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From Chantilly I travelled through Lusarche, Echouen, and St. Denis, and arrived in Paris in the afternoon of the 19th of August. suden i

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THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF NATURAL

WAS

HISTORY,

[From the same. ]

AS formerly called Jardin du Roi; but received its present name by a decree of the National Convention of the 10th of June, 1793. One end of it extends to the Seine: it consists of a botanic garden, library for natural history, a menagerie, or collection of foreign animals, and an amphitheatre, or lecture-room.

The botanic garden which belongs to it is three hundred and twenty toises, or fathoms, long, and ten in breadth. It is partitioned lengthways, that is, from its entrance down towards the Seine, by three very fine alleys; and intersected across by various others, which terminate in the public promenades, or walks. The different square divisions thus formed, are used for plantations, and are at present enclosed with rail-work. The green-house and orangerie were formerly in pretty good order, and separated into rooms and spaces: but a new green-house and orangerie are now additionally erected, and they are very conveniently disposed. Here is a great abundance of foreign plants and trees, and from hence all the botanic gardens of the central schools are supplied with seeds and with trees as soon as they can be transplanted. From the same highly cultivated spot, the cultivators of land can procure economic and nursery trees, and

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even the indigent poor can obtain plants when they can be spared.

Captain Baudouin, in his travels into different parts of the world, had collected a great variety of natural curiosities; and presented the whole to the nation, on condition that he should be furnished with a ship to convey them to France. The English government consented that this ship should perform her voyage without molestation. Meanwhile the English had taken possession of the island of Trinidad, where this extensive and famous collection had been left. When Captain Baudouin arrived at Trinidad, in order to bring away his collection, the English would not give it up, on pretence that their government had consented to the safety of the expedition by sea, and not by land. However, this and the former expeditions were not altogether fruitless; for Baudouin has brought into the botanic garden about one thousand different kinds of live plants, besides assortments of seeds, and a considerable herbarium.

The gallery for natural history is a building situated on the right hand, as you enter the botanic garden from the street. On the second floor of this building are four large apartments, where fishes, birds, shells, insects, minerals, earths, and stones, are deposited on shelves, furnished with glass fronts. The inner part is allotted to vegetables, and contains specimens of trees, together with the herbarium of Tournefort..

Vaillant presented to the Museum a part of his birds. But several persons, who had certain knowledge of the fact, assured me, that Vaillant ré served for himself the most singular and curious.

The gallery is open to the public the first, fourth, and seventh days of every decade, when it is crowded by all sorts of people, who come there not

instruction, but merely to view the place, by

way of amusement. A certain number of veterans and invalids are then stationed in different places about the rooms, in order to see that the drawers are not broke open, or the curiosities in any manner injured or destroyed. Before this regulation took place, a diamond was stolen from thence, in the time of the revolution. Every second, third, fifth, sixth, eighth, and ninth days of the decade, this gallery is open for such only as are desirous of studying natural history.

The excellent Lacepede, who is not less kind and obliging, than eminent for erudition, gave me a letter to Lucas, keeper of the gallery, who, with great civility, shewed me every thing that was curious and remarkable in this museum, and particularly the collection of quadrupeds, which is never exhibited to the public. Here I had a second view of some singular objects, which I had seen at the Hague one-and-twenty years before, in the Stadtholder's collection, such as the sea-horse, zebra, elephant, orang-outang, and a variety of monkeys. There are likewise to be seen in this museum, a lion, a tiger, a leopard, an uncommon large dog from the Pyrenees, and a fine skeleton of a cameleopard, whose height from his fore-feet to the top of his crown is sixteen feet.

All these and many other quadrupeds, and some large birds, are exhibited to view in an apartment on the third floor, or rather in a part of the garret formed into an apartment. The remaining part of the floor has the appearance of a large hall; above are sky-lights, and on each side are dens for wild beasts.

Just below the entrance from the e'ty into the botanical garden, and on the left hand there is to - be seen a plantation of trees and shrubs, which rise up to a considerable height, and have a beautiful appearance. In this fine grove formerly stood,

under a noble cedar of Lebanon, a marble bust of Linnæus, the Swedish naturalist, and the inventor and founder of the modern system of natural history. This bust was destroyed at the time when the peuple souverain amused themselves with spreading ruin and devastation. The cedar of Lebanon, either by a canon-ball, or some other violence, then lost its majestic top. Those Vandals destroyed every memorial and monument, without any discrimination whatever. They even demolished the tombs, and dug up the bodies of the most meritorious of their countrymen; not exempting that of the great Turenne himself, who had been, more than once, the deliverer of France. His sacred remains, in which was still visible the wound of the cannon-ball by which he fell in the service of his country, were treated by those barbarians in the most inhuman and contemptible manner. The mortal part of that great general lay in the museum, shamefully exposed among the skeletons of quadrupeds and birds; till it was removed by the order of Francis Neufchateau, and placed in an apartment of the amphitheatre, where it is set upright in a glass case.

Before I take my leave of the Museum for Natural History, I must observe, that it contains a great number of chests still unpacked, which are full of curious objects brought hither from conquered countries. I have been told by men who had every opportunity of being well informed, that those chests enclose a collection as interesting and extensive as that already deposited in the museum, in which there is no room for more objects without additional buildings.

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Tlarge head, short, rounded cars; and a face covered with short hair: the upper part of his head, his chin, and his whole neck and shoulders are covered with long shaggy hair like a mane: the hair on his body and limbs is short and smooth, but long on the bottom of his belly: his limbs are of vast strength: his tail is long, with a tuft of long black hairs at the end: his colour is tawny; but his belly inclines to white: the length of the largest lion from the nose to the tail, is above eight feet; of the tail, four. The lioness or female is less in size, and wants the mane.

The lion is met with, but rarely, in the hot parts of Asia; such as India, and Persia; and a few are still met with in the deserts between Bagdat and Bassorah, on the banks of the Euphrates: they have also been reckoned among the animals of

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