of collectors sent out from thence, but still more by the extensive correspondence of the Directors with intelligent persons in all parts of the globe, aided, as such communication has been, by the public and private services of individuals and companies, more than can be enumerated, in conveying our collections to and from the East, and to and from the West free of expense. It were impossible here to notice a tithe of the rare, or useful, or ornamental plants which these Gardens imported and distributed. A few of those quite recently received maybe mentioned —such as the Tussack grass from the Falkland Islands, proved to be already of the highest consequence to the West of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and particularly to the Orkneys and Hebrides, and analogous climates; the Para grass (introduced by Earl Grey), now transmitted to various tropical and sub-tropical colonies ; the deciduous and evergreen beeches of Tierra dd Euego; the lace bark tree of Jamaica ; the jute of India ; the Chinese grass, as it is called which affords the best material for calico, and which has latterly been cultivated in the British territories abroad; the African teak, long celebrated in ship-building, yet till now unknown to science ; the best caout-chouc (Sipbonia elastica); the cow-tree of Soutu of America; the double cocoanut (Lodoicea Secbellorum), that rarest of all palms; the Hum pine, from Van Diemen’s Land —which proves hardy—and is among the most beautiful of conifers : Cinchona bark (through Mr. Pentland) ; a hardy palm from China, &c. &c. The Victoria regia, introduced through our moans, is perhaps one of the most Remarkable ever reared in Europe : and the number of new and extraordinarily beautiful Rhododendrons sent to us by Dr. Hooker from Indi has excited the astonishment of botanists both at home and abroad. In the eastern extremity of the Himalaya —at elevations varying from 0000 to 18,000 feet above the level of the sea this traveller has detected, and in most cases drawn and described on the spot, no less than thirty-seven kinds, the majority of which are quite new. Twenty-two of those have already been reared at the Royal Gardens. We are sure that there