Page:The Present State of Peru.djvu/70

48 have been resorted to, to found a professorship, and augment the collections in the botanic garden of the Capital. Our indefatigable botanist, aided by the skilful draughtsman, Don Francisco Pulgar, is unceasingly occupied, and keeps up a constant communication between the mountains, Lima, and Madrid. The Flora of Peru, augmented by new and continual supplies, will be an eternal monument of the wisdom and magnificence of two sovereigns; a rich accumulation of the treasures of the vegetable kingdom; and the most authentic testimony to prove, that Peru does not abound less in exquisite plants, than in precious metals.

Let it not, however, be thought, that the inestimable collections we have cited, have already exhausted the productions of that nature. The unknown and rare plants which grow on the borders of the Andes, would of themselves form a catalogue. The want of tracks to penetrate into the spacious levels these mountains contain, and to examine the directions of the rivulets and streams by which they are intersected, is an insuperable obstacle to the exact inquiries which, it is trusted, will