Happy in its title, happy in its recitals, so far as the young are concerned, this book has somewhat of the spirited details of Robinson Crusoe. The incidents of intercourse among the natives, the contests with tigers, and the hair-breadth escapes, whilst traversing the heights and chasms of that noblest of nature's geological structures, rivet the attention of the youthful mind: but the lover of plants will seek in vain for a single fact, or description which its title might have led him to expect would be the burthen of the song. Whether its author had ever been in India, does not appear. He assumes to be the editor and collator of another's labors, and introduces him and others of his class to his readers, thus: "My plant-hunter is no fungus-digger. His occupation is of a nobler kind than contributing merely to the capricious palate of the gourmand. To his labors the whole civilized world is indebted. You owe him gratitude for many a bright joy. For the varied sheen of your garden you are indebted to him.

The gorgeous dahlia that nods over the flower-bed - the brilliant peony that sparkles on the parterre - the lovely camellia that greets you in the green house - the kalmias, the azalias, the rhododendrons, and a thousand other floral beauties are, one and all of them, the gifts of the plant-hunter. By his agency, England - cold, cloudy England - has become a garden of flowers, more varied in its species, and brighter in bloom, than those that blossomed in the famed valley of Cashmere. Many of the noble trees that lend grace to our English landscape - most of the beautiful shrubs that adorn our villas, and gladden the prospect from cottage windows, are the produce of his industry." Karl Linden, whose exploits and adventures he proceeds to relate, was a young Bavarian botanist, the son of an uneducated gardener, who having experienced the disadvantages of that condition, determined on the education of his son. At nineteen, Karl was a student in one of the universities, and had imbibed those principles of patriotic liberty that in 1848 were strong in the German heart, and was one of those brave students who gave temporary freedom to Baden and Bavaria. Forced to flee from his native land, an exile in London, what was the young refugee to do. He found English hospitality cold enough.

He was free indeed - to wander the streets and beg. Fortunately he bethought him of a resource. He understood the names and natures of most of the plants cultivated in Europe. His early opportunities in the garden of a great noble, where his father was the superintendent, had given him this knowledge; if he could do no better, he could make a hand in a garden and nursery; with such an idea in his mind, the young refugee presented himself at the gate of one of the magnificent nurseries in which great London abounds; he told his story, and was employed. It was not long before the intelligent and enterprising proprietor of the establishment discovered the botanical knowledge of his German protege. He wanted just such a man. He had plant-hunters in North and South America, in Africa, in Australia, - he wanted a collector for India. To India he was dispatched; a ship carried the plant-hunter to Calcutta, and his own good legs carried him to the Himalayas. Such are the opening chapters; we could have wished the subsequent ones were more appropriate to the title of the book; but he who wishes information on the botanical treasures of that quarter of the globe, need not look therein.

Let him consult that most interesting work, "Notes of a Naturalist in Bengal - the Sikkim and Nepal Himalayas," by Doct. Hooker, son of Sir Wm. Hooker, the distinguished Curator of Kew Gardens.

Mr. Editor, perhaps some of your youthful readers (for I trust you have many such, whose tastes the Horticulturist is assisting to mould for future usefulness and pleasure), may not know we have had plant-hunters among us: men who would have derived greater joy from the discovery of an unde-scribed Magnolia, or even an humble moss, than did Captain Sutler and his associates, on the first discovery of gold in California! Probably the first, certainly the most distinguished of the early plant-hunters of America, was Bartram, who, about the year 1730, made collections of American plants for his English correspondents. He was perhaps the first Anglo-American who conceived the idea of establishing a Botanic Garden, and determined more undescribed plants than any of his cotemporaries in our country.

In 1773, the second botanical garden was established in this country, by Humphrey Marshall, another plant-hunter, whose residence was at the site of the present village of Marshallton, Chester county, Pa. His example was not without its influence; and in 1777, John Jackson commenced a highly interesting collection of plants at his residence in the same county. - See Darlington. In 1785, Humphrey Marshall published "Arbustum Ameri-canum," believed to be the first botanical work written by an American, and published in this country; it is a rare book, of which a copy is preserved in the Philadelphia Library. In 1791, Bartram published his Travels in the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida - an interesting account of that section, mainly valuable at the present day as a record of the past. Other plant-hunters now appeared in quick succession - some impelled solely by the love of science; others, by the double purpose of gratifying their thirst for knowledge, and gaining bread by the exportation of their collections to Europe. One of the most distinguished of the present century was F. Andre Michaux, who in 1810 published in France his "History of the Forest Trees of North America," and of which, Mr. Editor, it was your pleasant lot to superintend several American editions.

The interesting biographical sketch of Michaux, recently published in the Horticulturist, has happily extended his name and fame. Preceding Michaux by a few years, was Kin, an eccentric German, of whom but little is recorded. He traversed on foot much of our then unexplored country, with bag on shoulder, a la chiffonnier, gathering as he journeyed whatever to his inquisitive eye seemed rare or beautiful. The collection of southern Azalias, which decorated the old Landreth Nurseries, was made by him, in return for some trivial aid extended his exchequer in an hour of need. Pursh followed, and for some time was gardener to Mr. Hamilton at the Woodlands. He was an educated, observant, German botanist, and in 1814 published in London "Flora Americae Septentrionalis," the most comprehensive work on American plants extant, though perhaps not of the very highest authority. His name will pass to posterity among those of the early plant-hunters in the wilds of the New World. To him, it has been said, belongs the chief credit of a most useful practical work, " The American Gardener's Calendar," published in 1806 by Bernard McMahon, whose name it bears.