ayor, 8 aldermen, and a common council of 48 members. The executive powers are exercised by the mayor and aldermen, and measures of a legislative character are adopted by a concurrent act of that board and of the common council. These officers are chosen annually by the citizens, voting in the wards in which they reside. Ward officers are also chosen annually to superintend the elections. The city, with the small town of Chelsea, forms the county of Suffolk. The couny is represented in the senate of the state by six senators. Until the year 1821, the municipal affairs of the town were superintended by a board of seven select-men, annually chosen; and all measures for raising and granting money, establishing schools, and making municipal regulations, were adopted in town-meeting, or assembly of the qualified voters, held in Faneuil hall. All public officers were chosen in town-meeting. There is a police court of three justices, for examining all criminal charges and the trial of minor offences; and a municipal court, held by a single judge, which has jurisdiction of all criminal causes not capital, which are tried by jury. The annual expenditures of the city amount to about $300,000; of which sum $53,000 are expended for the support of schools; $50,000 for paving, repairing and widening streets; $30,000 for the support and relief of the poor, &c. The public schools are, a Latin grammar school, open to all boys between the ages of 9 and 15; a high school, in which are taught the various branches of mathematics and other branches of English education; 8 grammar and writing schools, 7 of which have 2 masters each-a grammar and a writing master, who teach, alternately, boys and girls, at different hours; one African school; and 57 primary schools, which are kept by women, and in which children from four to seven years of age are taught to read, spell and write. The schools are under the direction of a school committee, consisting of the mayor and aldermen and 12 members, annually elected. The principal literary institution in the vicinity, Harvard university, is situated at Cambridge, three miles from the city. The medical branch of this institution is established in Boston, where the professors reside. The Boston athenæum has two large buildings; one containing a library, and the other a picture gallery, a hall for public lectures, and other rooms for scientific purposes. The library consists of at out 24,000 volumes. There are many

literary, scientific and charitable societics in B. Among the former are the American academy of arts and sciences, which has published four volumes of memoirs; the historical society, which has published 22 volumes; the Massachusetts medical society; the mechanic institution, under whose patronage courses of lectures for mecanics are delivered annually. Among the latter are the humane society; the Boston dispensary, by which the poor are furnished with medical attendance and medicine free of expense; the female asylum, for the maintenance of female orphans; the boys' asylum, and several others. The pursuits of the inhabitants are in a great measure mercantile. They carry on an extensive foreign trade, and own many ships, which are employed not only in the importing, exporting and coasting trade, but in trade between foreign markets. B. is the second commercial town in the U. States. The value of the annual imports is about $13,000,ʊ00, and that of the exports $9,000,000. The amount of shipping owned in B., at the commencement of 1828, was 161,583 tons. Many kinds of manufacı ires are carried on here. The capitalists of B. are also the principal proprietors in the joint stock manufacturing companies established in Lowell, Waltham, and other towns in Massachusetts and some of the neighboring states. Great improvements have been made, within a few years, in the appearance of the city by the widening and repaving of streets, the erection of new and elegant buildings, and the embellishment of the public grounds. The principal public square is the common, which, with the mall, a gravelled walk which surrounds it, covers a surface of about 50 acres. It is a handsome piece of ground, has a sloping and undulating surface, is partly shaded with elms, and is surrounded by some of the most elegant buildings in the city. There are six newspapers published daily, three semiweekly, several weekly, and a number of other periodical journals, some of which are conducted with great ability, and are extensively circulated. Among these are the North American Review and the Christian Examiner. B. was founded in August, 1630. It received the name of B. from a borough of the same name in Lincolnshire, England (from which a part of the inhabitants emigrated), by a vote of the court of assistants, September 7, and, on the 19th of October of the same year. the general court of the colony was held there. This general court was not con-

posed of representatives, but of the proprietors under the charter, acting in their own right. The first church was built in 1632. The Middlesex canal, leading from Boston harbor to the Merrimack river, forms with this river a navigable channel to Concord in New Hampshire. There are no other means of transportation to and from the interior, except such as are afforded by the common roads. In this respect, B. is behind the other principal cities of the U. States, and its inland trade is much less than it would otherwise have been. Projects are now before the public for remedying this inconvenience by the construction of rail-roads. The population has doubled from the year 1783 once in about 23 years. Previously to that date, the population of the town had been, for 100 years, nearly stationary, and for 50 years entirely so; its trade, and that of the colony, having been subjected to severe restraints and heavy burdens In the reign of Charles II, the inhabitants of the colony fell under the royal displeasure, and, in 1683, a writ of quo warranto was issued against the charter of the colony. A legal town-meeting of the freemen of B. was held, and the question was put to vote, whether it was their wish that the general court should resign the charter and the privileges therein granted, and it was resolved in the negative unanimously. The charter, however, was declared forfeited by a decree of the court of chancery, and, soon after, sir Edmund Andros was appointed the first royal governor. His administration, which endured for two or three years, was arbitrary and oppressive. In April, 1689, the people of B. took forcible possession of the fort in B., and the castle in the harbor, turned the guns upon the frigate Rose, and compelled her to surrender, seized the governor, and held him a close prisoner under guard in the castle. A little more than a month afterwards, news was received of the revolution in England, and the event was celebrated with great rejoicings. In 1765, after the passage of the stamp act, the person appointed distributor of stamps was compelled, by threats of violence, to decline the acceptance of the office, and the house of the lieutenant-governor was destroyed by a mob. A large military and naval force was stationed at B. for the purpose of overawing the people. On the evening of March 5, 1770, a sergeant's guard fired upon a crowd of people, who were surrounding them, and pelting them with snow-balls, and killed live meu. Dec. 16, 1773, on the arrival

of three ships loaded with tea, after various unsuccessful attempts had been made by public meetings of the citizens, to prevent its being landed and sold, in violation of the, non-importation resolves of the people, a number of men, disguised as In dians, went on board the ships, and threw all the tea overboard. In the following spring, the port of B. was closed by an act of parliament (Boston Port-bill), and the landing and shipping of goods within the harbor was ordered to be discontinued. The session of the general court was removed to Salem, and additional bodies of troops and a military governor were ordered to B. In 1775, the war commenced with the battles of Lexington and Bunker hill, and the town of B., in which the British troops were encamped to the number of 10,000 men, was besieged by the American army. The siege continued until the March following, when the British troops evacuated the town and castle, embarked on board their own ships, and withdrew to another part of the country. The inhabitants were among the earliest and most ardent assertors of the rights of the people, and among the earliest advocates and active supporters of independence. During the revolutionary struggle, popular meetings were frequent. These meetings were usually held in Faneuil hall. Benjamin Franklin was born in B., Jan. 17, 1706.

BOSWELL, James, the friend and biographer of Johnson, born at Edinburgh, in 1740, studied in his native city, in Glasgow, and in the Dutch university of Utrecht. He afterwards resided several times in London, and cultivated the acquaintance of the most distinguished men of his time. Here he became acquainted with Johnson-a circumstance which he himself calls the most important event of his life. He afterwards visited Voltaire at Ferney, Rousseau at Neufchatel, and Paoli in Corsica, with whom he became intimate. He then returned by the way of Paris to Scotland, and devoted himself to the bar. In 1768, when Corsica attracted so much attention, he published his valuable Account of Corsica, with Memoirs of Paoli. At a later period, he settled at London, where he lived in the closest intimacy with Johnson. In 1773, he accompanied him on a tour to the Scottish Highlands and Hebrides, and published an account of the excursion after their return. After the death of Johnson, he became his biographer. The minuteness and accuracy of his account, and the store of literary anecdote which

it contains, render this work very valuable. It was published in 2 vols. 4to., in 1790, and has been repeatedly reprinted. B. died in 1795.

BOSWORTH; a small town in the county of Leicester, England, about three miles from which is Bosworth field, where was fought, in 1458, the memorable battle between Richard III and the earl of Richmond, afterwards Henry VII. This battle, in which Richard lost his life, put a period to the long and bloody wars of the roses, between the houses of York and Lancas

ter.

BOTANICAL GARDENS; establishments in which plants from all climates, and all parts of the world, are cultivated in the open air, in green-houses and hot-houses. The object of such an establishment is partly information and the improvement of science, partly pleasure and luxury. Theophrastus seems to have instituted the first botanical garden. He bequeathed it to his scholars. Attalus Philometor, king of Pergamus, and Mithridates Eupator of Pontus, vied with each other in the establishment of gardens, where they cultivated poisons and antidotes. Pliny mentions a botanical garden which was laid out in Italy by Antonius Castor, son-in-law of king Dejotarus. In the middle ages, Charlemagne exerted a favorable influence, by establishing gardens near the imperial palaces and castles, specifying even the single shrubs, which were to be planted. In the beginning of the 14th century, Matthæus Sylvaticus, at Salerno, founded the first botanical garden, properly so called. The republic of Venice, soon afterwards, in 1333, instituted a public medical garden, and had the plants painted by Amadei. The paintings are still preserved. After the time of the revival of learning, the first botanical gardens, which contained, however, for the greater part, merely medicinal plants, were laid out in Italy. Duke Alfonso of Este was the founder of an excellent institution of this kind in Ferrara; then followed the gardens in Padua, Pisa and Pavia. Montpellier, in France, first imitated his example. The academical garden in Leyden was instituted in 1577; that of Paris, in 1633; and about the same time the first botanical gardens in Germany and England were founded. At present, the largest and most renowned in Germany are the imperial Austrian, at Schönbrunn, under the inspection of Jacquin; the royal Prussian, near Berlin, under Link and Otto; that of Weimar, in Belvedere; that of the grand duke of Baden. at

Schwetzingen; and the royal Hanoverian, in Herrnhausen. In Great Britain, the royal garden at Kew; the Chelsea garden, founded for the London apothecaries; and that at Liverpool, under the superintendence of Shepherd, are the most celebrated scientific institutions, to say nothing of the extensive gardens where plants are raised for sale. In France, the royal garden in Paris, under the inspection of Desfontaines and Thouin, is the principal. Formerly, that of Mal maison, founded by the empress Josephine, was the most famous (see Bonpland). In Italy, the garden of the university at Turin, superintended by Capelli, is, perhaps, the best; in Spain, the royal garden at Madrid, under Mariano Lagasca; in Denmark, the garden of the university at Copenhagen, under the superintendence of Hornemann. In Russia, the excellent institution of the count Alexis Rasumowsky, at Corinka, near Moscow, deserves to be placed by the side of the most celebrated establishments. The principal botanical gardens in the U. States are in New York, in Philadelphia and Cambridge. In Asia, the garden of the East India company at Čalcutta is the most important.-At present, almost all universities and learned academies, as well as many rich private proprietors, have botanical gardens.

BOTANY, the science of plants, may be divided into two parts, one of which describes their external appearance, and is sometimes called phytography; the other treats of their internal structure and organic action, and may be termed philosophical botany or phytonomy The former requires a perfect knowledge of terminology, the latter a thorough knowledge of the plants themselves, with a view to a systematic classification of them, according to fixed principles. The necessity of such a classification must have been felt as soon as the number of known plants became great, and their relations and analogies obvious. At the time of the revival of letters, hardly 1500 plants were known from the descriptions of the an.. cients. At present, at a moderate estima tion, more than 50,000 have been describ ed. It is obviously impossible to introduce order into this infinite chaos, or to acquire any distinct knowledge, without the aid of gencral principles. Even in the 16th and 17th centuries, the founders of botanical science perceived that in plants, as well as in all other natural bodies, the essential and necessary parts must be distinguished from the accidental, and that a

scientific classification must be founded on the former alone. Now it was obvious that the production of fruit and seed is the ultimate object of vegetation, and, accordingly, in the first attempts at classification, the relations and component parts of the seed and of the fruit were made the foundation of the arrangement. This arrangement was confirmed by an observation of the uniformity of nature in the formation of those parts in plants of similar kinds. But it was found, also, that uniformity in these formations prevailed in too great a number of plants to allow them alone to be made the distinguishing characteristics It became, therefore, necessary to have recourse to other parts. The flower was first chosen, as it presents a great variety of forms, and, at the same time, a uniformity of structure. But the limits to this uniformity, and the absence of flowers in innumerable plants, with the consideration that they are not essential, suggested to the immortal founder of modern scientific botany the idea that the sexual parts are most intimately related to the growth of the fruit, and that they are, therefore, of the greatest importance, and furnish better grounds of classification than the flower. A general principle was thus established, fertile in consequences, excellently adapted to facilitate the diffusion and extend the sphere of the science. The Linnæan system was founded exclusively on the relations of the sexual parts. Linnæus divided all known plants into two general divisions, one of which has visible sexual parts (phanerogamous), while in the other they are invisible or wanting (cryptogamous). The first division comprehends the 23 first classes of his system, which are distinguished according to the situation of the sexual parts in the same or in separate flowers, their number, their length, &c. If any system has introduced order in the midst of variety, and shed light on the immense diversities of nature, it is that of Linnæus. Hence, even those who have departed from it in their writings have considered it necessary for elementary instruction. Many objections, however, are brought against it. It has been made a question whether it is fitted for the investigation and classification of unknown plants. It is said that the sexual parts may be very different in similar plants; that he never will have a complete idea of nature, who proceeds only on one principle. It has, therefore, been thought necessary to find a more naturu. arrangement. (See Plants.) In order to follow nature, we must look at

every part; at the internal structure, as well as the external relations, analogies and differences. This can be done only by a profound and toilsome investigation, of which the mere follower of a system has hardly a notion. Seed is considered as the ultimate object of vegetation. Its parts, their formation, situation, and other relations, must be critically examined. The most perfect natural system, in modern times, is that of Jussieu, particularly as enlarged by Decandolle. (See Decandolle's Regni vegetabilis Systema naturale, his Théorie elémentaire de la Botanique, and his Prodromus Systematis naturalis Regni vegetabilis; also the Nouveaux Elémens de la Botanique, by Richard.)

The second general division of this science begins with the investigation of the internal structure, or the anatomy of plants. This study has been recently cultivated, by the Germans, to an extent, which, 30 years ago, could hardly have been conceived. It is closely connected with the first division, if the plants are studied in their natural order. Without good microscopes, and the aid of the best works in this branch, a distinct knowledge of the structure of plants cannot easily be obtained. Chemical botany must be connected with the anatomy of plants. Their constituent parts, their various changes, and the different combinations of their liquid and solid parts, are to be examined. From those, at last, we ascend to the laws of vegetable life, which are, in general, the same as those of animal life. Animal physiology must, therefore, be intimately united with the physiology of plants. Connected with the latter branches of knowledge, which the botanist cannot well dispense with, since they offer the most important conclusions on the economy of nature, on the history of the earth, and on the application of science to the arts. These are, first, the science of the deformities and diseases of plants, which can be made certain only by correct physiological views, and which is of great value in gardening, agriculture, and the cultivation of woods; and, second, a knowledge of the mode in which plants have been spread over the earth. If we study the forms of vegetation which have come to us from distant ages, in the flötz formations, this observation affords the most interesting discoveries in relation to the history of our earth. If we trace the laws by which vegetation seems to have been distributed, we extend our knowledge of the general action of nature, und arrive at conclusions which may be of

are two

great practical utility. The work of Sprengel on the structure and nature of plants, is, perhaps, the most complete. Separate parts of the anatomy of plants have been treated of by Link, Treviranus and Moldenhawer; vegetable chemistry by Senebier, Saussure and Schrader.

History of the Science. Of the two general divisions of botany, the physiological or philosophical is the elder. Before the Greek philosophers attempted to distinguish classes and species of plants, they examined the laws of vegetable life, the difference of plants from animals, and, as far as it could be done with the naked eye, their structure. Theophrastus of Eresus is the creator of philosophical botany, which he treated on a great and original plan. From the writings of the Alexandrians, and from original observations, Dioscorides of Anazarba, in the first century of the Christian era, compiled a work, which contains imperfect descriptions of about 1200 plants, the medical qualities of which were more attended to by the author than the description of their characteristics or their philosophical classification. This work continued, for 15 centuries, the only source of botanical knowledge. The Persian and Arabian physicians added about 200 plants, which were unknown to the Greeks, and, consequently, the number of known plants, at the time of the revival of letters, was about 1400. Germany has the merit of having founded historical botany. The obvious imperfections of Dioscorides, when the plants of Germany came to be investigated, and the extravagances into which those persons fell, who attempted to apply his descriptions to German plants, impelled Hieronymus of Brunswick, Otho Braunfelsius, Leon. Fuchsius, Hieron. Tragus and Conrad Gesner, to examine the vegetable productions of their country, independently of Dioscorides, and to represent them in wood-cuts. Gesner first started the idea that the parts of fructification were the most essential, and that plants must be classified with reference to them. They were followed, in he 16th century, by the Italians, Peter Matthiolus, Andr. Cæsalpinus, Prosp. Alpinus and Fab. Columna; the Belgians, Dodonæus, Clusius and Lobelius. Among the botanists of this period, who extended the science by their labors in collecting specimens, are the French Dalechamp, the English Gerard, the German Joach. Camerarius, Tabernaemontanus and John Bauhin, whose brother Gaspard not only increased the number of known plants by

numerous discoveries, but endeavored to reform the nomenclature, which had become much confused by the multiplication of names of the same plant. These are the fathers of botany, whose standard works still reward examination. By the exertions of these men, the number of known plants, at the beginning of the 17tk century, amounted to 5500. The neces sity of classification increased with the quantity of materials. Lobelius and Joh Bauhin adopted the natural division of trees, grasses, &c., without reference to any general principle. Andreas Caesalpi nus, by the advice of Conrad Gesner, fixed upon the fruit and the seed as the foundation of a classification, which is still retained by many of his followers, who are called fructists. In the 17th century, new methods were introduced by Robert Morison and John Ray; the latter of whom attended to the structure of the corolla and its parts, while Rivinus considered only the regularity or irregularity of its shape, and Tournefort its resemblance to other objects. The number of known plants was increased by Morison, Plukenet, Barrelier, Boccone, van Rheede, Petiver and Plumier. In the 17th century, the foundation of botanical anatomy was laid by Grew and Malpighi; botanical chemistry was founded by Homberg, Dodart and Mariotte; and the difference of sex was discovered by Grew, Morland and Rud. Jak. Camerarius. This discovery Micheli attempted to extend even to the lower degrees of organization, moss, lichens and sponges. To such predecessors, and to the great collectors of herbariums, Rumphius, Parkinson, Sloane, Flacourt, Sommelyn, Buxbaum, Ammann and Feuillée, the immortal Linnæus was indebted, in part, for the idea on which his system was founded, and for his great stores of botanical knowledge. When the first edition of his Species Plantarum was published, he was acquainted with 7300 species; in the second edition, with 8800. If we consider that a moderate herbarium now contains from 11,000 to 12,000 species, we must be astonished at the increase in the number of known plants in 60 years. The two sexes of Linnæus were afterwards extended, by Dillenius, Schmidel and Hedwig, to the imperfect vegetables. This system was opposed by Adanson, Alston and Haller; it was extended still farther by Schreber Scopoli, Crantz and Jacquin. In the 18th century, numerous discoveries in the vegetable world were made by John Bur mann, J. G. Gmelin, Pallas, Forskäl. For