I

THE LIBRARY

OF

THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA

PRESENTED BY

PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND
MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID

IN
A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

IN

A GLOUCESTERSHIRE
GARDEN

BY

HENRY N. ELLACOMBE, M.A.

TICAJt Or 1ITTON, AND HONORARY CANON OF BRISTOL,
AUTHOR Or ' PLANT LORB AND GARDEN

CRAFT or SHAKESPEARE'

ILLUSTRATED

SECOND EDITION

EDWARD ARNOLD

LONDON NEW YORK

37 BEDFORD STREET 70 FIFTH AVENUE

1896

SB

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

THIS volume owes its existence to certain papers of
mine which were published in the Guardian during
the years 1890-1893. In republishing them I have
omitted some, and slightly altered others, but only
so far as seemed necessary in order to bring them into
book-form.

At the time of their first appearance I received
many kind communications and suggestions from
readers of the Guardian and others. To all such I
am glad to have this opportunity of returning my
hearty thanks, as well as to the proprietors of the
Guardian for kindly allowing the republication.

HENRY N. ELLACOMBE.

BITTON VICARAGE,

GLOUCESTERSHIRE,
April 1895.

M309206

CONTENTS

PART I. A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

CHAPTER PAGE

I. JANUARY, 3

II. FEBRUARY, 18

III. MARCH, 31

IV. APRIL, 45

V. MAY, . 57

VI. JUNE, 68

VII. JULY, 78

VIII. AUGUST, 88

IX. SEPTEMBER, 95

X. OCTOBER, 105

XI. NOVEMBER, 116

XII. DECEMBER, 128

PART II.

XIII. SPRING FLOWERS, 149

XIV. SHRUBS, . 157

XV. LILIES, 166

XVI. ROSES, 174

XVII. CLIMBING PLANTS, 193

XVIII. GARDEN WALLS, 203

XIX. AUTUMN LEAVES, 213

XX. PALMS AND BAMBOOS, 223

XXI. BRAMBLES AND THISTLES, 235

XXII. TREES IN THE GARDEN, 247

XXIII. BIRDS IN THE GARDEN, ...... 258

XXIV. GARDEN ASSOCIATIONS, 269

XXV. GARDEN LESSONS, ....... 279

XXVI. PARSONAGE GARDENS 289

INDEX, 299

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

THE GARDEN, BITTON VICARAGE, . . . Frontispiece

TWELVE DESIGNS ILLUSTRATING THE TWELVE MONTHS,

facing the first page of each chapter, i-xn

THE MOAT GARDEN, LEEDS CASTLE, KENT, . to face page 204

PLACE DBS PALMIERS, HYERES, ... „ 223

A DEVONSHIRE LANE, , , 238

CATALPA TREE IN THE BITTON VICARAGE GARDEN, ,, 248

THE GARDEN OF AN ITALIAN VILLA, . . ,, 254

CEDARS IN THE BITTON VICARAGE GARDEN, . ,, 272

TREES ON THE RECTORY LAWN, EVERSLEY, . ,, 292

PAET I

CHAPTER I

January

Introduction — The garden described — Cyclamens-
Christmas Roses.

EVERY garden has its own special and separate char-
acter, which arises partly from the tastes of the owner
or his gardener, but still more from the situation,
aspect, and soil of the garden. It is this that saves
our gardens from monotony; if the conditions of
every garden were the same, it is to be feared that
the love of following the fashion of the day would
make our gardens painfully alike. But this is pre-
vented by the happy law that before success can be
reached the nature of the garden must be studied, and
the study soon leads to the conviction that we cannot
take our neighbour's garden as the exact model for our
own, but must be content to learn a little from one
and a little from another, and then to adapt the
lessons to our own garden in the way that our own
experience (often very dearly bought) tells us is the

4 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

best. And because of this special character in each
separate garden it follows that each garden has
something to teach, which cannot be taught so well
elsewhere ; and the happy result is that no one
with a love for gardening who visits other gardens
with his eyes open can ever go into a garden (especially
if the owner of that garden is a true lover of flowers)
without learning something. And it is this that makes
the records of good gardens such pleasant reading;
we cannot all go to Lancashire, Scotland, or the
Thames Valley, but we can be thankful for the
records of the gardens in those places as we read
them in Mr. Bright's Year in a Lancashire Garden, or
The Chronicle of a Year, chiefly in a Garden (also in
Lancashire), in Mr. Milner's Country Pleasures, or in
Miss Hope's Gardens and Woodlands (near Edinburgh),
or ' E. V. B.'s ' delightful Days and Hours in a Garden
(in Middlesex).

"With this conviction in my mind I think that a
record of a garden far removed from Lancashire and
Scotland, and even from Middlesex, with very different
surroundings, and carried on under very different
conditions, in south-west Gloucestershire, may have
an interest.

I must first describe the garden. It is not a large
garden — the whole extent, including a good propor-

JANUARY 5

tion of lawn, being about an acre and a half, and in
shape a parallelogram, or double square. It lies on
the west side of the Cotswolds, which rise about
half a mile away to the height of 750 feet; and
about fifteen miles to the south are the Mendips.
These two ranges of hills do much to shelter us from
the winds, both from the cold north and easterly
winds, and from the south-west winds, which in this
part of England are sometimes very violent. I attach
great importance to this kindly shelter from the
great strength of the winds, for plants are like our-
selves in many respects, and certainly in this, that
they can bear a very great amount of frost if only
the air is still, far better than they can bear a less
cold if accompanied with a high wind. The garden
then has this advantage of shelter; it has also the
advantage of a good aspect, for though the undula-
tions are very slight, the general slope faces the
south; and it has the further advantage of a rich
and deep alluvial soil, which, however, is so im-
pregnated with lime and ^ magnesia, that it is hope-
less to attempt rhododendrons, azaleas, kalmias, and
a host of other things; and it has the further dis-
advantage of being only about 70 feet above the
sea-level, which makes an insuperable difficulty in
the growth of the higher Alpines. On the whole,

6 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

the garden is favourable for the cultivation of flowers,
and especially for the cultivation of shrubs, except
those which dislike the lime. With this introduction I
go to the record for January.

' This is the state of man : to-day he puts forth
The tender leaves of hopes ; to-morrow blossoms,
And bears his blushing honours thick upon him :
The third day comes a frost, a killing frost ;
And, when he thinks, good easy man, full surely
His greatness is a-ripening, nips his root,
And then he falls.'— K. Henry VIII. , iii. 2.

This may well stand as the description of the
gardener during the December and January of 1892-3.
The first three weeks of December were so mild
that many letters were written to the papers de-
tailing the goodly collections of flowers that could
be picked in almost all parts of the kingdom.
Here I had an abundance of the bright flowers of
Cyclamen coum; I picked several flowers of the sweet-
scented Chimananthus j the Iris reticulata was shooting
so thickly through the ground that, knowing how
rapidly the flowers are formed after the first appear-
ance of the leaves, I thought it quite possible that
I might gather some of the lovely blossoms even on
New Year's Day ; the snowdrops were pushing their
white sharp points through the grass and in the beds
in every direction ; on many of the cottages there

JANUARY 7

was a golden covering of Jasminum nudiflvrum, and
the China roses had many half-opened flowers. But
Christmas Eve brought a change ; then came c a frost,
a killing frost ' —

* An envious, sneaping frost,
That bites the first-born infants of the spring,' —

and for three weeks a very low thermometer.

But, in spite of the cold, some flowers, though very
few, bravely held their own ; and though they looked
sad enough while the frost lasted, yet as soon as the
thaw came they brightened up again, and looked as
happy as if the mild weather of the early part of
December had met with no interruption. Two flowers
especially distinguished themselves in this way, the
cyclamen and the Christmas rose, and on both I must
say something.

I am often surprised that the cyclamens are so little
grown, for, with the exception of the Persian cyclamen,
they are all quite hardy, they give no trouble, they
may be let alone for years, and they increase rapidly
by their seeds self-sown. The autumnal cyclamen
(C. hedercefoUum) produces its pink or white flowers
before the leaves, and at a time of year when we*
have many other plants in flower, and so, though the
flowers are very pretty and sweet-scented, they are
not so much noticed; but they are followed by very
beautiful leaves, which look like variegated ivy-leaves,

8 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

and which keep their beauty all through the winter
and spring. But for January we have the cyclamen
of the south and east of Europe (C. coum\ which
produces abundance of flowers, not so large as the
autumnal species, but of a rich red (sometimes white)
colour, and so freely producing plants from self-sown
seeds, that I am sure I am not exaggerating when I
say that I have hundreds of plants, many of them
growing far away from the parent plants. I suppose
they like the soil here, and though they are mostly
wood plants I grow them under a south wall, as I do
most plants that flower early in the year, for I think
such early visitors deserve all the help and shelter we
can give them. I wonder that those who have woods
do not try to naturalise the cyclamen, but I never
heard of its being so used ; yet that it could be
naturalised is certain, from the fact that it has found
its way into English and other floras. But it is quite
a southern plant, and is not found wild north of
Switzerland, and there the native species (C. europceum)
is a summer bloomer, very pretty, but not equal to
C. coum, and not so easily grown, yet it grows on
some parts of the Alps up to 1500 feet, and I have
it from the Rhone Glacier. I suppose the cyclamen
is an old inhabitant of English gardens, for Gerard
named some places in which it was to be found wild,

JANUARY 9

but Gerard's localities of British plants are not to
be trusted, and his editor, Johnson (who had no
scruple in speaking disrespectfully of him), says it
was never found wild in England. Turner, in 1548,
could not go beyond, 'I heare saye that it groweth
in the west countrye of Englande'; and Parkinson
says (no doubt with an eye to Gerard), 'There
groweth none in the places where some have reported
them to grow.' Still the mere report that the plant
was found wild shows that it was at that time a
common plant.

I have a decided affection for this cyclamen — partly
for its early appearance, even before the spring is
with us ; partly from old associations, dating from
my earliest childhood ; and partly from the botanical
and literary interest of the plant, on which, even at
the risk of being tedious by speaking too much of
one plant, I must say something. The botanical
interest is chiefly connected with the curious habit of
the plant to form its seed-vessel in the usual way,
and then for the seed-vessel to hang down, and by
a succession of coils of its flower-stem to bring the
seed-vessel close to the ground, and there to bury
it. The cyclamen belongs to the primrose family,
and not only is it unlike all the other members of
the family in this peculiar habit, but, so far as I

10 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

know, there is no other plant that does the same.
Naturally all who have observed and written upon
the plant have noticed this habit, and there is little
doubt that the name of the plant was derived from
this coiling habit, though some writers (e.g. Cowley
and Miller) thought that the name came from its
round roots and leaves ; but the fact that Pliny gives
the name also to the honeysuckle, which has the
same habit of coiling its branches, is to me a suffi-
cient proof that this was the origin of the name. What
special benefit comes to the plant from this habit we
cannot say : it is easy to say that by it the seeds are
protected during the winter ; but that helps very
little. There are tens of thousands of plants whose
seeds are shed on the ground, and have to fight the
battle of life through the winter ; and why this par-
ticular protection should be given to the cyclamen
above other plants is a riddle as yet unanswered.
Darwin studied it, and could only say that it was a
successful effort of the plant to turn away from the
sun, for the protection of the seed, but could go no
further; so there we must leave it. But it is worth
notice that the same coiling occurs generally in
the Persian cyclamen, but in another part of the
plant (besides the coiling of the flower-stem), for in
that species it is a very common (if not universal)

JANUARY 11

habit of the petals when beginning to fade to twist
themselves into miniature corkscrews. And in the
same connection it would be interesting to know
whether this coiling takes place in the double cycla-
mens (presumably not seed-bearing). I have never
seen the double cyclamen, and do not suppose the
beauty of the flower would be increased by doubling ;
but our forefathers had it ; it is described by Parkin-
son, and appears in some of the old Dutch and French
engravings of spring flowers, and, I suppose, it was
known to Rapin (1672), for so only can I interpret
his lines : —

' Grseca peregrinis venit cyclaminus ab oris,
Corcyree geminam monies peperere f requentem. '

The literary interest of the cyclamen is connected
with the name. There can be no doubt that it is
the plant described by Theophrastus, and Dioscordes,
and Pliny, and mentioned by Theocritus ; and the
curious thing is that the long Greek name KUKAa/uvos
has held its own through the Latin Cyclaminus into our
common English cyclamen. In two of the oldest
English Vocabularies cyclamen is translated 'slite,'
but the name is not given in the later Vocabularies,
and seems never to have been a common English
name. There is an old English name for it, the
sowbread, but I can find no evidence that that was

12 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

ever a name in common use ; it was simply the trans-
lation of the continental pain de porceau, Pan Porcina,
and with one exception I have never met with it in
English literature except in the old gardening books.
The one exception is in Calverley's translation of
Theocritus, and if Dr. Lindley was correct in saying
that it is the common food of the wild boars of Sicily,
there is a decided fitness in Calverley's translation of
the Fifth Idyll, The Battle of the Sards :—

* Go to the river and dig up a clump of sow-bread leaves. '

But I should think that the plant was never suffi-
ciently common in England to get a common name,
and Turner (Names of Herbes, 1548), says : —

* I have never hearde yet the Englishe name of it. Me
thynke that it might well be called in Englishe rape violet,
because it hath a root lyke a rape, and floores lyke a violet or
sow-brede.'

Certainly sowbread could never have been an ap-
propriate English name for the flower : its scarcity
would have forbidden its use as food for pigs, and I
once had a practical proof that English pigs care little
for it. I had a night-raid on my garden from a
family of hungry pigs, and in the morning it was
easily seen that they had been grubbing in a bed that
had a large number of cyclamens in it, but not a

JANUARY 13

single root was touched by them. Of the cyclamen,
with all its charms as one of our best spring flowers,
I have now spoken satis superque.

I must speak more shortly of the great flower of
December and January, the Christmas rose. This,
like the cyclamen, has both a botanical and literary
interest. It has now been certainly proved that our
Christmas rose is not the hellebore of the Greek and
Latin writers, which was supposed to cure madness;
they spoke of two sorts, the black and the white, and
the black was either the Hellebwus orientalis, which
comes from the mountains of Eastern Turkey, or Helle-
borus cydophyllus, which is found on Mount Helicon and
Mount Parnassus ; while the white hellebore, which was
far the strongest medicine, is certainly the Veratrum
album, which grows in great abundance on Mount (Eta.
Our Christmas rose, Helleborus niger, comes from the
Carpathian Mountains, where it is so abundant that it
is said to grow in millions, and where during the three
months of August, September, and October, the Aus-
trian and Hungarian peasants dig them up by the
thousand, when they ' yield a golden harvest to certain
Austrian Jews who call themselves plant-collectors.'
This is comparatively a modern trade, arising from
the popularity of the flower during the last thirty
years. Before that few gardens had more than two

14 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

or three plants, though it has been grown as a garden
plant certainly from the beginning of the sixteenth
century. Prior to that I can find few records of it,
but when we come to the great gardening books of
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the beautiful
winter flower gets its full meed of praise, and from
that time it was never lost to English gardens ; but I
do not know of any writer, other than the writers
of botanical books, who speaks of it, except Erasmus
Darwin (and he, of course, may be ranked among the
botanical writers), and what he says may 1x3 worth
quoting, not only because I suppose very few now
read Thf //>ir.< of tht /'/<inA«, but also for the curious
note on the plant :—

' Bright as the silvery plume, or pearly shell,
The Hiiow-whitc rose or lily's virgin bell,
The fair hcllL'borus attractive shone,
Wanned every sage and every shepherd wnn.

And the note is this :

4 The Hclleborui nigcr has a large, beautiful, white flower
adorned with a circle of tubular two-lipped nectaries. After
impregnation the flower undergoes a remarkable change ; the
nectaries drop off, but the white coral remains and gradually
becomes quite green, and degenerates into a calyx.' — Lore* of
the Plants, ii. 198-202.

Accurate observer as he was, it never seems to have
occurred to him that the ' large, beautiful, white '

JANUARY 15

portion always was the calyx, while the curious little
trumpet-shaped green parts which he calls * two-lipped
nectaries' are really the petals of the corolla, which
very soon fall off. I have met with one other poem
on the Christmas rose, by C. Mackay, but it is scarcely
worth quoting ; and about ten years ago there was in
Punth (Dec. 30, 1882) a very spirited set of verses
on the flower, too long to quote in extenso, but I shall
quote part of the first verse as a specimen :—

' Know ye the flower that just now blows,
In the middle of winter — the Christmas rose —

Though it lack perfume to regale the nose,
To the eyes right fair is the Christmas rose —

A fiddlestick's end for the frost and snows ;

Sing hey, sing ho, for the Christmas rose.'

Of the Christmas rose proper there are several varie-
ties, chiefly differing in the size of the flowers and
their suitableness to different localities ; and there are
many species. We have two in England, both of which
grow in the Gloucestershire woods, //. fcetidus and
H. viridis, and both worth growing in the garden,
especially //. fa'tidus, for its handsome and lasting
foliage. For the same good character I grow and
admire //. arguiifolius from Corsica, which looks more
like a dwarf large-leaved holly than a Christmas rose.
I also grow and am fond of the many hybrids raised

16 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

about thirty years ago (chiefly at Berlin) between
H. guttatus and H. abschasicus ; for, though they lack
the pure colour of our Christmas rose, they produce
an abundance of really handsome flowers in the early
spring, and their fine foliage continues in beauty all
through the year. A curious thing in these hybrids
is that, unlike the Christmas rose, which is one of the
very best flowers for cutting and keeping in the house,
their flowers very soon fade after cutting. There have
been many devices tried and recommended for curing
this bad habit, such as splitting the flower stems, or
taking away the stems altogether, and letting the
flowers almost rest on the water; but I have tried
them all, and succeeded with none.

Closely allied to the hellebores, and so closely that
it was formerly included among them, is the bright
little winter aconite, now called Eranthis hyemalis-, it
has the same trumpet-shaped fugacious petals, and is
one of the first flowers of the year. I noted the half-
opened bud of the aconite this year, on January 22nd,
and on the same day a half-opened snowdrop, but they
were both beaten in the race by the very lovely Iris
histrioides, which was fully open on January 19th, and
is a gem of the first water. This, then, may take rank
as the first flower of the year, by which I mean the
first of which there was no appearance before the New

JANUARY 17

Year; for the cyclamen and Christmas rose may be
ranked among the flowers of December as well as of
January.

And so the flowers are again coming to us in their
appointed courses. As yet there are but very few, but
every day will unfold some new treasure ; but few
though they are, they are very lovely, and almost
because they are so few they are very dear to us, and
we may well be thankful for them.

CHAPTER II

Hybrid Hellebores — Crocus — Snowdrop — Snowflake —
Early flowering shrubs.

THE month of February has a very doubtful character.
' In February the sun enters Aquarius,' is the record
of the almanacks, and so Spenser describes 'cold
February ' sitting

' In an old wagon, for he could not xide,
Drawne of two fishes for the season fitting,
Which through the flood before did softly glide,
And swim alway.'

It was 'February fill-ditch,' and Don Pedro laughs
at Benedick for having * such a February face, so full
of frost and storm and cloudiness.' But it is not
always so ; and when we do get a mild February it is
a most enjoyable month, especially to the gardener.

The flowers which I recorded last month are still
in full beauty, the cyclamen and the hellebores — not,
however, the true Christmas rose, which has passed
away, but many of the other species, and especially

18

FEBRUARY 19

the fine hybrids, which this year are showing quite
splendid masses of flowers. I grow a great many;
the masses get larger every year, and some of them
are very curious ; for the hybrid flowers have lost their
hybridity, and have gone back to not one, but both the
parents ; so that I have clumps in which both parents
are growing from the same root. I need not say that
this is a very curious feature in vegetable physiology,
but there are many other such instances on record.

If any one was asked to name the chief flowers of
February, I suppose he would name the crocus and
the snowdrop; I certainly should with reference to
my own garden, for I am glad to say that both these
beautiful families revel here. I have large clumps of
snowdrops in every direction, and almost an equal
number of the old yellow crocus, which I highly prize.
It is not, however, quite the earliest; this year the
lead was taken by C. stellaris, a very bright little
flower, considered to be an old garden variety of the
common yellow ; but in most years C. imperati is the
first, and it is certainly one of the prettiest. It comes
from Naples and the mountains of Calabria, and is
perfectly hardy, but here it increases very slowly.
Both of these were in flower before the end of
January ; but the mild February has made the garden
rich with all the species that flower in the spring.

20 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

There are more autumnal than spring crocuses — I
mean more species ; but beautiful though they are in
themselves, they never can have the same value as
those which come to us when the garden generally is
so bare. The so-called Scotch crocus (0. biflorus) is
another very delicate one, which will stay in the same
spot for years and go on increasing, and when the sun
shines a mass of them is like a mass of silver. But
of all crocuses I value most the old Dutch yellow
crocus, — not to be reckoned among the oldest inhabitant
of our gardens ; but so long has it been in cultivation
that its native country is not known, and it has lost
the power of seeding. There are many varieties of
it, but the one I like best is one in shape like a
bottle-gourd, or old pilgrim's bottle, and so is called
C. lagenceflorus. Its peculiar shape and deep golden
colour make it very attractive.

* At their feet the crocus brake like fire,' is Tenny-
son's account of the herbage on which the goddesses
walked to meet Paris, and he is not the only one that
has spoken warmly of the golden crocus. It is tempt-
ing to quote some of the descriptions of its many
admirers, but I pass them all by, to speak of one book
only, which once was warmly welcomed, but is now,
perhaps, almost forgotten, but which always comes
to my mind when the season of the crocus and the

FEBRUARY 21

snowdrop returns. I mean Forbes Watsons Flowers
and Gardens, a book published five-and-twenty years
ago, and which came with a pathetic interest, for it
was written on a deathbed of great suffering, and
which appealed at once to all readers by its charm-
ing style and beautiful thoughts, and was doubly
welcome to gardeners by the way in which he lovingly
pulled to pieces, as it were, the few flowers of which
he wrote, in order to find in them for his own great
delight, and to point out to others, the hidden beauties
which can only be found by those who love them as
he did. I do not intend to quote all he said about
the crocus or the snowdrop, for he has three chapters
on them, but any one who has read the book, and who
is now rejoicing in the spring beauties of his garden,
will thank me for reminding him of it. Few, perhaps,
can see in the flowers all that Forbes Watson saw in
them ; it is a remarkable instance of the way in which
a thoughtful man can read his own thoughts into
almost anything, and perhaps into flowers more than
anything else, if he is a lover of flowers. Tennyson,
in the Day Dream, says this may happen to any
man: —

* Any man that walks the mead,

In bud, or blade, or bloom may find,
According as his humours lead,
A meaning suited to his mind.' —

22 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

Bell-lovers have said the same thing. * He that hears
bells,' says Burton in his Anatomy ', 'will make them
sound what he list; as the soul thinketh so the bell
clinketh.' I will dismiss the crocus with two lines
only from Forbes "Watson — 'The yellow crocus is a
perfect flower, leaving nothing that we could wish to
add to or to alter' — and will pass on to the snow-
drop.

Of all February flowers I suppose the snowdrop is
the most popular. Its thorough hardiness, its patience
under any ill-treatment, its easy cultivation, and,
above all, its pure beauty, make it welcome to
every garden, and there is no more valued plant in
the garden of the poor, and in children's gardens.
I suppose no flower brings so many associations and
past remembrances with it ; certainly it does to me,
for it has always been a favourite flower here.

I not only grow a great number of the common
snowdrop, but I grow most of the species, and would
grow all if I could, but some will not grow here.
The Crimean snowdrop does very well here, and I
like it for its plaited foliage, and for the pleasant
story which tells what a delight it was to our soldiers
when they saw it during the first dreadful winter of
the Crimean war. It was grown in England before
that, but by a very few, and I fancy that all that are

FEBRUARY 23

now grown date from the Crimean war. Clusius,
who described it, noticed that it was sweet-scented,
but the scent is very faint. The finest snowdrop with
me is G. imperati, from Naples and Genoa, and in
some years it is the earliest, but I do not often see
it in other gardens ; and I suppose it is particular
about soil, for a florist nurseryman admired it here, and
at once ordered three thousand from Germany, and in
three years they had all died out. I have another
which I admire for its deep green foliage, though the
flower is small — the G. latifolius from the Caucasus.

Something must be said about the pretty name,
or rather the pretty names, of the snowdrop. The
common name is not the old name, and certainly,
to nearly the end of the seventeenth century, it was
described as the white bulbous violet. Such a cum-
brous name might do when the plant was only a
garden plant, and probably not a common one, but
when it increased and multiplied so as to be found in
every garden, and was becoming naturalised in many
places, another name was wanted, and none more fitting
could be found than the pretty name of snowdrop,
which was creeping in in Gerard's time (he gives
the name very doubtfully), but which only came into
general use by very slow degrees. I suppose it was
adopted from the common names of the flower in its

24 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

native countries, such as France and Germany. Its
German names may be translated as snowflake, Feb-
ruary flower, naked maiden, snow-violet, and snow-
drop ; and its French names as the white bell, the bell
of the snows, the bell of winter, and the snow-piercer.
The pretty Latin name Galanthus — i.e. milk-flower —
was invented by Linnaeus to distinguish it from Leuco-
jum, which he restricted to the snowflake. I think
it would have been better if he had reversed the
names, calling the snowflake Galanthus and the snow-
drop Leucojum. For I have no doubt that the XCVKOIOV
of Theophrastus is our snowdrop; he describes it as
bulbous and the first flower of the year, and some-
times even flowering in winter, and coming almost at
the same time as, but generally a little before, the
dog's-tooth violet, and always before the narcissus,
the lily, and the bulbocodium, and much used for
garlands. This applies better to the snowdrop than
to any other flower, and the snowdrop is a Greek
flower, while the snowflake is not. It is also men-
tioned in two epigrams in the Anthologia Palatina,
and the lines are so pretty that they are well worth
transcribing : —

ij8rj \CVK&IOV 6d\\fi, 6d\\ei dt 0

s, 0d\\ei 8' ovpe<rl<j>oiTa Kplva. — v. 144.

FEBRUARY 25

XfVK&iov, irX^£w 5* aTraX^v &/j.a (jujprois
vdpKiffffov, 7rX^£w leal ret 'yeXuw'Ta Kplva.
rX^w /cat Kpbuov TjSvV ^TrtTrX^w 5* v&Kivdov

65a. — v. 147.

For a charming account of the beauties of the snow-
drop I will again refer to Forbes Watson's book; it
is very exhaustive, and says much for the sweet at-
tractiveness of the flower ; but I think this is shown
by no writer (and many have sung its praises) so
touchingly as by Tennyson in two lines, in which he
makes the poor dying May Queen pray that she may
be spared just a little longer :—

' I only wish to live till the snowdrops come again,
I long to see a flower so the day before I die.'

Very shortly I must speak of the spring snowflake.
It is a most graceful flower, closely allied to the snow-
drop, and does well with me, but, unlike the snowdrop,
it increases very slowly. Its chief difference from the
snowdrop is that the three sepals and the three petals
are all the same length, thus giving the flower a bell-
shape, so that it more deserves the name of bell of
the snow, bell of the winter, etc., than the snowdrop.
It is not a true British native, though the summer
snowflake, which really only differs in size and time
of flowering, is undoubtedly wild on the banks of the
Thames.

26 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

I must pass by the hepaticas, though they may take
rank among the earliest spring flowers. I would only
advise that they should never be disturbed — they dis-
like removal and division. All the sorts are worth
growing, and easily grown, — single and double red,
single and double blue (the double blue much resenting
any interference), and the single white. There is a
double white on record, but I never saw it, and have
been told by a good botanist that it is the autumnal
form of the single red. This, if true, and my in-
formant was a very accurate man, is curious ; but there
are two distinct forms of the single white, one with
red and the other with white anthers, and there is a
large blue Hepatica from Greece, H. angulosa, which
in some gardens is very beautiful, but will not grow
everywhere.

I might well leave the daffodils for the March record,
for they are flowers of March rather than of February,
but there is one, the earliest of all, which comes into
flower in the beginning of February, and seldom lasts
into March. This is the Narcissus minimus, a beautiful
little plant with the small flowers almost prostrate,
and undoubtedly only a variety of the common pseudo-
narcissus, but sufficiently distinguished both by the size
and time of flowering. It is a curious fact that these
varieties succeed one another according to their size.

FEBRUARY 27

First comes minimus, which is followed by minor, that
by the typical form, and that by major and maximus.
Whether there is any connection between size and
earliness of flowering I cannot say. Yet it is certain
that all the early spring flowers are of low growth;
and this succession among the narcissi may be only a
coincidence ; but it is curious, and, I think, worth noting.
There are some good shrubs in flower in February,
though none of them very conspicuous. The fine
Nepal Berbery, or Mahonia, is perhaps the most
conspicuous, and both for its flower and foliage it
is well worth growing ; but it is rather tender, and
has a straggling habit of growth which cannot be
kept in order by the knife ; it dislikes pruning. The
dwarf heath from the south of Europe (Erica herlacea)
is in full flower during February, and is certainly con-
spicuous enough both to ourselves and to the bees;
and if after flowering it is clipped with the shears, it
makes a very cushion -like mass that is pretty all
through the year. Among other shrubs in flower
the Daphne Mezereon attracts from its delicious scent,
but its stiff growth prevents its taking rank among
pretty shrubs, yet many admire it much, as Cowper
did, and described it as —

' Though leafless, well attired, and thick beset
With blushing wreaths, investing every spray.'

28 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

Three February shrubs may be classed together, the
Hamamelis, the Parrottia, and the Comus mascula.
They are all examples of Forbes Watson's remark
that most of the early shrubs produce their flowers
without leaves. He gives reasons for this which I
cannot fully understand. The Hamamelis and the
Parrottia flowers are simply bundles of stamens, very
pretty, but not very conspicuous, and both foreigners ;
but we have one British shrub with similar flowers,
with which I will conclude my February record.

I always look out for the little female blossoms of
the filbert, and always admire them. Every one knows
the male catkins, which look so pretty when the nut-
trees are bare of leaves, and some know the little
crimson blossom which is now open ready to receive
the pollen from the catkin. It is very small, but if
examined with a moderate lens it will be seen to be a
bunch of bright crimson pistils enclosed within some
bracts. As soon as it is fertilised a very curious thing
happens, of which I know no other instance. The
little flower is placed upon last year's wood, and if it
were an apple, or a peach, or any other fruit-tree, the
perfect fruit would be there also. But the nut acts
otherwise ; it at once starts away from the old wood,
and forms behind itself a thin branch, four or five
inches long, at the end of which it ripens into a nut ;

FEBRUARY 29

and as it so travels it carries with it the bract in which
the flower was formed, and which at last becomes the
pretty cup in which the nut lies. It is this leafy cup
that has given the name to the tree. The Romans called
it wrylus, inventing the name from the Greek /co/avs, a
helmet or cap, for I believe KopvAos is not found as a
true Greek word. The tree is a native British tree,
and the old British name was hcesel, a name which it is
not at all likely was taken from corylus, but it has the
same meaning, for hcesle is a cap or hat, and hcesel-nutu
is the hatted nut.

I wished to say something about the pleasure that
a gardener can get by watching the different ways
in which different plants come through the ground ;
but I must leave that to another chapter, and bring
this long record to a close with the hazel. Few
people are aware how our true British Flora gives us
almost no flowers for January or February, and, I
believe, none at all for January. Of course, I am
speaking only of the normal time of flowering, for
stray flowers, either premature or late, may often be
found ; and I exclude mosses and fungi, many of which
flower in winter, some very conspicuously, as the
scarlet pezizas. But the hazel and the spurge laurel,
and the two poplars, are, I believe, the only truly wild
British plants that flower before March, and this may

SO IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

give us some idea of the debt of gratitude we owe to
the old gardeners, who have made our winter gardens
bright with Christmas roses, cyclamens, crocuses, hepa-
ticas, and snowdrops. Since their time many other
winter flowers have been introduced, but very few
have yet succeeded in getting a fair footing. Why
some have succeeded with us, and others, which seemed
as likely, have failed, is a large and very interesting
subject.

CHAPTER III

Celandine— Daffodils— Dog's-tooth violets — Anemones — Spring
shrubs — Strength of flowers in bursting through the soil-
Uses of frost.

'MARCH cometh in like a lion,' and 'March winds
and April showers bring forth May flowers.' But
however cold and blustering March may be, it is
not merely a nursery for flowers to come in May ;
it has abundance of flowers of its own, both in the
fields and hedgerows and in the gardens. There are
perhaps no more welcome flowers than the wild-flowers
of March ; in the hedgerows are primroses and violets,
and everywhere is the bright coltsfoot and the lesser
celandine, certainly one of the brightest flowers of
the year, and 'so called bycause that it beginneth
to spring and to floure at the comming of the
swallowes ' (Lyte). But for all its beauty and fresh-
ness, I cannot join in Wordsworth's well-known
praises of it, for it is a sad weed in the garden,

31

32 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

springing up everywhere and defying the neatest
gardener.

There are many more welcome wild-flowers, but
I must leave them for the garden flowers. First,
of course, come the many daffodils, which ever since
the day of Perdita we have been taught to look on
as the chief flowers of March. With the exception
of the rose and lily, I suppose no flower has had so
much written on it, and such loving praises given
to it, as the daffodil or narcissus. From Homer
downwards many a poet has so praised it, and few
English poets have passed it by. Gower, Chaucer,
Spenser, Shakespeare, and Herrick are among the
early writers ; and among the later writers I need
only mention Wordsworth and Jean Ingelow, and
I need do no more than mention the names. During
the last twenty years the daffodils have been raised
(or degraded ?) to the rank of fashionable flowers,
and much has been published about them, and every-
thing that has been written has been thoroughly
searched for and abundantly quoted. I would only
draw attention to one poem of great beauty, which
is very little known, by Aubrey de Vere. It is called
' Ode to the Daffodil,' and is entirely in praise of
the wild daffodil, and so it reminds me that though
I place the daffodil among our garden plants, it is

MARCH 33

really one of our native plants, and surely one of
the most beautiful. There can be no doubt that the
common wild daffodil, or Lent lily, is a genuine
native ; it is found throughout the whole of England,
but is supposed not to be truly native in Scotland
or Ireland, though found almost through the whole
of Europe. The beautiful family is now considered
to consist of forty-two distinct species, besides many
varieties and hybrids, and its headquarters are in
the south of Europe. A few, however, are found in
Northern and Western Asia, one in Teneriffe, and a
few in North Africa. I do not know whether any
grow in Egypt, but on the wreaths found in the old
Egyptian tombs there are specimens of N. tazetta,
which have kept their freshness wonderfully for more
than three thousand years. None of the family are
found wild in America, but as garden plants they
are highly prized there, and are imported in large
quantities.

The crocuses have not only been very abundant in
flowers, but two of the species, the common yellow
and the pale lilac (C. vemus\ have held their beauty
much longer than usual. I cannot say why it should
be so, but here the sparrows scarcely touch the
crocuses, though I hear from many friends, especially
in towns, that they cannot grow the yellow crocus on

C

34 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

account of the sparrows. I have plenty of sparrows,
but they do not attack the crocus ; nor am I much
troubled with mice, which in some gardens work
woful destruction among the crocus bulbs. Now
and then I see signs of a mouse, but a good garden
cat and a few traps soon get rid of the little plagues.
Once, however, the mice, or rather the small field
voles, entirely destroyed a number of young apple-
trees, eating all the roots away, but not touching
any part aboveground. For some time they refused
all baits, but at last I tried the Brazil nut, and that
was irresistible, and I have never had a similar in
vasion of the little creatures.

Before the crocuses had passed away the dog's-
tooth violets were in full flower, and I rank them
among the very prettiest of our spring flowers. Yet
they are by no means common, and I suppose that
arises from their very slow increase, for my own
plants, which have certainly been here over thirty
years, scarcely increase at all. Though fairly common
in the south and east of Europe, it does not seem
to have been introduced into English gardens before
the beginning of the seventeenth century, and then
was considered to be an orchid, though really of
the lily family. Some of the family are found
in America, with spotted leaves very similar to the

MARCH 35

European plants, but the flowers, instead of being
reddish purple (hence Linnseus's name for them,
Erythronium, from cpvdpos, red), or sometimes white,
are all yellow, or yellowish white. The common
name, dog's-tooth violets, they get from the sharp
little roots, and it has been their name for a very
long time ; but the tooth form is not so clear in them
as in another beautiful spring flower, the toothwort,
or Dentaria, now classed with Cardamine. The plant is
closely allied to our cuckoo flower, or ladies' smocks ;
and we have one wild one (D. bulbifera), which is
rather pretty, but very inferior to the Continental forms,
D. digitata, and D. enneaphylla, yet an interesting
plant, from its habit of producing little bulbils in the
axils of the leaves, which fall off and soon form new
plants, just like the bulbils of some of the lilies, or
of the bulbiferous ferns. But the purple and white
species are really beautiful plants, very hardy and very
easily grown, and great ornaments in the spring garden;
yet sixty years ago Sweet expressed his astonishment
that it was not more common, and it is still very seldom
seen. The roots are very generally, though not always,
curiously like a set of teeth, hence the name ; —

'The root of it being white and smooth and shining, as
teeth ought to be, it was fitly named Dentaria, Dentillaria,
and Alabastrides, and as fitly Coralloides, the divers round

36 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

small knobs set together, whereof the root is composed,
resembling the knaggy eminences of the corale.' *

I can do little more than name a few of the good
flowers that make our spring gardens so bright. The
Iris orchioides has a brilliant yellow flower, and is a
great acquisition, introduced about twenty years ago
from Turkestan ; the different fumitories (Cwydalis)
make very pretty clumps ; and the two forms, purple
and white, of Sisyrinchiuni grandifl&mm, from Van-
couver's Island and the Rocky Mountains, are most
graceful plants, and come very early. Then the ane-
mones are beginning to show their many beauties;
the first here was the rich blue Anemone blanda from
Greece, followed very closely by our own wild yellow
anemone (A. ranvnoufaidcs), and that by the grand
anemones of Southern Europe, A. fulgens and others ;
and before the end of the month the pretty Pasque
flowers (A. pulsattila) will be in full flower, and the
yellow A. pahnata, from Hyeres, curious from being
the only anemone that has two flowers on a scape.
I have named enough now to prove that March has
a rich array of flowers of its own ; but as I walk
round the garden I note many more, of which I must
only give the names — Scillas, blue, white, and red ;

1 Cole, 1657.

MARCH 37

Chionodoxa ; Arabis, sheets of pure white ; mandrakes ;
Alyssum-, ' poly an thus of unnumbered dies'; Aubrietia;
periwinkles ; starch hyacinths, blue, white, and yellow ;
Sanguinaria, very curious, with its blood-like juice ;
Milla or Triteleia ; saxifrages, especially the large-
leaved megaseas ; Primula auricula, the typical yellow
from the Alps, and P. marginata ; Pulmonaria ; wall-
flowers ; Dondia or Hacquelia, and others. All of these
are pretty, and some of them very interesting, but I
pass them all by to say something of the shrubs of
March.

March is rich in flowering shrubs, some of them
ranking among the most beautiful of the year. The
old favourite, Pyrus, or Cijdonia japonica, is really a
grand plant in every way, and for more than eighty
years has been the chief spring ornament of English
gardens ; and, being quite hardy and easily grown, it
is often seen covering the walls of cottages. Though
its flowers are more abundant, and perhaps finer, and
come earlier when trained against a wall, it will grow
and flower anywhere; and there are many varieties,
differing chiefly in the colour of the flowers ; and it is
curious that here I seldom get fruit on the typical
red form, but I every year get abundance of fruit on
the white one. As a shrub, the most desirable is
Max Leichtlin's form of the Pyrus Maulei, which is a

38 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

low bush so densely covered with brilliant scarlet
flowers that in some places it would be hard to put
a pin between them. This dense flowering is one
peculiarity of the Pyrus Maulei, a plant which has
almost a sad history. It was introduced from Japan
about twenty years ago by Mr. Maule of Bristol, who
was so struck with the abundance and beauty of the
golden little quinces, that he gave up many acres to
its cultivation ; but the results were to him in every
way disastrous, and even hastened his death. With
the Pyrus japonica I associate another beautiful shrub,
also from Japan, but very different in habit and colour.
This is the Forsythia suspensa, a shrub which grows
to the top of my house, and is now covered with
long pendent branches, many more than a yard long,
thickly set with bright yellow flowers. This, too, is
very easy of cultivation, but is not often seen ; yet it
is very useful for cut flowers, for the long sprays can
be cut while still in bud, and will come out well in
water. The red-flowering currant (Ribes sanguimum) is
another old favourite, now in full flower, though it
has great beauty even before that, when the branches
are studded with the bright red bracts within which
the flowers are hid ; of this, too, there are white and
double varieties that make handsome spring shrubs.
The almond-tree is in flower in several gardens, and

MARCH 39

is very pretty, and full of pleasant associations ; but
I do not grow it, because the flowers are short-lived,
and then the tree has little beauty to recommend it ;
but I do grow and like the little dwarf almond from
Russia, which, at the end of March, is a mass of
pretty pink flowers. Last year my plant was covered
with fruit ; they were about the size of peas, and did
not come to perfection, but they looked like little
buttons of grey velvet, and were very suggestive of
the ' pussies ' of the willow. And this reminds me
that among the flowering shrubs of March the willows,
both wild and cultivated, are very conspicuous; the
4 pussies,' or ' palms,' are beautiful objects, and I grow
several of the dwarf species. I consider one, the
Salix lanata, from the Scottish Highlands, one of the
most beautiful silvery shrubs that I know. I must
only name the peach, whose blossoms are now very
lovely, for I want to mention two shrubs that are not
so common. The Rlwdodendron dauricum, from West
Asia, is perhaps only a geographical variety of the
rhododendron of the Alps, but it is almost the earliest
to flower, and the flowers, though small, are very
bright, and the shrub will grow in soils in which other
rhododendrons would perish. The Azara microphylla,
from South America, is a shrub that is always ad-
mired, but seldom grown. It is a hardy evergreen,

40 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

and the branchlets being all on the same plane, the
branches are like the frond of a fern, and it bears a
profusion of curious, very small, yellow flowers, which,
however, grow under the leaves, and are so completely
hidden that they might be entirely passed by; but
they have a most delicate scent, very like vanilla,
which brings them into notice. With the two Japanese
honeysuckles, L. Standishii, and L. fragrantissima, with
small flowers but a most delightful scent, and often
flowering even in January, I may close the list of
March flowers.

I have said that there was great pleasure in watch-
ing the ways in which different plants come through
the ground, and February and March are the months
in which that can best be seen. The more I study
flowers, the more I feel how little I know about them,
and especially how very little is known of a plant
by its flower only. The young shoots of a plant
when it first breaks the ground are often of wonderful
beauty, and are in many cases so utterly unlike the
same leaves when come to maturity, that to describe
a plant by its mature leaves only is to tell less than
half its story. And this is only one of the wonders
of young plant life. People sow seeds, and watch for
the coming of the plant, but few note that every
separate plant has its particular method of coming out

MARCH 41

of darkness into light, and we may be quite certain
that that particular method is the only one suitable to
it. Darwin noticed that some flowers break through
the ground as arches, the flower being formed under-
neath the ground, and then coming up curled almost
like a fern. He instances the parasitic Lathrea, Helle-
bwus niger, Epimedium, and Ranunculus ficaria ; I have
noticed the same thing in some of the fumitories,
and probably it occurs in other plants. Why these
should act so differently to all other plants is a
mystery. But the greatest mystery of this bursting
forth of the plants is that it is done when the growth
is at its tenderest age ; when the shoot is tender and
brittle it has power to push through everything that
binds it down. Instances are on record where funguses
have lifted large paving-stones, and in my own garden
I have an example almost as curious. Many years
ago I filled up a flower-bed, and brought a gravel path
through the midst of it. By accident a bunch of white
crocuses was left in the ground, and now every year
there is a bunch of these white crocuses coming up
through the hard gravel path, apparently quite happy
in their ungenial position. When I look on that
bunch of crocuses I get an excellent object-lesson in
the enormous strength of even the smallest plants.
The leaves and flowers of the crocus are apparently so

42 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

weak that a fly settling on any of them can weigh
it down ; yet they can force their way through a
substance as hard as concrete. From another habit
of many plants I get another object-lesson, from which
I learn that plant-life knows no rest. Many plants
come up in the spring at a considerable distance
from their position last summer. Roses will send
up suckers many feet away from the parent plant ;
the pretty Chinese poppy, ewnecon, will come up almost
anywhere in the bed except where it was first planted,
and this is more or less the case with almost all plants
which in our country dialect are called ' rastlers.'

If we carefully study the revival of plants in the
spring, we are often reminded that 'great are the
uses of adversity,' even to a garden. An Italian pro-
fessor, Signor Goiran, has recently given his opinion
that earthquakes are beneficial to agriculture, 'pro-
moting a more rapid germination of seeds, a quicker
rate of growth in the young plants, and a distincter
greenness in all vegetation.' Few gardeners would
wish to have such a help in their gardens ; but I feel
sure that they are helped by what at first seemed
almost as disastrous, for I am sure that for the abun-
dant flowers of one year we are often largely indebted
to previous very severe winters. We may have to
regret the entire loss of many good plants, and no

MARCH. 43

doubt only the strong ones survive ; but the strong
have by it gained more strength. The enforced rest
which is necessary after the shock of the severe winters
may make them produce few flowers the following
year ; but the rest was just what the plants wanted
to enable them to recover all they had lost, and to
gain much fresh strength; just as many an active
man is brought to a severe illness by overtaxing his
strength, but the enforced rest will often bring back
strength that he was fast losing altogether; or just
as a fruit-tree which bears beyond its strength one
year takes a rest in the next year, and then fruits
with renewed vigour the year' after. And this teaches
us that the true gardener is never overmuch dis-
quieted by bad seasons, whether they are seasons of
drought or of frost. The half-hearted gardener thinks
that all is lost when he has lost one season; but the
wise man's caution has a very wide meaning : ' He
that observeth the wind shall not sow, and he that
regardeth the clouds shall not reap.' The fair-weather
gardener, who will do nothing except when wind and
weather and everything else are favourable, is never a
master of his craft. Gardening, above all crafts, is a
matter of faith, grounded, however (if on nothing
better), on his experience that somehow or other
seasons go on in their right course, and bring their

44 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

right result* No doubt bad seasons are a trial of
his faith ; it is grievous to lose the fruits of much
labour by a frosty winter or a droughty summer ;
but, after all, frost and drought are necessities for
which, in all his calculations, he must leave an ample
margin ; but even in the extreme cases, when the
margin is past, the gardener's occupation is not gone.

CHAPTER IV

Banksia roses — Fritillaries — Crown Imperial— Paeonies —
Magnolias — Weeds.

WHEN we can pick good roses in the open garden we
may surely congratulate ourselves that we have left
the winter behind us ; and April often brings us good
bunches of Banksia roses, white and yellow. If only
for its early flowering this rose would be a favourite ;
but it has other claims. Its pretty and almost ever-
green-foliage, and its climbing habit, make it one of
the best shrubs for a wall, and in a very few years
it will reach to the top of most houses; while its
bunches of very small (almost the smallest of all roses)
and very sweet flowers, pure white or yellow (not so
sweet), are produced in abundance when the plant is
properly pruned and trained ; but all depends on that.
The flowers are borne on the last year's wood, and so
the long shoots which are produced in the summer

45

46 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

must not be spurred in, as most gardeners are tempted
to do, but nailed in carefully, while old and useless
branches are as carefully removed. The plant has
rather an interesting history. The date of its intro-
duction is not known for certain, but it was first
described (the double white form) in the Botanical
Magazine for 1818, as Lady Banks' Rose; but all that
could be told of it was that it was a native of China,
and had been introduced in 1807 by William Kerr.
The double yellow seems to have been introduced about
ten years later ; while the single yellow, the typical
native plant of China and Japan, has only been recently
introduced. The curious thing about these three plants
is that the typical plant, the single yellow, is by far
the tenderest; and that while the single and double
yellow are almost scentless, the double white is one of
the sweetest of roses, so that I once heard an old
gardener, whose chief pride was in an old Banksia
rose which he managed to perfection, declare that
when in full flower he could smell it though more than
a hundred yards away from it.

April is rich in flowers, and so Chaucer chose ' Aprille
with his schowres swoote,' when

'Zephirus eke with his swetc breeth
Enspirud hath in every holte and heeth
The tendre croppes '-

APRIL 47

as the pleasantest month for the Canterbury pilgrims ;
the month in which * longen folk to go on pilgrimage.'
Spenser described it as

' Garnished with garlands goodly dight
Of all the fairest flowers and freshest buds
Which the earth brings forth.'

And though Shakespeare called it 'spongy April,' ho
also called it 'well-apparelled April/ and 'proud-pied
April,' and it is indeed so rich in flowers that it is not
easy to select one which demands more attention than
others ; but in my garden the Fritillaries are a chief
ornament in April, and a great delight. I know that
they are capricious, and in some gardens they will not
grow at all, but here they are quite hardy, and being let
alone they increase freely both by their roots and seeds.
There are a very large number of species (more than
fifty, besides varieties), and I believe they may all be
considered hardy, at least in the south of England, and
are all well worth growing ; but I can only find space
for two, which, though the most old-fashioned, are, as
I think, the most beautiful. First, there is our own
native fritillary ; and its popularity is shown by its
many English names — such as, death bell, dead man's
bell, chequered daffodil, lily, or tulip, drooping tulip,
guinea-hen flower, turkey-hen flower, snake's flower,

48 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

snake's head, and many others. On these I need say
nothing; but the Latin name — Fritillaria meleagris —
deserves a short note. The flower was sent to Clusius,
towards the end of the sixteenth century, by Noel
Caperon, an apothecary of Orleans, who at the same
time suggested that it should be called fritillaria, from
fritillus, which he supposed to be a chessboard, instead
of the dice-box often used with such a board. Clusius
and others, who were better acquainted with Latin,
pointed out the mistake, and some suggested Caperonia,
and others (as Laurembergius) suggested Gaviana, from
gavia, a sea-gull ; but Fritillaria held its ground, not
only as the scientific name, but also as the common
name, though Parkinson and others tried to establish
the pretty name of chequered daffodil, but in vain.
The other name — Meleayris — it gets from its likeness
to a guinea-hen, and this name it has had for more
than three centuries. It is a plant that spreads from
Norway through the whole of Central Europe to the
Caucasus and Bosnia, and is now admitted into the
English flora, but is a doubtful native. It is, how-
ever, found sparingly in many parts of England south
of the Trent, and may be said to be abundant in the
meadows bordering the Thames, from its rise to below
Oxford, and in many meadows it is so abundant as
fully to justify Matthew Arnold's description : —

APRIL 49

I know what white, what purple'fritillaries

The grassy harvest of the river-fields

Above by Ensham, down by Sandford yields. '

— Thyrsis.

In some meadows, especially near Cricklade, nearly all
the flowers are white, and near Cirencester a curious
variety has been found, in which the white flowers and
the leaves and flower-stalks are so twisted as to have
gained for the plant the name of F. contorta. As a
garden-flower for April the fritillary is a most desir-
able plant ; however much it spreads and increases it
never is in the way : and the leaves and flower-stems
die away so soon after the flowering is over that it
may be allowed to remain undisturbed in any garden.

The other fritillary of which I must speak as one of
the grandest of April flowers — I might almost say one
of the grandest flowers of the year — is the great fritil-
lary, the Crown Imperial. It is a native of Persia,
Afghanistan, and Cashmere, and was introduced into
England from Constantinople about the middle of the
sixteenth century, and at once took its place as the
' Emperor of Flowers ' (Chapman), as the plant which,
' for its stately beautifulnesse, deserveth the first place
in our garden of delight' (Parkinson), and George
Herbert called it 'a gallant flower, the Crown Imperial.'
Perdita put it among her choicest garden flowers ;
Gerard described it at great length, and with all terms

D

50 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

of admiration, and the beautiful French and Dutch
books of the period gave excellent engravings of it.
From the first, too, it took the name which still remains
unto us, and which was at once adopted in all Euro-
pean nations ; and the name was happily chosen, for it
does not imply that the flower was the emperor of
flowers, but it draws attention to a very wonderful
arrangement of the flower and seed-vessels. It would
be hard to find any plant whose flowers are more com-
pletely turned earthwards than the Crown Imperial, yet
each flower contains a clear drop of sweet water at the
base of the petals, which remains steadily in the flower
in defiance of all the laws of gravitation. But no sooner
is the flower fully fertilised, and the large seed-pods
formed, than, in spite of their great weight, they at once
begin to rise, till at last they range themselves in per-
fect order on the top of the flower stem, forming what
it requires little fancy to liken to a well-formed crown
with sharp jewelled points. And not only in its name,
but in another very remarkable way, the beautiful
plant has remained stationary. Though it has been in
the hands of the gardeners for more than three hundred
years, they seem to have been unable to alter, or, as they
would say, improve it in any way ; so we, at the end
of the nineteenth century, have the very same varieties,
and no more, that our forefathers had in the sixteenth

APRIL 51

century. I will only add, that my experience with
the Crown Imperial has taught me to leave it alone as
much as possible, and never to remove or divide the
bulbs.

I very much admire the pseonies, both the tree and
herbaceous sorts, among the spring flowers, and I rank
them among the flowers of April, though they are
generally not in their full beauty till May. But in
April there is a special beauty in the young foliage
holding the unopened buds, and the foliage is so very
different in the different species that a collection of
them makes a very pleasant study. Many are in
flower in April ; the first with me is always P. cretensis,
a dwarf species, with very pale rose, almost white
flowers ; and this is followed by the very handsome
P. Whitmanniana, from the Caucasus. This pseony
has been introduced more than fifty years, but is still
very scarce, though its large yellow flowers are very
handsome, and give it the appearance of a gigantic
trollius. When the flowers of the pseonies are past,
their beauty is by no means over, for their foliage and
curious seed-vessels are attractive objects in the garden
for many months. I leave the dicentras, though I
think D. spedalilis the finest hardy herbaceous plant
that has been introduced during the last fifty years ;
the pansies, anemones, candytufts, and a host of other

52 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

things which make the garden bright in April, that I
may say something of the shrubs of April.

I cannot understand why so very few people grow
the spring-flowering magnolias. Many grow the large
M. grandiflora ; but coming from the Southern United
States, it is doubtfully hardy, and I have twice had it
quite killed by frost, though the stem of the tree was
6 in. through ; nor have I found it an easy tree to
manage. But the Chinese and Japanese species are
perfectly hardy, very easy to manage, and in spring
giving an abundance of most handsome flowers. The
species which I cultivate, and which have been in
wonderful beauty during the month, are M. Lennei,
with large flowers, of a rich, rosy red, and each petal
looking like a fine shell, M. obovata, M. purpurea, and
M. stelkita. This last I think the best of all ; it forms
a low shrub, which is covered with small flowers of
quite a dazzling white. The drawback to these de-
ciduous early magnolias is that their flowers are apt to
be caught by the spring frosts, but the same objection
does not apply to the Japanese orange, Citrus trifoliata,
which I have known covered with its white blossoms at
the time of frost, but not a flower was injured. This is
a curiously neglected shrub, for it has been introduced
many years, and has very pretty foliage, and some-
times produces little oranges, which, however, are of

APRIL 53

no value. Other good flowering shrubs for April are
the Mains florilunda, quite magnificent in bud; the
Exochordas, very pretty in bud ; several of the Genistas,
especially G. prcecox, and the double-flowering gorse;
and even the shrubs which flower later are very
attractive in April from their young foliage.

I am sorry to say that the April record of the garden
would be very incomplete without some mention of the
weeds ; for it is in April they first show themselves,
and some of them only in April. In new gardens it
is possible, and not very difficult, to keep the weeds
under ; but in old gardens it is almost impossible. It
is an old and very true gardening proverb, that one
year's seed is many years' weed ; or as Hamlet laments,
1 An un weeded garden grows to seed,' and so ' things
rank and gross in nature possess it merely.' In the
history of an old garden there must have often been a
one year's seed ; and there must be in it from time to
time many an unweeded corner. But I have almost
an affection for weeds, a decided affection for some of
them, and I have not much sympathy with those who
say that a garden is not worth looking at unless it is as
clean as a newly-swept floor ; it is a counsel of perfec-
tion, which I have no great wish to reach. A weed is
but a good plant in the wrong place ; I say a good
plant advisedly, having a full faith that where nature

64 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

plants it, it fills a right place. Daisies are not perhaps
in their right place in lawns, but I should be sorry to
see my lawn quite free from them, and so I am sure
would the children. Buttercups have a shining beauty
of petal that is not surpassed by any flower, and I do
not think that Jean Ingelow's comparison of a field of
buttercups to the Field of the Cloth of Gold, to the
great advantage of the buttercups, is much exaggerated ;
but they must be kept out of the garden. The weeds
that chiefly trouble me in April are the two veronicas,
V. agrestis and V. Buxbaumi ; either of them might lay
claim to the title of ' the little speedwell's darling blue,'
and they are so short-lived that they do little real harm ;
still, they give a good deal of trouble. But some weeds
are so beautiful that I should certainly grow them in
the garden, if only they could be kept in place, and if
they were not already too abundant. I should be
sorry to banish from my walls the creeping toad-flax
and the yellow fumitory, and as long as they keep to
the walls they do no harm. But there are two plants
that are sad weeds, but which, if lost, would be sorely
missed. The dandelion is one —

' The flower
That blows a globe of after arrowlets.'

Surely no other flower can surpass it for beauty of
foliage, beauty of shape, and rich beauty of colouring.

APRIL 55

The second weed that I often wish to transplant into
my garden, but dare not, is the goosegrass, or silver
weed, Potentilla anserina. Its beautiful leaves have a
silver sheen that make it very attractive ; but it is better
kept outside the garden, and it grows everywhere.
It is found in the Arctic regions and it is found
in New Zealand, and so has as wide a range as almost
any known plant, except, perhaps, the little fern
Cystopteris fragilis, which not only grows as far north
as lat. 76 deg., and as far south as New Zealand, but
was also found by Whymper in the Equatorial Andes.

But it is not only for their beauty that I have an
affection for some of the weeds, but, speaking as a
gardener, I am sure that they are often very useful.
We may see how in a hedgerow the most delicate
plants nestle themselves close to and under those of
the coarsest growth, and seem all the better for it ;
and I have seen many instances in which delicate seeds
and young cuttings have been saved when protected by
weeds, when those not so protected have perished.
One of the most interesting gardens and the most
untidy I ever saw was Professor Syme's in Fifeshire.
It was a mass of weeds, and rampant weeds ; but
among the weeds, and apparently rejoicing in them,
was a collection of some of the rarest plants, growing
in greater luxuriance than I had ever seen elsewhere.

66 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

The weeds keep the earth moist, and prevent the
radiation of heat, and how much they do so most of
us can see by observing the plantains on our lawns.
I am not fond of plantains on lawns, and get rid of
them ; but some will remain, and on them I have often
noticed that in a slight hoar-frost no hoar-frost is
formed on the plantains ; the broad leaves lying flat
on the ground keep in the earth-heat. I am tempted
to say more about weeds and their uses, but instead cl
doing so I will refer — and those who do not know the
book will thank me for doing so — to one of Burroughs'
charming little books, Fepacton, where there is a long
chapter on the use and beauty of weeds. I will, how-
ever, quote another American writer, Hawthorne, who
is quite enthusiastic in his praise of weeds. * There is,'
he says, * a sort of sacredness about them. Perhaps if
we could penetrate Nature's secrets we should find that
what we call weeds are more essential to the well-being
of the world than the most precious fruit or grain.'
This is perhaps somewhat exaggerated, but there is a
good truth in it.

CHAPTER V

Tulips— Genistas— Effects of drought.

THE garden record for May ought to be a record of
abundance of flowers and rich greenery, both in field
and garden. But the May of 1893 will long be
remembered as a May in which the garden was burnt
up, and everything was thrown out of its proper
season. There were flowers in abundance; but the
flowers of May owed nothing to the April showers,
for the long drought was accompanied with brilliant
sunshine, and for the most part of the time with dry
easterly and north-easterly winds, making the earth,
even in the most favoured soils, hard and parched,
and with little or no refreshment from dews, 'the
heaven over our head being as brass, and the earth
beneath us as iron.' The result of this was that
the gardens, and indeed the whole country, pre-
sented an appearance such as few of us could

67

58 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

remember, and produced many curious sights which
might rightly be called abnormal

Among these curious abnormal sights, I should
reckon the hawthorn, of which it is generally very
difficult to pick a single blossom on May-day, but
which in that year was in full flower at the same
time as the blackthorn, on the 13th of April, and
was even in flower before the first swallow was seen.
The swallows were very late that year. I did not
see the first in my garden till the 23rd of April,
only one day before the cuckoo was heard for the
first time ; and on the same day appeared the pretty
little redstart, which I always welcome as one of the
truest harbingers of summer, almost as much so as the
corncrake, which I lx)th heard and saw on April 25.

In the garden the chief effect was that the flowers
were forced into premature blooming ; we had in May
the flowers of June. There was a wonderful abundance
of flowers everywhere, but they were stunted, and
starved, and dwarfed, and so were robbed of half
their beauty. Thus the lily of the valley which
delights in moisture, produced flowers which were
like silver shot, and were sadly deficient in scent;
and the beautiful guelder rose produced its lovely
balls of flowers about one-half the usual size. The
late daffodils came with short stalks and small flowers,

MAY 59

and soon passed away ; while many plants, especially
those with shallow roots, or which had not been long
planted, gradually flagged and in many cases perished.
Still there was an abundance of flowers, and among
the flowers of the end of April and the early part of
May none are so conspicuous as the tulips. I am
not very fond of the florist's tulips; in some cases
their colours are most brilliant, but always coarse
and flaring, and their growth is very stiff, and to me
they give little pleasure. Indeed, I think a bed con-
sisting of tulips only is an ugly object ; I should
say that such a bed is the ugliest of all such one-
flowered beds, except a bed of double zinnias; but
in so saying I suppose I am in a minority, and
perhaps a very small minority. For more than three
hundred years tulips have had a wonderful fascina-
tion for all florist gardeners, and for many who are
more than florists, and I suppose their popularity is
still almost as great as ever. The bulb catalogues,
both English and foreign, contain every year long
lists of tulips. Many of them are very high-priced,
though, of course, very cheap if compared with the
prices which are reported to have been given for
tulips during the ' tulipo-mania ' of the seventeenth
century. In the whole history of plants there is
probably no more curious or sadder chapter than

60 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

this of the tulipo-mania, which, though still often
quoted as an instance of the extravagance of florists
in their favourite flowers, is known to have been
simply a gigantic swindle, in which the plants had
really very little part — a Stock Exchange gambling,
which it required the high hand of the law to stop.
But it was not stopped before it had produced quite
a literature of its own; and a long list of books on
the subject will be found in Beckman's History of
Inventions, who gives also an excellent account of
the great swindle.

The tulips of the florist are all varieties of the
Eastern T. Gesneriana, a plant which varies from seed
and roots almost more than any plant known, so that
the same plant cannot bo depended on to produce the
same flowers for more than two or three years.
But besides the florist's tulip there are nearly a
hundred true species coming from the south and
east of Europe, thence through Southern Asia to
India, China, and Japan; but none are found in
America and Australia. Of these, many are very
beautiful flowers, and, unlike tlie great florist's tulip,
are low and small. They mostly come from Central
Asia, and many of them are of quite recent intro-
duction; and among them I should especially re-
commend Kolpakowskyana, Ostrowskyana, pulchella, saxa-

MAY 61

tiltSy australis (called by nurserymen Persica), and
undulatcefolia. I also much admire T. retroflexa, a
most graceful flower with pale yellow recurved petals,
which was a great favourite with the late Mrs. Ewing
(Aunt Judy), and I think there are none more beauti-
ful than the two European species, T. Clusiana from
Mentone, and T. sylvestris. In my own garden I have
never seen a flower of T. Clusiana, though it sends up
leaves every year, but T. sylvestris is abundant in flower
and very beautiful. It is the only tulip that can be
called Northern, and botanists doubt its being a true
native of Britain ; but I have seen it in abundance on a
barren hillside near Bath, far from houses, and where
it seems most certainly wild, and it is almost the only
plant that grows well there, except the Bath asparagus,
Ornithogalum Pyrenaicum, which is equally abundant.

I must say something more about the tulip, for it
has both a literary and botanic interest. Besides
the literature on the ' tulipo-mania,' which I have
already mentioned, the writers of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries seem to have thought that
no words were sufficient to express their admiration
of the tulip. Of course such writers are for the
most part writers on flowers; for, in spite of the
popularity of the flower, it does not seem to have
found any such place in general literature as the

62 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

lily and the rose. Herrick indeed was bold enough
to compare his mistress to a tulip, but it was only
to point the moral that life and beauty soon pass
away ; and I know of no other author who has made
the tulip his subject except Steele, who, in a charm-
ing paper in the Taller (No. 228), has a good-
humoured laugh against the absurd names given to
tulips, and congratulated himself that he * had never
fallen into any of these fantastical tastes/ but, * look-
ing upon the whole country in spring-time as a
spacious garden/ could thank 'the bounty of Pro-
vidence, which has made the most pleasing and most
beautiful objects the most ordinary and most common.'
But with the gardening writers the praises of the
tulip are absurdly fulsome and extravagant. Each
writer tries to outdo the others in his superlatives,
and I have no room for their praises. One specimen
will suffice, and I choose it because the writer, Francis
Pomey, a Jesuit of the early part of the seventeenth
century, is little known, and I quote from Hoffmann :—

1 Tulipa, in regno florum, coronam sibi iure vindicat. Huic
uni concessit natura, ut quidquid Tenustatis et gratia? aliis
tributum dispersumque est, ipsa in se colligat.'

There is much more to the same effect, but that is
enough, for I want to say something about a very

MAY 63

curious point in the botanical structure of the tulip.
The flower of this year springs from a bulb that
seems simple and compact, but within that bulb
another bulb is formed (or more than one) in the
axils of the scales, which will be the flowering bulb
of next year; and within that is, again, another
bulbil, which will be the flowering bulb of the year
after next ; so that each bulb lives three years, and
no more, yet each, as it comes to maturity, contains
within itself other formed bulbs for two years to come.
Madame de Genlis, who wrote on almost every sub-
ject in the beginning of the century, carries this still
further, and says that in October there will be found
at the base of the bulb the entire tulip flower which
will appear aboveground in April, with stem, petals,
stamens, pistil, ovary, and seeds; but Madame de
Genlis is not to be trusted in her botany or her facts.
But the structure of the spring bulb which I have
mentioned is a certain fact, and, as far as I know, this
structure is unique and confined to the tulips, though
there is something very analogous to it in the structure
of ferns. If a fern, of which the fronds of this year
are fully developed, is examined (in a large fern, such as
the Struthiopteris or Felix mas, it can be seen very
easily), the fronds of this year form the fine outside
crown, but inside that there is an inner crown of fronds

64 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

a few inches high, but with each frond separate and
curled up, which will be the outside fronds of next
year, and within that, again, is a third ball of fronds
not yet separate, and with the points all tucked into
one common centre, and these will be the outside
fronds of the year after next. I will finish this long
account of the tulip by saying that though it must
have been known to the Greek and Latin writers, it
has not been found possible to identify it with cer-
tainty with any plant named by them. Its present
name was given by Gesner in the sixteenth century,
being the name of the Dalmatian hat, or cap, which
the reflexed tulip was thought to resemble.

The tulip has led me too far astray, and left me
little room to speak of the other flowers of May. I
am much pleased this year with Genista Andreami,
which flowered sparingly when young, but now bears
an abundance of flowers. It is certainly a most de-
sirable new plant, and is perfectly hardy, as we
might expect from a plant of which one parent is our
common broom, if, indeed, it is not a mere variety
of the wild plant. I am surprised that it should do
so well here, for the wild broom seldom grows well
on lime, and so I do not attempt it. After flowering,
my plant showed signs of withering, which I at first
thought might arise from the drought ; but, seeing

MAY 65

it laden with seed-pods, I concluded that it had
flowered too freely, and that if allowed to perfect
its seed it would die, so I hardened my heart and
cut it back very hard, and the bush very soon
recovered. I think it is not sufficiently known that
all flowering shrubs are much improved by being cut
back after flowering and before they go to seed. By
this means the strength of the plant is not wasted
by perfecting the seeds, but is spent in laying up
nourishment for next year's flowers. And this applies
to all flowers, and may be seen most clearly in bulbous
plants, which, after flowering, naturally produce seed-
pods, but not on all the flowering stems. Those stems
which do not produce seed-pods very soon fade away ;
those which are ripening seed will keep green and
flourishing till the seed is formed, but if the seed-pods
are cut away the flower-stem at once begins to die
down, and the vital strength which would have been
spent on the seeds remains stored up in the roots.

There are many other species of the broom
family besides Genista Andreana which are beautiful
ornaments in any garden, but I am inclined to give
the palm to G. virgata, a shrub of very elegant growth,
with small leaves, and an abundance of pale yellow
flowers, and perfectly hardy, though its native home
is in Madeira. There are also many dwarf prostrate

E

66 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

species, which make excellent plants for the rock-
garden, but the family is too large for me to stay
longer with them.

It is a pleasant puzzle to think what will be the
effect of the long spring drought in the late summer
and autumn garden. I have no doubt that one result
will be to give an increased value to the summer
bedding plants, for the ordinary plants of summer
and autumn must pass away early, and then the
1 bedders ' will be useful, and I should think it very
probable that many of the spring plants, which lasted
so short a time and passed away so early, will flower
again in the autumn. Another result which I look
forward to with hope is, that many shrubs which
often cannot ripen their fruit before the frost comes,
and in some seasons cannot even flower, on account
of the shortness of the summer, will be able to do so
this year, when the summer may well be said to have
begun in April. I mentioned last month that the
Japanese orange, Citrus trifoliata, was in beautiful
flower in April; it now has plenty of well-formed
fruit, and, as in former years I have never seen the
fruit formed before the end of summer, I may hope
this year to see the fruit fully ripen.1 For the same

1 It produced an abundance of small, handsome fruit, full of good
seeds, which germinated freely.

MAY 67

reason I hope to see flowers and fruit on the fine
Asparagus verticillatus (already a beautiful green pillar
quite fifteen feet high), on the Japanese Tchi-Tchi
(Diospyros costatus), on the Christ's thorn, on the
magnolias, and even perhaps on the Smilax, on the
Nandina, and the Peripkca Grceca. I hope it may
also ripen the golden pods of the Japanese Kohlreuteria,
and the long pods, like French beans, of the Catalpa,
both of which I had in the Jubilee year, but never
before or since ; and it surely must ripen the wood of
our shrubs and fruit-trees, which will help them to
withstand a hard winter, if it should be our ill-luck
to add another hard winter to the three already past.
If the long drought of March, April, and May brings
us these results, we may not altogether regret it;
and such results would go far to compensate for the
trouble and anxieties which marred the pleasures of
those eleven weeks of bright sunshine, and will also
make some very memorable additions to my records
of * A Gloucestershire Garden.'

CHAPTER VI

3|UIU

Irises — Lilies — Roses — (Enothera — Funkias — Honey -d
Philadelphus — Ferns — A long drought.

JUNE is the fullest month of the year in the garden,
fullest in foliage and flower; it is Shakespeare's 'foison
of the year.'

The chief flowers of June are the irises, the roses,
and the lilies. Of the irises, the grand /. ochroleuca
is one of the most stately, and is most ornamental. Its
native country is not certainly known, but it has
been a favourite in English gardens for more than a
hundred years, and is said to have been brought
from the East by the great traveller, Dr. Pococke,
but there is no record of its having been found in a
wild state. The most beautiful iris with me in the
dry year of 1893 was /. monnieri, a very near relation
of the Himalayan /. aurea, and generally in flower
in July, but in that year quite a month before its
usual time, and with flowers larger and purer in

JUNE 69

colour than I remember it before; so I suppose the
drought and bright sunshine suit it well. /. aurea
did fairly well, but instead of the flower-stems being
over five feet high, as they often are in other seasons,
they were not above a yard in height, But I do not
think the drought will ever seriously injure the irises ;
by their premature flowering, and their small flowers
which soon pass away, a very small tax is laid upon
their vital powers, and they will probably be enabled
to lay up a good store of strength for future years.

Of roses and lilies I cannot say much.1 But there
is no finality about roses ; and when we remember the
large number of books which have been written on
them, and which every year adds to, I may plead that
the subject is not exhausted. I have lately learned
an additional excellence in the Banksia rose, which
I had not noted before, that it lasts in flower longer
than any other rose, except the monthly roses. I
picked a good bunch on April 2nd ; and on June
3rd there were still good bunches on the trees, though
beginning to fade. I have also learned that the
Himalayan R. polyantha, which is like a fountain of
flowers, has a really unpleasant scent at times; so

1 See the chapters on 'Roses' and ' Lilies,' in Part II. Much of
this June record was peculiar to the excellent summer of 1893, and
I have abridged it accordingly.

70 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

that, unlike other roses, which 'are fast flowers of
their smells ; so that you may walk by a whole row
of them, and find nothing of their sweetness ; yea,
though it be in a morning's dew' (Bacon), this rose
gives out its scent of its own accord for many yards
round, and to me the scent is unpleasant. I know
of only one other rose that can be called ill-scented,
the Austrian briar, and in that the scent is not very
perceptible; most of the modern hybrid roses have
no scent at all, which in a rose is almost unpardon-
able. A very pleasant book has been recently pub-
lished in France by M. Charles Joret, which is well
worth reading by any lover of roses, for its exhaustive
account of the classical and mediaeval history of the
rose; indeed, he carries it still further back, for he
quotes from one of the old miracle plays on the
Creation a speech of the Tempter, in which — * Le
diable voulant de*peindre la nature delicate et fragile
d'Eve, la compare & la rose :—

' Tu ea fieblette et tend re choee,
Et ce plus freache quo n'eat roae.'

This must be the earliest instance of the degradation
of the rose for the grossest flattery. Milton ventured
to plant the rose in Paradise, but of a special sort,
1 without thorn the rose ' ; but he has a touching

JUNE 71

allusion to the flower, in singling it out as one of
the great losses which had come to him through his
blindness : —

'With the year

Seasons return, but not to me returns
Day, or the sweet approach of ev'n or morn,
Or sight of vernal bloom or summer's rose.'

The old rose Lamarque deserves a grateful record.
It has always been a great favourite with me, and
when in its full beauty I think it almost the most
beautiful of white roses. I do not know its exact
history, except that it is a tea-scented Noisette (which
was a hybrid between fi. Indica and R. nwschata), and
is the parent of the Grand Cloth of Gold Rose, but
it is not a popular rose, for it is not considered a good
exhibition rose, and at the Rose Conference in 1889
it only obtained two votes as against nearly eighty
for some of the other tea roses, for it has the reputation
of being rather tender, which I very much doubt, my
plant having been in the same place for certainly over
fifty years, during which it must have passed through
many a severe winter with little injury.1 Its numerous
trusses of pure white sweet-scented roses are most beauti-
ful, especially in dry seasons ; and if I were limited to

1 In the hard winter of 1895 the Lamarque was less injured than
most roses.

72 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

one white rose I think I should choose Lamarque. The
old white cabbage is also a great beauty.

The drought has more effect on the bulbous and
herbaceous plants than it has upon the trees and
shrubs. But I note two families of herbaceous plants
which in my soil seem to rejoice in the drought,
the cenotheras and the funkias. The cenotheras, or
evening primroses, are beautiful plants, but I never
could understand Linnseus's reason for giving this
name, which he got from Theophrastus and Pliny,
to a family of plants which are entirely American,
though two have been admitted into the European
and English floras, but there can be no doubt that
they are aliens and garden escapes. Theophrastus's
conothera (Vini renatm) is supposed to have been a
willow herb, but Pliny's cannot be identified with
any plant now known :—

* It is,' he says, ' an hearbe good as wine to make the heart
merrie. It groweth with leaves resembling those of the almond-
tree, and beareth flowers like unto roses. Of such virtue is
this hearbe, that if it be given to drink to the wildest beast
that i», it will tame the same and make it gentle.' — Holland's
Translation.

The best known of the low-growing evening primroses
is probably the old yellow CE. missouriensis, and that
is a plant that no garden should be without. But

JUNE 73

still more beautiful is the (E. caespitosa, from the Rocky
Mountains ; every evening in June it will open many
of its beautiful, pure white flowers, large and sweet-
scented, but soon fading away in the next day's sun ;
yet if they are picked and put in water they will
preserve their beauty for some days. The (E. speciosa,
a very hardy plant from North America, is taller than
the other two I have named, which are both prostrate
plants, but bears an abundance of white flowers, which
do not confine their beauty to the evening and night,
but keep themselves well open all the day ; in some
soils it is apt to become troublesome by spreading too
much. For the funkias a dry season is most favourable ;
their great enemies are the snails and slugs, but the
dry weather keeps these at bay. I admire the funkias
very much; they like my soil, and grow into large
plants ; but I seldom succeed in flowering the beautiful
F. grandiflora from Japan, and I believe the only way
of getting it in full beauty is to grow it under glass.

A dry season is a favourable season for trees and
well-established shrubs. Trees are very full-foliaged,
and the flowering trees are laden with flowers. The
tulip-tree is quite a sight with its load of pretty, sweet-
scented flowers ; the ashes are weighed down with
their * keys,' and the limes are equally weighted with
their flowers. But, besides flowers, some of the trees

74 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

show such an extraordinary amount of honey-dew that
it is almost unpleasant to walk under the lime-trees.
This honey-dew is still something of a mystery. We
know that it is in some way produced by innumerable
aphides, and that the bees gather it, not for honey, but
for bee-food. To the old writers it was a subject of
much speculation. Virgil spoke of ' Aerii mellis coelestia
donaj and * Qutrcus sudabunt roscida mdla.' Pliny and
other writers spoke of it positively as a falling dew
from heaven, while the old English writers were more
inclined to look on it as a sweet exudation from the
earth and flowers ; but of its usefulness to bee-keepers
they had no doubt, and Butler, the most amusing of
all the old writers on bees, says that —

* The hooni-dews fall ' [his curious book is all printed
phonetically] ' for the moat part in the morning before it bee
ligt ; and then sail you hav the bees up in the morning as
soon as they can see, making such a humming noys wer they
go (specially in the garden, cooming loaden horn) that, as
merry gossips wen they meet, a man may hear them farther
than tee them.'— BUTLER, Feminin Monarchy 1636, vi. 44.

Of other shrubs I need only make mention of the
Philadelphus, or mock orange. This is the shrub
that is commonly called the syringa, and is so well
known for its rich, almost overpowering orange-like
scent, and the cucumber-like taste of the leaves. The

JUNE 75

common name, syringa, is a curious example of the
way in which common names once established refuse
to give way to more scientific arrangements. For
under the one name of syringa the old writers, Clusius,
Gerard, Parkinson, and others, lumped together both
the mock oranges and the lilac, deriving the name
from the Greek <r\'piy£, a pipe; 'a virgarum rectarwn
longitudine, et fungosae interwris medullae copia qua
extmpta ramuli fistulosi sunt' (Clusius). Hence the
old English name of pipe-tree, now lost. But
botanically the mock orange and the lilacs are far
apart, the lilacs being closely allied to the olives, while
the mock oranges are near to, though quite distinct
from, the myrtles, and so Linnaeus separated them,
calling the lilacs syringa, and giving to the mock
oranges the old Greek name of Philadelphus, which is
by many supposed to have been the jasmine. But a
common name is not so easily thrown off, and to this
day the mock oranges are commonly called syringas.
There are many species, the chief favourite being the
large North American P. Gordonianus, and this has the
same scent as the common European P. coronarius, a
scent which is too powerful to many except in the
open air : —

* Of a pleasant, sweet smell (says Gerard), but in my judg-
ment they are too sweet, troubling and molesting the head in

76 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

a very strange manner. I once gathered the floures and layd
them in my chamber window, which smelled more strongly
after they had been together a few houres, with such an un-
acquainted savor, that they awaked me out of sleepe, so that
I could not rest till I had cast them out of my chamber.'

Much as I admire these large-flowered mock oranges,
I more admire the P. hirsutus from Tennessee ; it has
much smaller flowers, and they are not so sweet-
scented, but they are produced in great abundance,
and stud the branches in a particularly elegant way,
and they are not so overwhelmed with the leaves,
which are also small. And there is no better shrub
for the rock-work than P. microphyllus ; it comes from
New Mexico, but it is remarkable for its low growth,
its very small leaves, and its abundance of small
flowers, which, however, are not produced till the
shrub is some years old. A very near ally of the
Philadelphus is the Deutzia, of which there are many
species, chiefly from Japan, very hardy, and this
year very full of flower.

It must be confessed that a long drought brings
some trouble to the gardener, especially in new
gardens, or where plants of any sort have been recently
planted. In those cases the necessary constant use
of the waterpot adds largely to the labours of the
garden, and even so the plants may die ; for plants

JUNE 77

require not only moisture at their roots, but also a
moist atmosphere above them. We may have also to
lament for the dwindled specimens of many of our
flowers, fruit, and vegetables ; but when we have said
all that, and said it as grumblingly as possible, there
surely is much in a hot dry season not to grumble at,
but to rejoice and be thankful for. It is something to
say, and it will be something to remember for many
years, that throughout all England we have been able
— for three continuous months l — to be out of doors
in our gardens and fields under perfectly cloudless
skies, with no fear of rain, with very little wind, and
even with so little dew, that in the early mornings
and in the late and long evenings the most delicate
might sit out and enjoy the abundance of flowers
(bright though short-lived), the rich scents of the pure
air, and the sounds of the birds and insects, to whom
the bright season seems to have brought a large addi-
tion of life and happiness. Nothing is absolutely
perfect in this world (according to our ideas), and
whatever the season may be there will be found some
occasion for grumbling. But the wise man's con-
clusion is the best, Omnia fecit pulchra in tempore suo.

i Referring to 1893.

CHAPTER VII

Xanthoceras aorbtfolia — Syrian Oak — Eryngiums and their
allies— Gypsophila paniculcUa — Spring flowers in autumn —
Tenacity of plant-life.

ONE of the best flowering shrubs for July is Xatitiioceras
sorlifolia. I have had this for many years, and it has
frequently flowered here, but never fruited. Both in
flower and fruit it is a most handsome shrub ; indeed,
when it was first sent to me from the Jardins des
Plantes, in Paris, it came to me with the note that
it was the best of all the flowering shrubs. I should
be slow to pass that judgment upon any shrub, but it
is very beautiful ; yet, though perfectly hardy, it is
very seldom seen. It is one of the many good things
that were sent to France from Northern China by the
Abbe* David in 1868; it has rich green leaves some-
thing like the leaves of the ash, and the fruit is as

1 This chapter, like the last, was written in the dry summer of
1893.

73

JULY 79

large as an apple, and of a deep green ; it is closely
allied to our wild bladder nut (Staphyleia), and the
horse-chestnuts, and it gets its name of Xanthoceras,
or Yellowhorn, from the curious yellow horn -like
glands placed between the stamens. In the July of
1893 the Mentone Asparagas (A. acutifolius) was also
in full flower for the first time, and the Cochineal Oak
(Q. pseudo-coccifera) produced abundance of acorns ; these
I had seen before, but they generally are formed too
late to come to perfection. This interesting oak is
very seldom seen in gardens ; indeed, I have never
seen it in England but at Kew and in my own garden ;
yet it is a very hardy evergreen, and forms a good
bush, and is by no means a rare plant in its native
countries ; for it has a very wide geographical range,
stretching from Spain to beyond Syria. Abraham's
Oak at Mamre is of this species, and it is so abundant
in Syria, that, according to Sir Joseph Hooker, who
published a most interesting account of the oaks of
Syria from personal observation in 1860 — 'On Mount
Carmel it forms nine-tenths of the shrubby vegetation,
and it is almost equally abundant on the west flanks of
the Anti-Lebanon, and many slopes and valleys of
Lebanon.' The acorns on my tree are never larger
than peas, but in Syria they are larger than any
English acorns.

80 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

The drought of that year was also very favourable
to all that large tribe of plants which many people
despise, and lump them all as ' thistles ' ; I mean not
only the thistles proper (carduus, cnicus, carlina, etc.),
but also the globe thistles (echinops), the teasles, and
the eryngiums. I like them all, and grow many of
them, and think that there are few finer herbaceous
plants than the eryngiums when they are well estab-
lished, and when the season suits them. There is a
very great variety among them, from the silvery
little E. glaciale, not more than two or three inches
high, from Spain, to the tall species, E. Oliveriarum,
with the handsome flowers borne on pale or deep-
blue stems and involucres; and where this colour
is well developed there is no other blue flower
that can surpass it ; but I think the colour is very
dependent on soil and weather. There are many
other pretty species, with very handsome foliage ; and
we have two British species — the Sea Holly, E. mari-
timum, common all round our coasts, with leaves that
in some cases might almost be called blue, and which
perhaps formed Sir John Falstaffs Eryngoes, for in
his day the roots were candied and much liked, but
which I do not remember to have seen grown success-
fully in gardens; while the E. campestre is easily
grown, and even may become troublesome, but it is

JULY 81

doubtfully native, though found in a few places. But
I suppose the handsomest of all the Thistle family
is the globe artichoke, Cynara scolymus, a native of
Southern Europe, grown in England for more than
three hundred years, generally in the kitchen-garden ;
but I have sometimes seen single plants grown on
lawns with wonderful effect; and I well remember
that the late Miss Marianne North had one on her
lawn at Alderley (I think it is shown in one of the
pictures in the North Gallery at Kew), which she had
planted in a conspicuous position near the house, as
one of the most decorative plants she could place
there. I grow, and like for its curious appearance, a
thistle that looks very like a dwarf globe artichoke;
this is the Carlina acanthoides, with large deep-green
leaves lying quite flat on the ground, and in the centre
without any visible stem a flower looking very like an
artichoke head cut off and dropped among the leaves ;
it has not much beauty, but is attractive from its
curious appearance. All these thistles, if I may so
class them all together, do exceedingly well in a dry
year ; the blue ones especially come of a richer and
more metallic blue, and the luxuriance of this par-
ticular tribe is interesting by helping us to under-
stand how it is that the dry desert parts of Eastern
countries abound in thorny and prickly plants to the

82 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

exclusion of many others. All travellers in the Syrian
deserts have specially noted this, and there can be no
doubt that the thorny thistly character of these plants
is a great protection to them against browsing animals,
for they mostly come into flower after the herbage is
dried up, and if not so protected would very soon be
destroyed.

The drought seems also to be very acceptable to
another plant of a very different family, the Gypsophila
paniculata. I have grown it for many years ; and there
is no plant which is so suggestive of a mist hanging
over the plant. In this respect it is even superior to
the wig-tree (Rhus cotinus), for in that the feathery,
mist-like bunches are interspersed with the foliage,
but in the gypsophila the little foliage does not show,
and the whole plant is covered and surrounded with
the mist. The plant is quite hardy, and comes from
Austria and other parts of Central Europe. I first
saw it, or first appreciated its beauty, at a flower-
show held many years ago at a meeting of the Agri-
cultural Society at Oxford. It was used in the prize
bouquets, and it gave a lightness to them beyond any
grasses; and for that purpose I have grown it ever
since. The individual flowers are very small and in-
conspicuous, but they make a mass unlike any other
plant; and though the name gypsophila points to its

JULY 83

love of chalk, it will grow anywhere. The statices, or
sea lavenders, seem also to rejoice in the drought, and
this is not to be wondered at, for though they grow in
places where the atmosphere is moist with sea-spray,
they are often found among the rocks where there is
the smallest amount of soil. There are many species,
and all handsome plants which remain in flower a long
time, and if picked before they are quite faded they
may be kept all through the winter. Most of them
are hardy, though there are some, perhaps the hand-
somest, from the Canary Islands, which can only be
kept in the greenhouse. Linnaeus took the names of
Statice and Limonium from Pliny, though I should
think it certain that Pliny's plants were in no way
related to our sea lavenders ; the older writers classed
them amongst the caryophylli, or gilliflowers, and we
still keep a remembrance of that in the name of sea
pink for the armeria or thrift, which is so closely
allied to the sea lavender that botanically it only
differs by having its flowers in a close head instead of
in a spike. The statices and armerias are found
throughout the whole of the northern hemisphere as
high north as the Arctic Circle, and there are nearly
a hundred species, of which we have five in Great
Britain.

But though the drought may be favourable to some

84 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

plants, it is very unfavourable to others. The tall
campanulas of all sorts are quite a failure; yet the
platycodons, so nearly allied to the campanulas, do
well ; and all the low-growing campanulas, many of
which are down plants, are also very bright and
full of flower. The gentians are all rather stunted
in growth ; the G. asclepiadea, which is sometimes
quite four feet high here, does not in a dry year
exceed two feet, and I am surprised that it should
suffer at all from drought, for in its native Swiss
habitats it is often found in places exposed to the
full sun and in shallow soils. I am not surprised
that the saxifrages suffer, for most of them are lovers
of wet places ; but I am surprised that the sedums
and sempervivums suffer, for they are all succulent
plants, having in themselves a store of moisture which
generally seems sufficient for all their wants, even
when growing in the barest and driest spots, with
little or no soil ; yet many of them have shown that
they feel the drought severely by curling themselves
up into small balls, and so remaining till the rains
come, when they again unfold themselves. I was also
puzzled with the bamboos. Looking on them as sun-
loving plants, I had not before fully realised how
necessary moisture is to them ; but up to the middle
of July, though they showed no signs of distress,

JULY 85

they scarcely sent up a single fresh shoot, when in
other years the shoots of the year would have reached
ten feet or more.1

The larger trees, such as oaks, elms, ashes, etc.,
are in wonderful luxuriance, and the drought seems
to have no effect upon them; but I fancy this is
owing not so much to their liking the long bright
sunshine, as to their having laid up last year a large
supply of strength, which has enabled them to enjoy
the sunshine without injury. The catalpa has flowered
much before its usual time, for I have known years
in which there was not even a leaf on the catalpa in
the first week of July. It comes from North America,
and I believe the name is the native Indian name of
the tree ; and the koelreuteria, which comes from China
and Japan, is equally hardy, and in July is covered
with the curious bunches of flowers.

On the whole, after reckoning up all the losses and
disappointments, I do not think that the gardener
has much cause to complain of a long drought. There
will be losses, of course, and so, perhaps, many gaps
in the garden, but these we must expect every year
from many causes, and the drought may teach us
some good lessons. It teaches us very forcibly how

1 It is now found that the requisites for the successful growth of
bamboos are abundance of manure and abundance of moisture.

86 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

steadily plant-life goes on in spite of all hindrances.
It is really sad to go round the garden during a long
drought, with the lawn brown, the shrubs getting
scorched, and the beds looking almost like dust-heaps.
Yet no sooner does the rain come than all is at once
changed, and we are taught that the garden was by
no means dead, but only biding its time ; it was like
a man who from illness or other cause is driven into
enforced idleness, but who, as soon as the cause is
removed, shows that the idleness was only from
temporary weakness, which ended in increased strength.
Within a very few days after the rains come to us
after a long drought the grass becomes of the freshest
green and the shrubs put out fresh leaves, herbaceous
plants begin to shoot upwards, and it is no exaggera-
tion to say that all Nature rejoices. I think none of
us are aware what a large reserve of plant-life Nature
is always keeping in the most unlikely places. We
see it in our dust-heaps and ballast-heaps, which, left
to themselves, soon get covered with vegetation ; and
I was told recently by an officer who had served at
Suakim, that the tents of the soldiers were pitched in
the barest sand of the desert, and that his tent was
pitched next to the photographer's; and in a very
few days the space between the two tents was clothed
with a rich herbage, which sprang up from the

JULY 87

water flung away by the photographer in washing his
utensils. I think this lesson of the fixed certainty
that with no real change, though with occasional short
interruptions, the order of life goes steadily on, is a
very valuable one. And it was a lesson which Henry
Vaughan, the Silurist, who was a keen observer of
Nature, and in some respects even surpassed George
Herbert in seeing good in, and drawing good lessons
from, the commonest objects in everyday life, has
brought out in his poem on 'Man,' in which he
moralised on the changeableness of man as compared
with the unchangeableness of Nature, and from which
I will quote one stanza : —

' The flowers,
Early as well as late,
Rise with the sun, and set in the same bowers ;

I would (said I) my God would give
The staidness of these things to man ; for these
To His Divine appointment ever cleave,
And no new business breaks their peace.'

That is not the Only lesson that may be learned from
the long drought, producing a short appearance of
desolation, and ending in the full beauty of fresh life
and luxuriant vegetation ; but I must not allow myself
to moralise further, or to turn my Gloucestershire
garden into a pulpit.

CHAPTER VIII

Box — White-leaved plants— Poles for climbers— Fuchsias —
Hibiscus.

THE garden record for August is very much the same
as the record for July ; but in the dry season of 1893
seeds and fruits were formed on many plants and
shrubs which generally are not produced at all, or, if
produced, come too late for ripening. Among these
unusual fruits were the curious fruits of the common
box-tree, and they are very curious, and well worth
observing. For the box belongs to the great family of
the Euphorbias or Spurges, a family which consists
of more than 2500 species, and is spread all over
the world, but which in Great Britain is confined
to nine species of spurges, two species of dog's mer-
cury (Mercurialis), and one species of box. The affinity
of the box with the spurges is not very apparent when
we compare our common box with the spurges which

AUGUST 89

are such troublesome weeds in our flower-borders, but
when the box shows its fruit the relationship is more
easily recognised.

One result of long drought, followed by much rain
is a wonderful and very rapid growth of luxuriant
foliage ; geraniums which stood quite still during the
drought become most luxuriant. There is a peculiarity
in one class of plants which is worth noting. The
drought has little or no effect on plants, whether her-
baceous or shrubby, which have white or grey leaves ;
they go on growing as if the season was normal;
indeed, they rather seem to like the drought. The
plants I mean are not what might be called albinos,
white varieties of green-foliaged plants, but they are
plants with typically white leaves, such as many of the
Achilleas, the Artemisias, many of the New Zealand
shrubs, etc. How these should be able to stand the
drought better than other plants, I cannot say ; but we
know that they are also able to stand against sea-
breezes strongly charged with salt, for many of the
seaside shrubs have white or grey foliage; and I
remember once being at Weston-super-Mare the day
after a very remarkable gale, which blew from the
Bristol Channel with great force. For many miles
inland all the hedges had their windward sides as if a
fire had passed over them, and in Weston itself, where

90 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

the sea had been driven over the gardens near the
beach, all shrubs and other plants with green leaves
were seriously injured, while all those with white or
grey foliage were quite unhurt. I do not profess to
explain this, and I have never seen it explained,1
but it is a curious fact in plant-life, which was
again brought to my memory by the different effects
produced by the drought of 1893 on plants of dif-
ferent colours.

A few years ago I thought I could add to the capa-
cities of my garden by the erection of tall poles of oak,
upon which I would train creepers of different kinds,
vines, clematis, roses, brambles, wistaria, etc., and I
am very pleased at the result. Already several of the
poles are well covered, and I have a sort of rudimen-
tary pergola ; and I have little doubt that I shall see
them all soon covered, and they will make a very
pleasant feature in the garden. But on a few I trained
some climbing annuals, and I am well pleased with
them. On one I trained fancy gourds, chiefly the
snake gourds. The foliage is most beautiful, and the
flowers being pure white are very striking ; but I do
not get many fruits, for, for some reason which I

1 The white colour of the leaves is tomentum ; and Linnaeus' rule
was, ' tomentum servat plantas a ventis ; gaudet saepius colore incano.'
— Phil. Bot., 163. viii.

AUGUST 91

cannot explain, nearly all the flowers are males, and the
few female flowers produce fruit which does not come
to perfection. On another pole I have trained Coboea
scandens, a very old favourite. As a rapid-growing
climber it has few equals, and its flowers, which are
like large bells, green at first and then turning to a
rich purple, are very ornamental, and when it reaches
the latter stage the stamens, which before were well
inside the flower, grow to a considerable length, pro-
truding far beyond the flower, and twisting themselves
in a curious way, for which it is very hard to give a
reason. But it is as a climber that the coboaa is such
an interesting plant. Darwin, in 1865, in his delight-
ful paper ' On the Movements and Habits of Climbing
Plants,' which afterwards took a new shape in his
larger book on The Movements of Plants in 1880, gave a
long description of the movements of coboea.1 He
studied it as ' an admirably constructed climber,' and
there is probably no plant from which the method by
which plants climb by their tendrils can be better
learned. Each shoot ends in a very fine branched ten-
dril which stands upright, and each branchlet ends in
one or more very delicate claws. The tendril steadily
revolves in a circle till it meets with something to
which it can attach itself by the little claws. These
i See p. 200.

92 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

claws seize upon any irregularities and fix themselves
there most firmly, and then, as soon as the attachment
is complete, the long tendril begins to contract itself
into a corkscrew, or rather a double corkscrew (for the
twists are always double and in different directions),
until in a very few days the branch, which may have
been several inches from the support, is drawn close
up to it, and secured to it so firmly that I never
knew a plant blown down by the strongest wind.
Altogether it is a very pretty lesson in plant-life,
and one that can be learned and followed with very
little trouble.

In a good season the garden is full of flowers in
August, many of which may have appeared before, but
that does not make them less welcome now. Roses,
for instance, seem not to tire in their production of
flowers ; and among the shrubs there are many that in
this month are showing a wonderful wealth of bloom,
such as the Japanese privets, the hibiscus, and the
hardy fuchsias. A few years ago it was considered
bad taste to admire a fuchsia; but I always valued
them as very bright objects in the autumn garden, and
I am told that they are again becoming fashionable.
They are all American plants, except three which are
found in New Zealand \ they belong botanically to the
same family as the evening primroses, and in the south

AUGUST 93

of England, 1 believe, they all may be grown as hardy
herbaceous plants, except, perhaps, the beautiful F.
triphylla, which is a tropical species. They are evi-
dently very fond of the neighbourhood of the sea ; on
the coasts of Devon and Cornwall they grow luxuri-
antly, and do not require cutting down in winter ; and
at Kirkwall in the Orkneys I have seen houses covered
with them from the ground to the roof, with spaces
cut out for the windows. The hardiest I find to be F.
discolor, F. macrostemma, F. Riccartoni, and F. globosa.
Of the Japanese privets I need say nothing • there are
many varieties, and they all make good flowering
shrubs for the late summer, but the Hibiscus, or Althaea,
is such an old favourite in English gardens that it
deserves a little more notice. The Hibiscus Syriacus, or
Althaea frutex, was brought to England at the beginning
of the seventeenth century, and it was not considered
hardy : ' In the winter it must be kept in a large pott
or tubbe, in the house or in a warme cellar, if you
would have them to thrive ' (Parkinson). It is, how-
ever, perfectly hardy, and forms a handsome bush, and,
where the soil suits it, there are few handsomer flower-
ing shrubs. It seems to like my soil, for my plants
are covered with handsome flowers, which remain on
the bush a long time. The prevailing colour is purple
of different shades, but the one I admire most is

94 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

a single flower of the purest white, called by the
gardeners Totus albus. The finest of the family is the
North American Hibiscus grandiflorus ; it is herbaceous,
or rather must be treated as an herbaceous plant, and
generally flowers too late in the autumn, and gets
injured by the frost, but will flower in hot years.
In its native country it is a marsh plant, but here
it seems to prefer a sunny place and ordinary garden
soil.

CHAPTEE IX

Abundance of flowers — Bedding out — Asters — Fruits and seeds
— Apparent waste of seed.

THE summer having been especially favourable to
growth, with rain at intervals in abundance, but also
with a very fair amount of bright sunshine, the result
is a September quite remarkable for the rich, fresh
green of the whole country, especially of the gardens,
and for an abundance of vigorous plant-life. We have
lost or put aside the old English word 'foison,' which
even in Shakespeare's time was passing away, and it
would be useless affectation to attempt to revive it;
yet we really have no word which exactly expresses
the same idea — the idea of luxuriant growth in tree
and herb and flower, and restricted to vegetable
growth, almost the same as the Latin uber, though not
exactly, for uber is sometimes applied to other kinds of
plenty; but Shakespeare's 'Earth's increase, foison

96 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

plenty,' would well describe the appearance of our
fields and gardens in this year's September.

There is as yet no lack of flowers, and of many
kinds. The summer ' bedders ' are at their best ; and
to those who wish for large masses of colour in August
and September, nothing is so useful or so effective
as these summer 'bedders.' To me a 'bedded-out'
garden gives little pleasure, and I see little beauty in
' carpet beds ' and ' pincushion borders,' but the flowers
which compose these beds and borders have each their
charm and beauty, and we cannot do without them. I
would not willingly be without the sweet scent of the
heliotropes ; and I use largely geraniums, calceolarias,
and begonias, but I use them as single plants to fill up
many gaps, and to brighten up many an odd corner,
and for such purposes they are most useful, and do what
I ask of them most effectually. But there are plenty of
fine flowers besides jthe 'bedders.' The autumn roses
have been very abundant and beautiful; some more
beautiful than in their midsummer bloom. The grand
old rose Souvenir de Malmaison is never so beautiful in
summer as in autumn, so that it is quite worth while
to sacrifice the summer blooms, and let it bloom in
autumn only. Then there are the beautiful asters, — not
the gay French asters, which I cannot admire, though
their colours are sometimes very beautiful, but they

SEPTEMBER 97

are too stiff and formal, only a little better than
zinnias, which I think quite ugly flowers; but by
beautiful asters I mean the Michaelmas daisies, the
glory of the autumnal garden, and very delightful for
their attractiveness to butterflies. A large plant of
the rich blue Aster amellus, covered with peacock
butterflies, is a common sight enough, but it is a sight
to be thankful for. And of all autumn flowers there is
none more beautiful than the white Japanese anemone,
which increases wonderfully with me, but of which one
cannot have too much ; for indeed I think there is no
more beautiful hardy flower, and none more useful, as
it lasts a long time in flower, and, when cut, will retain
its beauty in water almost longer than any other.
And among flowering shrubs, besides the roses, there is
the beautiful Abelia Chinensis from China, now a mass
of blossom from top to bottom, many varieties of the
Japanese privet, the Althceas or Hibiscus in many
colours, and some of the shrubby spiraeas.

But I must leave, the flowers because I wish to speak
more particularly of what is to me a great interest in
September, and that is the fruits and seeds of the
garden. By fruits I do not so much mean the edible
fruits — apples, pears, peaches, etc. — but I mean what
botanists call fruits, i.e. the vessels containing the
seeds of any plant and the seeds themselves. In the

98 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

whole range of botanical science I know of no sub-
ject which is so fascinating and so deeply interesting
as the study of seeds, technically, I believe, called
carpology; and at no time of the year can it be so
pleasantly followed up as in the month of September,
for the garden is full now of seed-vessels of all sorts,
many of them highly ornamental, and all more or less
full of interest. I pass by the rowans and the haw-
thorns, though they are now in great beauty, but I
class them more among the wild trees of the hedge-
rows. In the garden the most ornamental tree is
the large-leaved spindle-tree (Euonymus latifolius) when
covered with its brilliant scarlet fruit. Our own wild
spindle-tree is a very pretty tree in fruit, but the fruit
is small and dull in colour compared with the large-
leaved species. I wonder this tree is not more
common. Though a native of the south of Europe, it
is quite hardy, and was known and apparently grown
by Gerard and Parkinson, but it is very seldom seen.
The scarlet fruit opens in four parts, and shows the
orange-scarlet seeds inside. When thus open it bears
a very close resemblance to the biretta, and it has thus
obtained its French name of bonnet de prttre, its
Spanish name of lonete de clerigo, and its Portuguese
name of Urette de clerigo. There is a variety with
white seeds which is worth growing, but not so hand-

SEPTEMBER 99

some as the red-fruited species. Then there are the
rose hips, and among the many species of roses (there
are about forty species, with many intermediate varie-
ties) there is as much difference in the hips as in the
flower and foliage ; indeed, there is more, for there are
many species which at first sight are very similar in
flower and leaf, but are totally dissimilar in the hip.
I know of no rose that is not beautiful as seen in full
fruit; but there are three or four that stand out as
specially to be noted. The Japanese roses (B. rugosa)
are perhaps the most admired when in fruit, but the
apple rose, which is only a large-fruited variety of the
English Rosa villosa, is as beautiful. The hips of the
Rosa grandiflora, which is apparently the Siberian form
of our Burnet rose or Scotch briar, are of the deepest
black ; while the hips of the Indian R. microphylla are
as large as those of the Japanese rose, but quite dis-
tinct. Here this rose grows well, and is beautiful in
flower and foliage, but it will not ripen its fruit;
whereas at Kew it produces abundance of fruit as large
as small apples, and very sweet scented. But to enter
into the endless variety of the shapes and colours of
the seed-vessels of different plants would require a
volume. I merely mention these to show that they
are in many cases as pleasant to the eye of the casual
observer as they are interesting subjects of thought to

100 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

those who desire to look deeper into the mysteries of
nature. That they are deeply interesting to many is
quite certain, and their chief interest lies in their
mystery, and so in our real ignorance about them. As
a seed lies in our hand, or under our microscope, we
may, perhaps, see something of its shape and colour,
but its history is too marvellous for us fully to read,
for it has a long history of the past, and as long a his-
tory for the future. As to the history of the past, the
old idea that plants were created in order that fruits
and other products useful and pleasant to man might
be brought into existence, and for those purposes only,
has long been exploded ; and we now believe that the
whole life of a plant is directed to the one object of
forming seed for the continuance of the life of the
plant. Not for the sake of the beautiful flowers has
the plant gone through its life : the beautiful flowers
themselves were only one step onward in the forma-
tion of the seed. To form that little seed the plant
lay dormant through the cold of winter, and in due
time sprang up from its winter's sleep ; for the sake of
that only stem and leaves were formed, and became
the conduits of pure air and moisture, and carried the
warmth of the sun and the refreshing rain to the root
and sap which were gradually building up the wonder-
ful architecture of the flower ; for the sake of the seed

SEPTEMBER 101

only was the flower formed with calyx, corolla, pistil,
stamens, and ovary, with colours and lines and scents
to attract insects that would be friendly helps, or it
may be with an equally subtle arrangement to ward off
others that would be hurtful. That is something of
the past history of the seed, but it has also a future
history. That small object contains within itself a
something which will develop into root, stem, leaves,
flower, and seed, which will last for less than one
year, perhaps as an annual, or for hundreds of years in
a forest tree, according to the eternal law fixed upon
1 every herb bearing seed which is upon the face of all
the earth, and every tree in which is the fruit of a tree
yielding seed.'

But though such care has been taken to produce and
protect the seed, the apparent waste of seed is enor-
mous and quite inexplicable. I mean that the number
of living plants produced from every good seed bears
no proportion to the amount of seed formed and
ripened. In my own garden, for instance, there must
be millions of seeds formed, and for the most part
ripened every year; and yet, with the exception of
such things as groundsel, thistle, and other garden
weeds, which seem to have an unbounded power of
germination, it is very unusual to find any quantity of
seedlings. It is the same with our common forest

102 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

trees. Our common elm does not form seed ; but what
becomes of the thousands of seeds dropped from our
oaks, ashes, limes, chestnuts, etc. ? Here and there we
may find a solitary seedling, but that is all. Many are
browsed away by sheep and cattle, and many are eaten
by birds ; but those are not all destroyed, for in many
cases seeds germinate more readily after passing
through the birds, but by far the greater number
seem to be wasted. Still, I feel sure they are not
really wasted, and there are curious instances how
they will bide their time upon or under the ground till
the fitting opportunity for their germination arrives.
This has been often shown by the rapid appearance of
young vegetation after forest fires, and there is a well-
known experiment of Darwin's showing how full of
latent life the earth is, which has been often quoted,
but is worth repetition : —

1 1 took in February three tablespoonfuls of mud from three
different points, beneath water on the edge of a little pond ;
this mud when dry weighed only 6 j oz. I kept it covered
in my study for six months, pulling up and counting each
plant as it grew ; the plants were of many kinds, and were
altogether 537 in number, and yet the viscid mud was all
contained in a breakfast cup.' — Origin of Species, 386.

There is one very curious point in seed-life which
always seems to me a special puzzle. Plants seem to

SEPTEMBER 103

know (if I may say so) when they are going to die,
and then to be able to put forth more vigorous means
for their reproduction. All gardeners know some in-
stances of this in some form or other, and in my own
garden it has been brought before me this year in a
very marked manner. For many years I have grown
a pretty little sea lavender (Statice Cosyrensis) from
Cosyra, a small island between Italy and Africa, now
called Pantellaria. Though a free bloomer, I never
knew it to produce a seedling or to form seed. Last
year it showed signs of decay from old age, and it
entirely disappeared in the winter, but this spring I
found a nourishing young seedling about a foot from
the parent plant, and since that I have found two or
three more still farther away.

But I must come to a stop. I have only touched
the fringe of the subject, but from the little I have
said I hope my readers may learn that there is much
beauty left in their gardens even when the flowers are
faded. They will find the subject very puzzling and
very mysterious, but also very full of interest, and not
the less so because it will show how with all our
knowledge of plants we still have much to learn, and
indeed are very ignorant. It may interest any who
take up the subject to note how often in the New
Testament the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven are

104 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

compared to the mysteries of seed-life, and how the
Great Teacher Himself told us of man's ignorance on
such a common everyday thing as the growth of a
seed. 'Si homo jaciat semen in terrain, et dormiat
et exsurgat nocte et die, et semen germinet et incres-
cat, dum nescit ille.'

CHAPTER X

flDctobet

Skeleton leaves — Cotoneaster — Paeonies — Fuchsias —
Helianthus — Asters — Ivy.

THE modern description of October is ' chill October '
or * dull October ' ; the older description of the month
was very different. To our forefathers October
came

' Full of merry glee,

For yet his noule was totty of the must
Which he was treading in the wine vat's sea,
And of the joyous yale whose gentle gust
Made him so f rollick and so full of lust.' — SPENSER.

To them it was the month which put the crown on the
labours of the year, and they rejoiced in it accordingly.
But to us who can no longer rejoice in a vintage, but
may well be content with our harvest and with our
hop-gathering, which is almost more beautiful than a
vintage, October has its charms. It may have its cold
and even frosty nights, which work sad havoc in the

105

106 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

gardens, and it may have its cold, cheerless, and dull
days ; but it is not always so, and when we do get a
bright, sunny October it is a most cheerful and plea-
sant time, and especially so, as I think, in the gardens.
Certainly a bright English October is full of pleasant
sights in the garden. I spoke in my last chapter of
the beauty and interest of the fruits and seed-vessels,
which can be studied now better than at any other
time, but I left so much unsaid that I must return to
the same subject again. I am fond of a plant which is
very hardy and, in some places, very common, but is
almost unknown to many gardeners. This is the Phy-
salis alkekengi, or winter cherry, of no great beauty in
flower, but very handsome in fruit, and having two
curious stages in its fruit, both of which have their
separate beauty. The rather dull white flower is fol-
lowed by what looks a handsome scarlet fruit. This,
however, is only the remains of the calyx, but is more
like a bladder than a calyx. If opened, a green fruit
will be found inside, which is sometimes called the
Cape gooseberry, and eaten ; but the Cape gooseberry
(Physalis edulis) is a pleasant and wholesome fruit, and
may be easily grown in a cool greenhouse ; whereas
the winter cherry has a bad reputation, but I believe it
to be quite harmless, though it comes of a suspicious
family, the Solanacece. As the winter comes on the

OCTOBER 107

fruit enters on the second stage, and it is in this stage
that I consider it most beautiful. The scarlet covering
gradually disappears, and in its place is a sort of a
cage of exquisite texture, from the top of the inside of
which there drops a scarlet fruit of the size and colour
of a cherry. The whole outside covering has become
skeletonised and white, and how this is done naturally
is a puzzle which I have never seen satisfactorily
explained. We can easily skeletonise leaves and fruits
artificially, but in the alkekengi this is done slowly, and
apparently by the action of the atmosphere on the
thin, pulpy portion of the fruit. Many leaves are
skeletonised in the same way after falling from the
trees, especially poplar leaves and the butcher-brooms,
but I can only call to mind two other plants in which
this skeletonising seems to be a regular part of the life
of the plant. The little fiubus austmlis is the most
southern bramble known, coming from New Zealand,
and also, I believe, from the Falkland Islands; and
one of its varieties has only skeleton leaves — i.e. it has
only the midribs of the leaves, but these are set with
small white thorns, which give the whole plant almost
a jewelled appearance. It is easily grown, and is fairly
hardy. But by far the most beautiful of these natur-
ally skeletonised plants is the lace leaf of Madagascar
(Ouviranda fenestralis), the leaves of which (to quote the

108 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

botanical description in the Bot. Mag.) ' are constituted
by a series of the most beautiful network, without
parenchyma, reduced, in short, to its vascular reticulated
tissue.' In more simple language, the long leaves are
lovely specimens of natural lacework, but, of course, it
is not hardy ; it requires a tank in a hothouse, and if I
had a hothouse I would certainly grow this. But the
alkekengi is perfectly hardy, and on a small scale is as
beautiful as the lace plant. It grows wild in many
parts of Europe, but not in Great Britain. Its name
seems to point to Arabia as another native habitat, and
I suppose it grows in Japan, for it is described and
beautifully figured in the wonderful Japanese book of
botany, the So moku. It may, then, be grown any-
where ; and I once saw a large bed of it in a vicarage
garden in Berkshire, where it was grown for Christmas
decorations j and perhaps this is the best way of grow-
ing it, in a bed by itself, for if grown with other
flowers it is apt to become troublesome, ' the roots be
long, not unlike the roots of Couch-grasse, ramping
and creeping within the upper crust of the earth farre
abroad, whereby it encreaseth greatly ' (Gerard).

The physalis has detained me too long ; at a much
shorter length I must describe a few other fruiting
shrubs which are now making bright spots in the
garden. The low-growing Cotoneaster horizontals from

OCTOBER 109

the Himalayas is a surprise to all who see it. It lies
flat upon the ground, and the smaller branches radiate
from both sides of the main branches with such won-
derful regularity that they almost resemble the skele-
ton of a flatfish. It is not completely evergreen, but
the young leaves appear very early in spring, and the
whole plant is then covered with pretty red buds,
which open into small white flowers, followed by a pro-
fusion of bright scarlet berries, which remain for a long
time, and are a great ornament. At present the plant
is rather scarce, but as it can be raised easily both
from seeds and cuttings it will probably soon become
common; and having grown it for some years I can
strongly recommend it as one of the best shrubs I
know for the low parts of a rockwork, or any other
place well beneath the eye.

Then there are the barberries. Our common bar-
berry is now considered a native of England, yet
Turner, a good observer, writing in 1548, said of it :
* Barberries growe wylde in the hedges and woddes in
Germany, but in Englande only in gardines'; and,
though the name has a very English sound, it is really
a corruption from the Arabic name. It once had an
evil reputation as producing rust in wheat, but that
idea is now exploded, and it may be grown without
fear anywhere. Where it grows well its scarlet fruit

110 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

makes a very pretty object in autumn ; but it is capri-
cious, and will not fruit everywhere ; it does not fruit
here well. The most beautiful variety is that in which
the fruits have no seed inside (B. asperma), the fruits
being both larger and more brilliant in colour than the
more common sort. There are many other foreign
species (about fifty in all), chiefly from China and the
Himalayas, and a few are found in America. But of
all the Berberids there is none, I think, to compare
with Nandina domestica. As a decorative shrub it is
very highly valued in China and Japan, and is there
called the sacred bamboo, but, though it has been
grown in England for nearly a hundred years, and is
quite hardy, it is very seldom seen. Its great beauty
is in the foliage, the leaves being very various both in
colour and shape, and very graceful; the flowers are
pretty and remain long upon the bush, and are fol-
lowed by curious and handsome fruit, which, however,
is seldom produced in England. It can be trained to a
wall, or grown as a bush, and however grown is always
attractive.

Among the fruits of October I must not omit the
fruit of the pseony (P. corallina). I grow many
pseonies, but I do not know of any that produce the
handsome seed-vessels that this so-called British paeony
produces. It is certainly not a British plant, and is

OCTOBER 111

now excluded from the British flora, but it has been
naturalised for many years in the Steep Holmes in the
British Channel; and its beauty consists in the two
sorts of seeds, red and black, which are respectively
the fertile and unfertile seeds : —

' The round black shining seeds, which are the true seed,
being full and good, and many red or crimson grains which
are lanck and idle, intermixed among the black, as if they
were good seed, whereby it maketh a very pretty show.' —
PARKINSON.

With a simple mention of the fruits of the thorn
apple, both the common white (Datura Stramonium)
and the purple (D. Tatula), not so handsome in flower,
but more handsome in fruit, and both very old inhabi-
tants of English gardens, I will leave the fruits and
seeds of October, to say something about the flowers.

The swallows have quite left us, and we have had
some sharp frosts, which have cleared away some of
the tender summer flowers (begonias, heliotropes,
dahlias, etc.), and,, which I much more regret, have
stripped the leaves from many of the trees while they
were still green, and so have robbed us of much of
our best autumnal-tinted foliage. The mulberry, the
catalpa, the salisburia, and many others, are in their
bare winter form, and the brightness of the St. Luke's
summer was sadly marred. Still we have plenty of

112 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

flowers left. I am surprised at a fine bunch of Ahtrae-
meria psittacina, or pulchella, which has been in full
flower for some weeks, and has been as yet uninjured
by frosts. It is true that I have it in a very sheltered
corner, but it is a Brazilian plant, and though I have
grown it for many years in the same place I have not
before noted it as a good flowering plant for the late
autumn. The Pampas grasses are very late this year,
and I suppose that arises from their starting into growth
very late in the cold spring. The male Pampas grass
will not flower at all this year, and the female was
too late to be of use in harvest decorations ; but its
place was well filled by the bamboos, which have been
in quite luxuriant growth this year. The hardy fuchsias,
though rather late, have been very full of blossom, and
they are shrubs which I value for their rich autumn
blooming. I grow most of the hardy kinds, and have
done so for many years, though I have been often told
by friends who call themselves aesthetic that they have
no beauty ; I am therefore rather amused to see how
they are again becoming fashionable. I have grown
in the open ground in summer the beautiful new F.
triphylla, and it has been a great success. I call it
new because it was introduced into England less than
ten years ago, yet it is really the oldest fuchsia
known, having been discovered more than a hundred

OCTOBER 113

and fifty years ago, and being the plant on which the
genus was founded. As it comes from the West Indies
it will almost certainly not be hardy, but it grows
readily from cuttings, and will make a lovely plant for
the summer borders, as its beautiful waxy orange-
scarlet flowers cannot easily be surpassed. And a
most beautiful shrub for the late autumn is Caryopteris
mastacanihus. It is a shrub about five feet high, now
covered with a profusion of pale blue flowers. It is a
native of Canton, and is considered to be rather ten-
der ; but in this part of England it appears to be quite
hardy, and the leaves have a delicate and to me a plea-
sant scent. In its native country it is used in the
manufacture of mastic, but I believe it does not enter
into the mastic used in England, which is entirely
produced from the European Pistacia. The perennial
sunflowers have been, and still are, very good ; and
among them I like especially the Helianthus giganteus, a
plant that in good soil will reach ten feet in height,
and produce for many weeks an abundance of flowers
of the purest yellow. As a North American plant it is
very hardy, and is now becoming common. It seems
to be very popular for the gardens of railway stations,
in several of which I have seen it in great abundance.
I also like the H. orgyalis from the Kocky Mountains,
which is as tall as the other, and though the flowers

114 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

are not so handsome, the habit of the plant is very
graceful, the tall stems being clothed with long narrow
leaves (sometimes sixteen inches long) which hang
down, and give the plant almost a palm-like appear-
ance. But the best flowers of October are still the
Michaelmas daisies. Some have passed away, but
those that remain are among the best, such as Aster
turbinellus, A. wrdifolius, and A. multiflorus. But the
bravest show is made by the two forms, blue and rose,
of the A. Novae Angliae, which no weather seems to
hurt, and which may be expected to keep in beauty
almost till the middle of November, perhaps later.
With me they are the latest of the asters, and so are
specially prized, for I have never succeeded well with
Aster grandiflontSj which I have sometimes seen in
flower at Christmas, but which, coming from the
Southern United States, is not so hardy as the others.

Passing a few steps outside the garden I come upon
a mass of flowers which deserve a passing notice, and
which shall be the last October flower that I will name.
On the top of an old wall there is a thick covering of
old ivy now laden with flowers. It is a good instance
of the habit of the ivy not to flower as long as it is
climbing, but as soon as it has reached its possible
limit it breaks out into flower. I need say nothing to
recommend the ivy in any form : it is a favourite with

OCTOBER 115

all, except with the late Professor Freeman, who dis-
liked it for its interference with his views of ancient
buildings, and had no better names for it than ' that
baleful plant,' 'that insidious weed,' etc. Those who
wish to know all about it should read Shirley Hib-
berd's pretty monograph on it; but I will resist the
temptation to say more, for my chapter has already
run to its full length. I must note, however, that we
are still picking good roses, — the last survivors, but
very sweet, and very acceptable.

CHAPTER XI

j^ofcember

Outside gardens — Autumnal tints — Anatomy of trees-
Removal of plants — Changes in the garden — Growth of
plants in November.

WHEN Horace Walpole described the great changes
in gardening which Kent had effected, he summed up
his work in a happy phrase, which has almost become
proverbial : ' He leaped the fence, and saw that all
nature was a garden.' The discovery led the way to
the modern landscape gardening, and to the destruc-
tion of the old English gardens, but I do not know
enough of Kent to say whether this idea of the un-
bounded extent of gardens was to him any real plea-
sure. But I have never considered that my garden
ended at the garden fence ; I have many outside
gardens in the woods and downs, the fields and hedge-
rows, and the rivers, and many also in my neighbours'
gardens, in all of which I can enjoy, almost as if they
were my own, many plants which it may be well to

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NOVEMBER 117

keep out of the garden proper, or which grow better
elsewhere than with me. Thus, I would not be
altogether without the wild bramble and the dog-rose,
but I can see them better in the hedgerows; the
creeping Jenny (now so popular in the hanging baskets
and window-boxes of town gardens) grows abundantly
for me in a near meadow ; the grand white and yellow
dead nettles would be a real ornament to my garden,
but those, too, I prefer to keep in the hedgerows;
the pretty quinsywort (Asperula cynanchica) will not
grow in my garden, but I can always see it on
the downs; nor can I keep for long the beautiful
large butterfly orchis or the bee orchis, but I can at
any time see them by walking to a wood not two
miles away ; while in another wood I can see the rare
little Gagea lutea, and the curious parasitical toothwort
(Lathrea squamaria) ; and, having no place for aquatics,
I cannot grow the flowering rush or the water-lilies,
but I am content to enjoy them in the river which
bounds the parish. In the same way, I consider that
I grow in my neighbours' gardens many plants that I
cannot grow in my own. My low elevation forbids
the growth of the high Alpines, and even of such
plants as the Onosmas, but they grow well in a
neighbour's garden at a slightly higher elevation. I
go to another neighbour's garden every spring to

118 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

admire a grand display of Crown Imperials; and in
many cottage gardens I admire (I hope without undue
envy) the spikes of white lilies, which with me are
very loth to flower at all

But at no other time of the year is the value of
these outside gardens more brought home to me than
in the late autumn, in the end of October and the
beginning of November. The elm is the common tree
of this district, and as I look round my garden I am
forced to acknowledge that the points of interest and
beauty have been much diminished ; but when I look
at its surroundings and see the hillsides and hedge-
rows, which form a part of my garden view, a rich
mass of golden foliage, I then see that the interest and
beauty have only been changed from one part of the
garden to another. I lately saw, in an American
paper, an account of the beauty of the American
autumn, in which this view of the extension of the
garden is very pleasantly put :—

'At this time of year the garden seems to me the least
interesting one of the year, . . . but around us is the
glamour of the glorious American autumn, tinging the fields
and ripening leaves with a wealth of colours overpowering the
brightest garden. Seen under a declining sun at this season,
our Jersey meadows show broad, harmonious, and exquisite
shadings of colour, which no expert in bedding-out can hope

NOVEMBER 119

to rival. When one has perceptions open to these impressions,
the mere enclosed garden is at this season rather common-
place.5

Though I welcome these autumnal beauties, and
claim them as parts of my garden, though outside the
garden fence, I do not intend in this paper to speak
of the beauties of autumnal foliage. But I must
mention a North American sumach, which promises
to be one of the most beautiful of our autumnal
shrubs. This is the Ehus cotinoides, a native of
Alabama, in the Southern United States, and ap-
parently very rare there. It seems to be perfectly
hardy, is deciduous, and forms a low bush. In the
spring the leaves are a delicate rose colour, but early
in autumn they become an intense crimson, richer
than any Japanese maple, and remain on the bush in
all their brilliancy for a long time. I have not seen
the flowers, but they are small and inconspicuous, and
I believe it has not yet flowered in England.

There is plenty of work in the garden in November,
and in its way very interesting, the more so because
it is unlike the work of any other month. We may
lament the loss of leaves on the trees, and the change
in them from thick masses of green to bare skeletons.
But these skeletons have a beauty of their own, and
to the botanist and student of tree-life they are a

120 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

very pleasant study ; indeed, no one can venture on
a record of the life of a tree or shrub who does not
as much study its anatomy in the winter as he does
the leaves, flowers, and fruits in the summer. The
anatomy of trees is a constant marvel, and to study
it thoroughly will teach many unexpected lessons :
to mark the different angles and thicknesses of
the branches, varying in every tree according to the
necessities of each family and each species, and vary-
ing in trees of the same species according to their
position as regards light and soil and prevailing winds,
will require many a winter's study. And in Novem-
ber, when the trees are bare of leaves, is the time for
that pruning of trees which is one of the pleasantest
labours of the garden, and one of the most healthy ;
but it is an art that is not soon learned, and in
no branch of gardening does experience and steady
observation of the wants and growth of trees produce
better results. A tree that has been well looked after
from its infancy will show a vigour both in girth and
height over neglected trees that will be a surprise to
many, and a good object-lesson to those who think
that everything may be left to nature.

Another very pleasant November work is the carry-
ing out alterations in the garden, including the re-
moval of all sorts of plants. I am in the habit during

NOVEMBER 121

the summer of making notes of work to be done in
the winter, such as the removal of plants which are
getting too crowded, or which are evidently not happy
in their present position, or the alteration of paths
and beds made necessary by the growth of trees, or
it may be merely by the desire for change; and all
such work is best done in November. In some gardens
there is a great deal of work done in the separation of
plants, and I know of many who think that frequent
separation is absolutely necessary to the well-being of
plants. It may be so in some soils, especially in heavy
clay soils, but I am glad that it is not necessary for
me. I find it better to leave plants alone as much as
possible; there are some which from time to time I
may be obliged to divide, but I do it unwillingly, for
I find, in many cases, that it takes them more than a
year to recover from the operation. This is especially
the case with roses, lilies, and paeonies, but I believe
this is entirely a question of soil, and what is a law
for my garden is no law for others. In my own
garden I am not afraid of moving plants at almost
any time of the year, if I see the necessity for it ; but
to move plants in the height of summer requires extra
care in planting, and much watching after planting;
in November the work is much easier. There are few
gardening works in which a gardener's skill, or want

122 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

of skill, are more shown than in removing plants from
one place to another, especially shrubs ; and in no
branch are there so many disappointments when the
work is done by careless or unskilful hands. All that
such trees or shrubs ask for is that they should be
kept out of the ground as short a time as possible,
and be placed in their new home very firmly ; and, to
get this firmness, a few heavy stones placed near the
stem are a good help, they prevent the plant being
much swayed by the wind, and they prevent the
evaporation of moisture and the loss of warmth by
radiation.

But it is not my object to give rules for gardening,
I wish rather to record the work done in the month,
so I must give a few lines to another garden work for
which the month of November is very suitable. Every
garden is subject to many changes ; in each year trees
and bushes grow, and call for more room ; and then
paths must be altered, and old beds, perhaps, destroyed,
and new ones made. And I have always noticed that
the more a man loves his garden, the more he delights
in constantly changing the arrangements, which were,
perhaps, good for a time, but which, as time goes on,
must give way to others ; and the most uninteresting
garden is one that has been made on a fixed plan,
rigidly adhered to through succeeding years, till what

NOVEMBER 123

may have been good and beautiful at the beginning
becomes dull, uninteresting, and ugly. Personally, I
have little faith in fixed plans, perhaps because I have
never had any plan in my own garden ; such as it is, it
has grown into its present shape and plan, and has
almost formed itself; and I may say with certainty
that though I have many trees, shrubs, and other plants
which have been in their present places for many
years — many over seventy years — yet there is not a
single path or flower-bed that is the same now as it was
thirty or even twenty years ago. And this adds much
to the pleasure of a garden; this power of altering
to suit the wants of growing trees and shrubs, or it
may be only to suit one's own peculiar taste or fancy,
gives a pleasant feeling of ownership which nothing
else will give.

The month of November, then, is not all dull and
dreary : there is no blaze of flowers, but there is much
room for pleasant work, and, to those who know where
to look for it, there is much interesting plant-life to
observe. In a garden there is no such thing as absolute
rest, though we talk as if there was.

' Each month is various to present
The world with some development.'

— The, Two Voices.

And in November plant-life is really very active. It

124 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

always seems to me a wonderful thing that in this
month, when we are doing all we can to protect our
favourites from the bitter frosts which we know will
be with us shortly, nature is clothing many plants
with young fresh leaves which must be, as we suppose,
more or less tender. This is most seen in many of the
herbaceous plants, which already have as many radical
leaves as they ever will have, but it is seen also in
many shrubs; and it is to me very remarkable that
some tender shrubs put out their young leaves, while
the hardier ones show no such signs of returning life.
For instance, the beautiful fuchsia gooseberry (Ribes
speciosum), from California and Mexico, is now showing
its young green leaves, while our own hardy gooseberry
shows none. There are many such instances, and I
suppose in the Eibes, and probably in all the others,
this early leafing is a reminiscence of the habits of the
plants in their native countries. Then the daffodils are
pushing their way through the ground ; the buds of the
Christmas roses are well formed ; the catkins of the hazel
are fairly abundant, and those of the Garrya are
lengthening every day ; while it is easy to find prim-
roses in flower in many places, but I always suppose
those to be the late flowering or double-flowering
specimens of the present year, and not the premature
flowers of next spring — however, they are very welcome.

NOVEMBER 125

' The primrose yet is dear,
The primrose of the later year,
As not unlike to that of spring.'

— In Memoriam.

In the general absence of flowers in November, there
is a special value in two shrubs, which in favourable soils
are now in full flower. These are the laurustinus and
the dwarf gorse. The laurustinus lives with me, but
never flowers well ; perhaps it does not like the abun-
dance of lime in the soil, yet I know it in great beauty
growing on pure oolite ; but nowhere do I see it more
flourishing or more covered with flowers than in one of
my outside gardens on the red sandstone. It is nearly
related to our guelder-rose and the wayfaring tree,
but is not a British plant, though a very old favourite
in English gardens. It comes chiefly from Southern
Europe, but is quite hardy, except in the severest
winters, when it gets cut down, but not killed; but
when frosted the smell is most offensive and far-reach-
ing. There is a variety with shiny leaves and large
flowers (V. lucidum\ which I have seen in the Isle of
Wight and Devonshire, like large bushes of Kalmia,
but it is rather tender. The dwarf gorse, Ulex nanus,
seems also to like the sandstone formation. It is
closely allied to the common gorse, but lies prostrate
on the ground, and flowers in the autumn. It would

126 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

be a good plant for low rockeries, but it might be
troublesome, for I notice on our railway banks and
cuttings that it spreads rapidly ; yet where it can be
watched it might be grown for its bright golden flowers,
which would be welcome at any time, but are doubly
welcome in November. It is not a very rare plant, but
it is very local. I have not found it in many places,
but I found it abundantly in the New Forest, and it
grows on Wimbledon Common, but not abundantly.

Certainly the absence of sun, and the dull skies, do
make November a dull and gloomy month ; and I know
that to many, and some of them lovers of gardens, the
garden in November is a piteous object, and so sadden-
ing that they feel obliged to leave it for the seaside.
I am thankful to say that to me it is not so ; indeed,
the seaside in November would be far more dispiriting
to me than my own garden, with its bare trees and
falling leaves, for I have no dislike to bare trees and
falling leaves in their proper seasons. And it is curious
to note how differently the same sights and smells of the
late autumn affect different people. Tennyson, with all
his love of a garden, records his feelings of the season—

4 The air is damp and hushed and close,
As a sick man's room when he taketh repose

An hour before death —
My very heart faints and my whole soul grieves

NOVEMBER 127

At the moist rich smell of the rotting leaves,

And the breath

Of the fading edges of box beneath,
And the year's last rose.'

On the other hand, Mr. Bright, almost parodying this,
says * the air is soft and warm and still . . . there is
an aromatic fragrance everywhere from the withering
leaves and from the lingering flowers.' He is forced,
however, to add, 'but there is sadness with it all,' and
it is the only note of sadness in the Year in a Lancashire
Garden. To a great extent I must agree with him.
November, especially the latter part of it, is not a
bright month in the garden, in some respects it is more
gloomy even than December ; but with all its dulness
and gloominess I hold that it has an interest and even
a beauty of its own. And I am glad to say that I am
not alone in my appreciation of the garden in Novem-
ber, for among the ornaments of the garden I now
reckon the starlings. They have been away for some
months, but are now coming back to us. What they
find on the lawn I do not exactly know, but they are
very busy, and apparently very happy, and I admire
them much, and gladly welcome them.

CHAPTER XII

Bowles's Flora— Conifers — Variegated shrubs — Ferns —
Laumstinus — Looking forward— Conclusion.

WHAT can any one say of the garden in December 1
Can any one honestly say that a garden in December
is pleasant, or can give pleasant thoughts 1 The general
verdict of December would be given in Tennyson's
words : —

' Earthward he boweth the heavy stalks

Of the mouldering flowers ;
Heavily hangs the broad sunflower

Over its grave i' the earth so chilly ;
Heavily hangs the hollyhock,

Heavily hangs the tiger-lily.'

And, as Tennyson is speaking of 'the year's last
hours,' he evidently was not in the habit of making
things neat in the garden by cutting down the old
flower-stems. If that was his habit I am much in-
clined to agree with him; I never think that the

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.DECEMBER 129

prospect of the garden in December is much better by
making all the flower-beds too tidy. I feel sure that
the dead flower-stems (the 'Kecksies' of Shakespeare
and the old writers, and the word still lingers in a few
parts) must be some protection to the plants; and,
when the hoar-frosts come, these dead stems, especially
where the dead flower-heads remain, put on a won-
derful beauty, as any one may see who will walk by
an old hedgerow in a hoar-frost and look at the rank
herbage, particularly where there is any abundance of
the large umbelliferous plants.

But even in December the garden is not altogether
without flowers, and, as wise Ulysses says, 'Though
much is taken, much abides.' About a hundred years
ago a pretty book was published called Bowles's Flora ;
or, a Curious Collection of the most Beautiful Flowers as they
appear in their Ch'eatest Perfection each Month of the Year.
There are twelve plates, one for each month; and
in each is a vase filled with the flowers of the month.
They are well drawn and engraved, and coloured by
hand ; and it was a very popular book, for in old houses
I have often seen the set of plates framed and glazed.
The flowers have all their English names, and it is easy
to see that our grandfathers could in each month show
collections of flowers which were as beautiful as those
we have now, though perhaps not so varied. In the

I

130 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

plate for December the vase holds thirty-six different
flowers. Of these, a few are greenhouse flowers, and
some are clearly out of season, though in some seasons
they may be gathered in December ; but the list of the
hardy flowers is sufficiently interesting to be worth
copying. They are auricula, pansies, white corn
marigold, strawberry daisy (a very double sort),
laurustinus, red spring cyclamen (C. coum\ Christmas
flower (Relleborus niger), winter white primrose, genti-
anella, yellow corn marigold, valerian, winter double
crowfoot, St. Peter's shrub (a white-flowered shrub
which I cannot identify), mountain avens, single
anemone, sage and rosemary, winter flowering pear (I
suppose the Gloucester pear, which, like the Glaston-
bury thorn, often flowers in December), Spanish
Virgin's bower (evidently from the leaf Clematis cir-
rhosa, but the artist had not seen the flower, and
imagined it incorrectly), Glastonbury thorn, and buds
of monthly rose. This is really a goodly list, and no
doubt they might all be gathered in December, but not
all at the same time, and most of them I could gather
here, but not all. We had our first snow on December
4th, and the day before I got my first true Christmas
rose, by which I mean to exclude the fine Helleborus
altifolius, which can more often be gathered in
October than December. I never saw the white corn

DECEMBER 131

marigold, and I carefully keep out of my garden the
corn marigold, for it is a dreadful weed, and if it were
to escape out of my garden into the cornfields the
farmers would have good reason to condemn my garden
as a public nuisance. But I have been much astonished
to see the common marigold holding its beauty so late ;
not only in my own garden, but in many neighbouring
gardens it has been in quite its summer brightness till
past the middle of December. I do not think this is
out of the common, but it had certainly escaped my
notice in former years. A shrub that can show in
December a mass of blossoms as golden as the marigold
is the yellow Chinese jasmine (/. nudiflorum), certainly
a great ornament where it can be well grown, and it
covers many cottages in my village, but I never very
much admired it. The leaves fall very early in the
autumn, and then there is nothing to conceal the stiff
angular growth of the plant (it was first called /.
angulare) ; yet the individual sprays are bright and
pretty, and if grown as a bush much of this ugly habit
is concealed.

But though there is no abundance of flowers in
December, the garden need not look bare and cheerless,
though it must necessarily be deficient in bright colours.
First, there is always the rich green of the lawn, and
that alone is a pleasant sight, and in many gardens

132 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

there is a large stock of evergreens, both permanent,
and used specially to fill in winter the beds which
had in summer the gay bedders. In the generality
of gardens these evergreens consist mostly of conifers
and laurels, and neither of these do I consider
very good for gardens of limited extent. I have
no great love for conifers (with a very few exceptions),
and in winter their stiff shapes and heavy colours are
brought into a prominence that gives me little pleasure,
though I must admit that they put on a wonderful
beauty when heavily laden with snow. Nor do I
much admire laurels as usually grown — that is, in
thick masses kept trimmed and shorn, though an
occasional one grown singly may be both useful and
beautiful ; but even so I would give the preference to
the colchican and the round-leaved varieties over the
common one. The Portugal laurel I do not grow at
all, and I think it only fit for very large gardens, and
even in those I have seldom seen one I could much
admire. But of all evergreens I think there is none to
compare with the holly, especially when allowed to
grow freely and naturally ; it is beautiful at all times,
and in winter, especially when covered with its scarlet
berries, it is a very precious ornament to brighten the
garden.

But there are two classes of plants which I consider

DECEMBER 133

of especial value for the winter decoration of gardens —
the variegated shrubs which do not shed their leaves,
and hardy evergreen ferns. It is the fashion, especi-
ally among botanists, to despise variegated plants ; they
are said to be diseased, and to show their disease by
their sickly appearance. This may be true, if the partial
absence of chlorophyll is to be counted a disease, but it
does not prevent their being very beautiful and very
useful, and if vigour in growth is a sign of health, there
are many instances in which the variegated specimens
are hardier and more vigorous than the typical green
forms. But I here claim for them a special value in the
winter decoration of our gardens, and will name a few
which I find most useful for this purpose. I have
seen some of the variegated ivies covering a large
extent of wall, and at a very small distance the wall
seemed to be clothed with a rich creeper bearing an
abundance of yellow or white flowers. All the varie-
gated hollies are as useful ; they brighten up a lawn
in a wonderful way, and there are many to choose
from, but I find that the variety with the large white
blotches on the leaves produces the best effect. It is
called, I believe, the milkmaid holly, but it has other
names ; and one peculiarity of it is its habit of bearing
branches in which every leaf is of a pure ivory white ;
this, too, at a little distance looks like a bunch of white

134 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

flowers, and if cut will keep its beauty in water all
through the winter. I have also on a rock-work a
large mass of the dwarf Japanese euonymus (E.
radicans variegata), which I much prize. Not only does
it lighten up the rock-work at all times, and especially
in the winter, but it gives abundance of pretty sprays
which are most useful both in the house and the
church.

The second class of plants which I recommend for
winter decoration are the evergreen hardy ferns. In
most gardens the ferns are only grown in one fernery ;
I grow them everywhere, and, provided that the
ground is not allowed to get too dry, they will flourish
everywhere, even in the fullest exposure to sunshine.
And as I walk round the garden in December their
beauty is very striking, and I wonder that they are
not more used to fill the summer beds with good winter
foliage. Care must, of course, be taken with the
selection when so used, but a good selection can easily
be made. The athyriums die down with the first frost,
and entirely disappear during the winter. The male
ferns keep their foliage much longer, though they too
get brown and withered before Christmas; but it is
curious that the many crested and tasselled varieties of
the male fern keep their fine foliage much longer than
the typical plants, and I have known them keep their

DECEMBER 135

beauty all through the winter till the young fronds
begin to grow in the spring. But the polystichums are
absolutely evergreen, however severe the winter may
be, and there are few ferns, whether British or exotic,
that surpass them in beauty. It is the same with the
hartstongues (Scolopendria) and the polypodies, and all
their many varieties. Indeed, there are some of the
polypodies which are, I think, at their best in winter,
such as the Welsh polypody, and some others which
come rather near it. I know of no foliage plant in
winter that comes near to our Welsh polypody; in
summer it is not so valuable, because it comes into leaf
so very late, often not till nearly the end of July, but
once the leaves are fully formed it will bear comparison
with any. Though the typical polypody has a very wide
geographical range, the Welsh polypody is almost con-
fined to England and Wales, and is very rare in a wild
state. It is, however, abundant in Teneriffe, and has
been found wild in North America. There are also a
few foreign exotic ferns, which are very hardy and ever-
green, of which two very good ones are the Japanese
Cyrtomium, and the North American Polystichum
munitum, this last being, I think, the handsomest hardy
fern all through the year that I know.

But though I think the garden must in December
largely depend on evergreen trees, variegated shrubs,

136 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

and evergreen ferns, yet there are still some good
flowers to be gathered besides those I have already
named. The Clematis cirrhosa will not flower every year,
though I have often had it in good flower in December,
but as it comes from Western France and the south of
Spain, it requires more heat than our summers usually
give it; when we have a hot summer and a mild
November and December, then it will produce abun-
dance of its pale buff flowers. But in almost every
season I can pick flowers in December from the white
variety of the dwarf heath of Southern Europe all
through the winter.

I must say a few words about the laurustinus, which
I mentioned last month, partly because it may almost
be called the flowering shrub of December, but also
because I overlooked some notes I had made on its
literary history, which has one or two curious points.
There can be little doubt that our plant is the tinus of
Ovid, Baccis coerula tinus, and the tinus of Pliny, * which
differeth from all other laurels in the colour of the fruit,
for it beareth blue berries,' and it is possible that the
Latin word may be derived from the Doric TWJ/OS
(small) ; but when we are further told by Miller (and
others) that the word means the small laurel, and that
the Doric word is the origin of our word ' tiny,' we may
be allowed to doubt, for ' tiny ' was an English word

DECEMBER 137

long before our ancestors began to make English words
out of Greek. And I must also make good another
omission in my last chapter. When noticing the curious
fact of the growth of young and apparently tender
foliage at a time of year when we should suppose
the young foliage would be too weak to resist the
frost, I omitted to mention what is, I think, the most
remarkable as well as the most common example. The
beautiful Lilium candidum is, perhaps, a native of Europe,
but this is very doubtful, and its real native country
is an open question, though Mr. Elwes, in his fine
monograph on the lilies, rather inclines to Georgia.
But it stands alone in this respect (and this may
have some bearing on its native country) — that
before the end of the autumn all its radical leaves
are fully formed ; and, as far as I know, no other lily
ventures to show a leaf before the spring; and this
is true, not only of the typical plant, but also of its
varieties.

December is not the month for the full enjoyment of
the garden ; it is the month of pleasant memories, and
it may be also of pleasant anticipations. By this I
mean that a good gardener, as he looks round his trees
and shrubs, and even his herbaceous plants, can form
a fairly true estimate of his prospects for the coming
year. In some cases he can do so almost to a certainty :

138 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

in the rhododendrons, if he cannot say how many
flowers he will have, he can count the trusses; and
there are many others almost as much marked, as the
spring-flowering magnolias. Or he can go among his
fruit-trees, and tell almost to a certainty what his crop
may be; among his pears, for instance (to take the
commonest case), if he only knows the difference
between fruit-buds and leaf-buds — it is very marked,
and every gardener knows it — he can see to a certainty
whether it is likely to be a good or bad year. Of
course if his trees are not protected he will have to
make a liberal discount for the robberies of bullfinches
and other bud-loving birds, who in a hard winter will
claim and take their full share ; and he will have to
make a still more liberal discount for spring frosts ; but
at any rate the flower-buds are there, and he can count
them, and very pleasant and interesting work this is.

I am not fond of frost and snow, and the older we
get the less we like it. But I have no doubt whatever
that frost and snow have their uses, and that we should
be all the worse without them. Many writers have
taken the British weather as their theme, and shown
how its endless changes and its harshness have done
much to develop the character of Englishmen, of
which an extreme instance may be taken in Kingsley's
eulogy of and welcome to the north-east wind. But I

DECEMBER 139

am speaking only of the effects of frost and snow on
English gardens, and I feel sure, though I may not be
able to prove it, that much of the beauty of our English
gardens comes from our English winters ; for certainly
our fickle seasons must have been the determining
element in the character of our gardens, as, indeed, the
seasons must be everywhere throughout the world.
But however that may be, there can be no doubt that
the interest of our gardens, and that which has made
Great Britain a nation of gardeners, has been our fickle
and comparatively cold climate. I have never seen
tropical vegetation ; my ' At last ' has never come, and
almost certainly will never be anything but an un-
fulfilled wish ; but though I know that I should fully
admire the glorious vegetation, I can fancy nothing less
interesting from a gardening point of view. To have a
garden where nature and the climate do everything,
and man is called upon to do little more than scratch
the ground and gather the flowers and fruit, might be
very pleasant from one point of view, but it would take
away all that to me constitutes the real interest of
gardening, in its difficulties, and even its disappoint-
ments.

And so we will try and make the best we can of our
English garden in December. 'The earth mourneth
and languisheth,' but it is not all barren. Even Cowper,

140 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

who, with his morbid melancholy, was at times full of
cheerfulness, could say, speaking of winter —

' I love thee, all unlovely as thou seemest,
And dreaded as thou art.'

But I go to a greater poet than Cowper. During
Advent we always use the Benedidte in our Advent
services ; and as I read it in December I am forcibly
struck with the way in which the writer speaks of
winter. Whilst to almost every other 'work of the
Lord ' he gives but one verse or less of his grand hymn,
to winter he gives no less than four — '0 ye winter
and summer,' ' 0 ye dews and frosts,' ' 0 ye frost and
cold,' '0 ye ice and snow,' ' Benedicite Domino, lawlate et
supcrexaltate Enm in saecula.'

I have been asked by some, who seem to think
that I grow many plants which are not usually seen in
gardens of hardy plants, to say if I have any special
rules for the successful cultivation of them. I know
of no secrets in gardening, and I do not work or
manage the garden on any hard-and-fast rules. If I
have any rule, it is to leave my plants as much as
possible to nature, and to let them grow in the ways
which they choose for themselves. For this reason I
dislike all tyings and nailings, all sticks, and everything
that tends to cramp the free growth of the plants. Of

DECEMBER 141

course there is a limit to this freedom of growth ;
some plants must be tied for their own protection
against wind, but such tying should be done as early
as possible, for it is with plants as with ourselves,
that the right way to train them in the way they
should go is to commence with the 'child.' But
for most plants I prefer cages. They are made, of
different heights and diameters, of iron (technically
called 'three-quarter round'), with three or four up-
rights and a few hoops. They are cheaply made, and
last for ever ; and I leave them in the ground all the
winter, so that when the plants sprout in the spring
they at once adapt themselves to the cage that sur-
rounds them, and soon hide it with their foliage. It
may seem a paradox to talk of a free natural growth
and yet to recommend a constant use of the pruning-
knife, but in practice the one is necessary to the
other; and in nothing is the gardener's skill more
shown than in the judicious use of the pruning-knife.

And when I am asked what qualities I consider most
necessary in a gardener wishing to have and keep a
good collection of plants, I name without any hesi-
tation these three — patience, liberality, and a catalogue.
Under patience I include perseverance and a prudent
boldness, for the three go together. Without some
boldness the gardener will make no experiments, and his

142 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

garden will be no more than a copy of his neighbour's ;
but if he is bold enough to try experiments with his
plants he will often meet with quite unexpected success,
and a success which may be a real gain to others. I
have always been fond of trying in the open ground
plants which I have been told would only grow in the
greenhouse, and I have been rewarded with many
pleasant surprises, pleasant to others as well as myself.
But, without speaking of myself, the great, almost
national, advantage of boldness in making experiments
with plants in fresh places is shown by the well-known
examples of the tea, which in our own time was con-
fined to China, but is now well grown in India and
Ceylon ; the cinchona, which so long was only to
be found in Brazil forests, but now forms a staple
article of commerce in India ; the currants of commerce,
which were always supposed to require the narrow
Greek zone in which alone they could be grown with-
out stones, but which are now grown successfully in
Florida and California ; where also is now grown the
French plum, which only in the Garonne Valley could
be made to produce the abundant juices that are so
prized, contained in the thin but tough skin which
enables the fruit to stand the high temperature of the
kilns in which they are preserved. But such boldness
is of little use without much patience and perseverance,

DECEMBER 143

for success cannot be expected at the first trial ; many
trials in many different places must often be made
before success is reached ; and, of course, there will be
many disappointments, but these need not be painful,
and they have their uses, for in plant-growing, as in life,
' tribulation worketh patience, and patience experience.'

The second quality I name is liberality, which many
years ago I was taught by an excellent gardener to be
of the first importance in making and keeping a good
collection. I have no sympathy with the feeling of
satisfaction in being the sole possessor of a rare plant ;
I hold it to be true economy to divide and distribute
as much as possible, for the selfish holder of the rarity
will often find himself rightly punished by losing his
one plant, and then not knowing where to look for
it again.1

And the third requisite is a good catalogue ; and I
know from experience that I should have had great
difficulty in getting my collection together if I had
not always made it a practice to catalogue my plants,
and to keep the catalogue as accurate as possible. It
forms at once the best letter of introduction to other
gardens, showing what you want, and also what you
may perhaps be able to give. But a good catalogue
requires a careful naming of plants, and that, I think,
1 See p. 293.

144 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

a very pleasant part of gardening, though it sometimes
requires much study to determine accurately the right
name.1 The study of plant names is by itself most
interesting, and leads to much unexpected information.
But for the good naming, some sort of label is neces-
sary, and what is the best form of label is still an
open question. I dislike wooden labels of all sorts —
they are all too conspicuous, and for private gardens
the label should be as little conspicuous as possible;
in a public botanic garden they should be large, easily
seen, and easily read. Here I have for many years
used a cast-iron tally with a T-shaped head. This
head is painted white, and when required for use has
a thin coating of black quick-drying paint (Aspinall's
paints do very well for the purpose), through which
the name is written with any sharp-pointed instrument.
The tally is almost invisible a few yards off, but the name
can be read easily without taking it out of the ground.

I have now gone round the calendar, and my garden
record is at an end. I have not attempted to give a
complete list of all the flowers that can be gathered in
each month ; my object has rather been to show that
there is no month in the year in which some, or indeed

1 This study has now (1896) been made much easier by the com-
pletion of the Index Kewensis,

DECEMBER 145

many, good flowers cannot be enjoyed. My own
experience has been that a garden is a constant plea-
sure, and that the pleasure does not depend upon
unbroken success. There will be many failures and fre-
quent disappointments ; there will be losses, sometimes
of the flowers and fruits, and sometimes of the entire
plants j there will be killing frosts, and long droughts,
and unfruitful seasons ; but the true gardener takes all
these as necessary parts of his work — ' minds quiet and
contented take,' or may take, them all as necessary
parts of the pleasure of his garden. That no season is
altogether barren of pleasure, I hope I have been to
some extent successful in showing; and when I hear
people say, as some will say, that a garden is all very
well in the bright months of a fine spring or summer,
or even in the less bright months of autumn, but is
altogether a dreariness in winter, or in bad seasons,
I remember a song which was popular when I was
young, which told of the pleasures of each season, and
which ended —

* But know the best season to laugh and to sing
Is summer, is winter, is autumn, is spring.'

I cannot close my garden record better than by wishing
to all my brother gardeners as much pleasure from
their gardens as I can thankfully record to have
received from mine.

K

PART II

CHAPTEE XIII

fepn'ng; jflotoerg

The earliest blossoms — Christmas Roses— Snowdrops —
Crocus — Scilla — Polyanthus — Anemone.

To the true gardener — the man who loves his flowers
— spring is perhaps the most enjoyable season of the
year ; to him, in very truth —

* Then comes in the sweet of the year,
For the red blood reigns in the winter's pale.'

To him the reign of the red blood in the winter's pale
is the season of happy hopes, the season in which he
begins to look forward to triumphs which will now, he
thinks, most certainly be his, the season in which he
gladly allows hope to triumph over experience. And
by ' spring ' I mean not any fixed month, and certainly
not any fixed day, on which, according to the almanack,
'spring commences,' but I mean that time, month or
day, in which he sees the resurrection of his much-
loved plants, when every day shows some new growth,

150 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

and when no day is like the last, but adds one or more
treasures to be welcomed that have long been out of
his sight ; and so when each day brings a fresh plea-
sure, the earnest of, perhaps, fuller beauties to come,
but scarcely of keener pleasures. At no other time of
the year can the gardener have such a variety of hopes
and expectations daily renewed and added to as he has
in spring ; and it must have been from some such feel-
ing as this, that when Bacon drew out his ideal garden
and stocked it with fair flowers of the whole year, his
object was not to have perpetual summer, but perpetual
spring — 'My meaning is that you may have ver per-
petuum as the place affords.'

1 As the place affords ' gives a very large margin to
the time of the year at which the opening of spring
may be placed. Fixing it by the time at which
flowers first begin to show their new life, it may in
many places be fixed even in January, for it must be
an exceptionally cold January that cannot show some
flowers. I may mention three that may be found in
many gardens in January, and which are very interest-
ing as giving a direct denial to the common idea that
strongly scented flowers require bright sunshine to
bring out their scents. They are the sweet-scented
coltsfoot, with the scent of heliotrope, a native of the
south of Europe, naturalised in some parts of England ;

SPRING FLOWERS 151

the Japanese honeysuckle (Lonicera fragrantissima), with
the scent of an orange-blossom ; and the Chimonanthus
fragrans, also Japanese, with a rich, heavy scent that is
all its own.

These are welcome flowers of spring, but they lack
brightness, and spring is full of bright flowers, the
brightest of the year, bright in themselves, but most
bright and most welcome by coming when they do.
Let me name a few of them, confining myself to the
earliest flowers of the year. There is the Christmas
rose (Helleborus niger), a flower that would attract notice
at any time of the year, but most welcome for coming,
as it does, in the coldest and darkest days, and now so
popular that we have in different parts Christmas-rose
farms, from which the fine flowers of the purest white
(otherwise unsaleable) are picked by tens of thousands
in the fortnights before and after Christmas. But its
popularity is no new fashion. It was probably intro-
duced into England in the early part of the sixteenth
century, and was highly prized. It was excellently
described by Parkinson : —

4 The flowers have the most beautiful aspect, and the time
of his flowering most rare. ... It hath many fair green leaves
rising from the root, each of them standing on a thick round
fleshy greene stalke, divided into seven, eight, or nine parts or
leaves, and each of them nicked or dented, . . . abiding all
the winter, at which time the flowers rise up, . . . every one

152 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

by itself, . . . consisting of fine broad white leaves, like unto
a great white single rose, . . . with many pale yellow
thrummes in the middle, standing about a green head.'

The plant is perfectly hardy, but capricious, growing
and flowering without any difficulty in one garden, and
refusing to grow at all in another ; and there are many
species and hybrids, all handsome plants, but not equal
to the white one.1 With the Christmas rose I may
join the snowdrop, for they are often in flower together.
Of all spring garden flowers none is such a teacher of
hope. So it certainly was to Keble. To him it was
not only the

' First-born of the year's delight,
Pride of the dewy glade,'

but—

' I love thec, dear,' ho said, ' because

Thy shy avortrd smiles

To fancy txxle a joyous year,

One of life's fairy isles.'

' The snowdrop,' says Forbes Watson, ' is a very star
of hope in a season of wreck and decay, the one bright
link l>etween the perishing good of the past and the
better which has not yet tagiiii to follow.'

And almost, but not quite, as brave in fighting
against difficulties is the whole tribe of crocus, especi-

i Se« also p. 14.

SPRING FLOWERS 153

ally the early golden crocus.1 With the golden crocus
will often come the 'pale primrose,' and it is very
tempting to spend some time on this

1 First-born chUd of Ver,
Merry spring-time's harbinger,
With her bells dim,'

from its many literary and other associations; but I
must not do so, for it is a wild-flower, and I am now
speaking only of cultivated garden flowers ; and yet
even so the primrose might claim a place, not only
because it can be, and often is, used as an ornamental
garden plant, but also because of its close brotherhood
with the polyanthus, the most effective of all spring
flowers when grown in masses, and one of the easiest
to grow. One packet of seed will bring hundreds of
plants, which will ornament the spring garden for
many years. But, having gathered our pure white
Christmas roses and our golden crocus, we may well
join with them the gem-like blues of the two early
squills — the Scilla sibirica and Sc. bifolia. These are
small flowers, but not even the gentian surpasses them
in richness of colour, and they are perfectly hardy ;
but within the last few years they have met with a
formidable rival in the Chionodoxa, a beautiful bulbous
plant discovered near Smyrna in 1842, but not intro-

1 For a further account of snowdrops and crocuses, see p. 19.

154 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

duced into England till 1877 ; and yet already, from its
free flowering and abundance of seed, it has become in
some gardens almost a weed, and when introduced into
our woods, as is now being done, there is little doubt it
will soon become completely naturalised, and be a com-
panion and rival of our bluebells. The mass that was
discovered by Mr. Maw on Nymph Dagh (4000 feet)
was described by him as ' forming one of the most
sumptuous displays of floral beauty he ever beheld, a
mass of blue and white, resembling XfnHyhihi insigni*
in colour, but more intense and brilliant ' ; and no one
who knows the plant will doubt the correctness of his
description.

Hut, even l>efore the'squills and the Chionodow, our
spring gardens do not want blue flowers. We gener-
ally associate the iris with the early summer, but there
are two that will flower in the midst of snow as beauti-
ful as any of their summer brethren, and it is hard to
say which of the two is most beautiful. They arc the
/. .</{//<>.«/, of a very delicate blue, and sweet-scented,
which comes from Algiers, Corfu, and the Morea, and
of which there is a white variety of great beauty, look-
ing like a white orchid ; and the 7. A /<>!//<//</, a bulbous
species, with a smaller flower of a rich deep violet
colour, and sweet-scented, which conies from Asia
Minor, Syria, and Persia. Both of these are perfectly

SPRING FLOWERS 155

hardy, and should be in every spring garden, and they
come so early that the sight of them is really one of
the first pleasant surprises of the year.

With one more colour I will conclude my account of
the spring garden. I want a good scarlet, and I find it
in the anemone — not our wood anemone, on which I
now can say nothing, but the brilliant beauties of the
south of France. Throughout the year we have no
scarlet flower that will surpass the intense brilliancy of
A. fulgens, especially the large Greek form, and it is as
hardy as a bramble and as easy of increase. And as to
abundance of flowers, I know of one vicarage garden in
which this flower is a favourite, and is dotted about in
many parts, and many hundreds of bright flowers are
picked from the beginning of the year. It is one of
the oldest inhabitants of English gardens. Whether it
is the dv(fjuai'i) of Bion that sprang from Aphrodite's
tears, or the anemone of Pliny, is doubtful, but I like
to think it is, and Theophrastus's description of it as
flowering in the winter, and very shortly after its
appearance aboveground, and that it is one of the
€Viycto(/)uAA.a, favours this idea ; and so does Pliny,
who says, ' Some have a deeper and scarlet flower,
others bear a purple flower, and there be again which
are white. The leaves of these three be like unto
parsley ' (Philemon Holland's trans., 1601).

156 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

In this short sketch I have strictly confined myself
to the earliest spring flowers ; indeed, they might
almost be ranked as winter flowers, or ' harbingers of
spring.' Had I gone further, I should soon have found
myself in that wealth of flowers which is seen in April
and May, and includes the great families of tulips,
hyacinths, violet*, crown imperials, daffodils, even
roses, and literally hundreds of other plant*. And
even within the narrow limiu I have prescrilxxl to
myself, I have by no means exhausted the list of
beauties that may be grown, but I have said enough to
show that even snow and frost, and dark days and cold
nights, will not prevent us, even in our much-abused
climate, from having our gardens gay with flowers,
which will not only delight us for their Ixjauty, but
will also teach us good lessons of hope and thankful-
ness. In January the days are dark and cloudy, and
the trees are bare and leafless, but not always, and not
for long :—

1 Time will bring on summer,
When briars shall have leaves as well as thorns,
And be AS sweet as sharp.'

CHAPTER XIV

fefjrubtf

Good collections rare — Rhododendrons— Azaleas —
Brooms and Gorses.

DURING the last fortnight in April and the first fort-
night in May there is something of a lull in the flower-
ing plants. The pioneers of the year — the Christmas
roses, the snowdrops, and crocuses — have quite passed
away, and the daffodils, fritillaries, tulips, and hya-
cinths are fast following them, while the great army
that will soon appear of paeonies, irises, roses, and lilies
has not yet come into sight ; and in gardens that trust
to bedding-out plants there is nothing to be seen but
bare earth in empty beds. Outside the garden the
case is very different. In every wood and hedgerow
that great outburst of life has begun in all its strength
and exuberance which has given to May its many
epithets— ' the merry month of May,' 'all-beauteous
May,' 'faire May, the fayrest mayd on ground,' and
many such, all testifying to the joy that comes to us

157

15H IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

from the sight of the return to life of all the heautica
of nature, with the promUe that all thing* will again
go forward in their normal course. Then only, ami
for a «hort time only, while the wood* ami he<lgerowa
arc covered with the tender green* which tell that the
young leaves are hunting through their l»ud« and are
covering the tree-* with a Ixviuty which ;u» yet can
Bcarcely In? railed full foliage, each tret? stand* out
distinctly marked t»v it* own peculiar shade of green,
HO that it i* |M»*MMe fnr a practised eve to distinguish
iH'tween elms, (wik*, And l*eechc,«, or tatwet'ti larv-hc*
and Scotch fir«* In .June they will all 1*» of an almo*t
tinifi»nu gn»«Mi, dark, and even monoUtnotu, and w> they
will remain till in autumn each tree will again a*Miiuc
it.H own jieculiar Krillunt hue, *» that each can !*»
readily di»tifigiu**he«l from n« fellnw.

I'.ut in the flowerganlen there in at that time no
»»uch varietv. There are tlowep* to \tc found, and of
much lieautv, l»ut thev are not in abundance, ami it i«»
then that the gardener timN the gre.it advantage i.f a
go4nl collection of shrill". I wi^h, th« r«-f-»re, t«. lecmn
mend the growth of shrill* to a f.ir l.irger extent than
i-< usuallv seen, ami I will give a short H-l "f su< h a*
an* UM'ful in spring, ami a few r«u--.nn vhv I "trough*
recommeml them. Hut it H w..rth while to Ht«»p a
little, and see what shrub* are as we h:»\e them now.

SHKUBS 159

The division of low-growing plants into shrubs and
herbaceous plants is one easily recognised, but it is not
a technical or scientific division. Shrubs occupy the
debatable ground between herWeous plants and trees,
but the boundary-line on cither side is not well defined,
and is constantly being broken through. Many herlw-
ceous plants might almost l>c called .shrub.-*, and many
shrubs (especially tender shrubs) die down every year,
and so in our climate are herlwccous. Many shrubs
also may attain the size of trees, and many trees are
better treated as shrubs. But in speaking of shrills I
mean woody plants which do not die down in winter
and seldom exceed G ft. or 8 ft. in height.

Of such shrubs we have now a very large number in
cultivation iu England, but it was not always so, and
the cultivation of shrubs as we now grow them may
almost be called a modern art. Down to the middle
of the eighteenth century shrubs were chiefly used for
making arbours and ' plashed alleys,' and were valued
according as they were or were not useful to the
topiarist. We read of 'groves,' but the bushes that
composed them were very few ; and even Bacon's
heath, or wilderness, had only ' some thickets made
only of sweetbriar and honeysuckle, with some wild
vine amongst,' with • mole-hills ' set with wild thyme,
etc., and * heaps, with little bushes prickt upon their

160 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

top.' Evelyn had a love for shrubs, and prided him-
self on having introduced the Alattnws from Languedoc,
but his list of shrubs is a very poor one. The very
name of shrub was almost a name of contempt, or at
least it was chiefly used to mark the vegetation of a
rough, wild country. Spenser's 'gloomy glade was
covered with boughs and shrubs.' In Caliban's country
there was ' neither bush nor shrub to bear off any
weather at all.' Etymologically, the word is the same
as scrub ; we still speak of a scrubby waste, and the
word survives as a place-name in Wormwood Scrubs.

But in our day shrubberies ought not to be scrub-
beries, for our modern shrill* can no longer be spoken
of as rough plants fit only for a wild common. Since
the middle of the last century, many hundreds of
hardy shrubs have been introduced from North and
South America, Australia and New Zealand, China and
Japan, and the Himalayas. Yet it is still a most
unusual thing to see a good collection of shrubs except
in gardens where the owner is something of a lx>tanist.
In the hundreds and thousands of new gardens that
are made, the shrubs are left to the nurseryman, whose
collection is limited to a few species which he supplies
by the hundred to all alike. Yet it need not be so,
and nothing gives so much character and charm to a
garden, or so much breaks the monotony that makes so

SHRUBS 161

many modern gardens alike, as a variety of shrubs well
chosen and well looked after. I will name a few, con-
fining myself to those which are in beauty in the early
months of the year, and excluding all that could be
classed either as trees or climbers.

Where the soil is suitable there can be no difficulty
in making the spring garden brilliant with the rhodo-
dendrons ; but it is hopeless to attempt to grow them
in soil in which there is the slightest trace of lime.
But where lime is absent rhododendrons should be
grown freely, both the European and American forms,
in their many varieties, and, in the south of England,
the grand Himalayan forms.

Where the rhododendron will grow, the azaleas and
kalmias will also grow, and the three together will
make a blaze of colour that is unsurpassed at any time
of the year ; but in the majority of gardens they must
of necessity be absent ; yet there are other shrubs that
will brighten any garden. I must pass by our native
gorse, in spite of its associations and beauty, to name
its two foreign relations, the German and Spanish
gorses, both very beautiful, and forming compact
golden bushes which keep in flower for many weeks.
With them I join their near allies the brooms ; not our
native broom, which, in spite of its rich golden colour,
is too straggling and untidy except in shrubberies, but

L

162 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

the smaller- flowered cytiaua. Of thia there are two
aorta which are good ornament* fur any lawn — the
pure whiUJ Cy/uiu alb*s from Portugal, very pretty,
though apt to grow in a thin and weak way, and the
(yintf praffoi^ a garden variety, which forma a cloae
bush covered with lovely, pale lemon flower*, which
laat a long time, but cannot lie picked on account of
their heavy, unpleasant smell. The l«rl»errii%* are all
uaeful, both for their spring flowen and their autumnal
tint*, and they are easily grown, and kevp in guncl
shape. They are found in all quarter* of the globe,
and we have one in KngUnd which is interesting to the
student of old Knglish UiUny a* being joined by the
old writcni with the box as an ornamental hdlgo pUnt,
;tn«l Itearing a name which haa not changed (it ia
'bartiaryn tre * in the Promptorium), but which haa
never \teen cxplainctl. rAt/wyii //riui/ii ia a beautiful
shrub of the me family, which, though known to
taunt*!* for more than sixty years, haa only l»een
intnuluccci into Kngland about twenty years. It is a
rich evergreen, and in spring is crowded with iu sweot
scento*! pure white flower*, and its bin la arc so like
the buds of the orange that they are often IUKX! aa
aubatitutoa. Though a Mexican plant, it is perfectly
hardv, but like* to bo sheltered from strong winda ;
and as it increaaea oaaily from cuttings, it ought soon

SHRUBS 163

to be in every garden. At present it is too much
confined to 'the gardens of the curious.' And from
Australia and New Zealand we have several of the
daisy bushes, one of which, Okaria GunnintM, is a most
desirable spring flowering shrub, the whole shrub being
covered with white, daisy-like flowers, and perfumed
with a fine aromatic scent.

I must not go further, though I should have liked to
speak of the magnolias, spiraeas, the Pyrus Japonica,
the hardy orange (Citrus /ri/o/i<i/<i, in flower at the
beginning of May), the California!! bramble (liulw.*
ddiciosus), the Daphnes, the Forsythias, and many
others. Of roses, I could have picked specimens from
the monthly China, but as yet roses are few. They
will soon come in multitudes, and will require and
deserve a chapter to themselves. What I have Haul
of these few shrubs may serve as a guide-post to many
others which I have not space to descril>e, and I wish
to add a few words on the general advantages of grow-
ing shrubs to a much larger extent than is now done.

Shrubs, being perennial, make permanent masses on
lawns, and so can be used as lasting objects in land-
scape gardening, in a way that herbaceous plants,
however large, cannot. Being permanent, too, they
improve every year in size, and generally in vigour;
herbaceous plants reach the same height in wich year

164 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

that they reached the year previous, and no more ;
and shrubs do not in the autumn end in 'kecksiet,'
which require removal

Shrubs, when fully grown, are near the eye — a
matter of no little consequence when the time comes in
which stooping is a weariness.

On rock-works, shrubs arc indispensable, though moat
people are afraid of them ; but a rock- work without
shrul>s looks bare and unnatural, and the great success
of the large new rock-work at Kew may be largely
attributed to the free use of shrubs.

I by no means wish to exclude the growth of hrrki
ceous plants and Alpines -quite the contrary, and so I
give as my last reason for the growth of shrubs that
nothing is so useful as a protection for tender plant*
It is too much the fashion to keep every plant in a
bonier as separate as possible from its neighbour ; but
we have only to go to the nearest hedgerow to see how
plants flourish by nestling into each other ; and on the
Iwirest Alpine hillsides the plants love to get near the
shelter of the low shrubs, and even grow so much
among the roots as to appear almost parasitical. To
dwell under the shadow of something better and
stronger than one's self is as good for Mowers as it is for
man, and S|>enser taught this truth in the pretty fable
of the '(Jake and the Brere.' The whole tale is in the

SHRUBS 165

Shtpheartfs Calendar for 'Februarie/ and is much too
long to quote at length ; but it tells how ' a bragging
brere ' lived and flourished by ' a goodly oake,' how it
took offence at the oak and got the master to cut it
down, and then —

' Eftsoones winter gan to approache ;
The blustring Boreas did encroche,
And l>cat upon the solitary Brere ;
For now no succour was seen him neere—
Now 'gan hee repent his pride too late,
For, naked left, and disconsolate,
The byting frost nipt his stalk t* dead ;

Such was the end of this ambitious Brere
For scorning Eld.'

I will merely add that no gardener will keep a
collection of shrubs in good order unless he has a hard
heart and a sharp knife, and uses them both with
judgment.

CHAPTER XV

Number of ipeciw— Difficulty of cultivation— WhiU Lilie»—

Lilitim auratum.

IK spring is to the gardener the season of pleasant
hojx>s and expectations, June in atxive all other months
tho month of hojjcs ami expectations more or lew
realised. Hy the general oWrver the chief thing noticed
is the full leafage of the month. So Spenser saw it :-

' Aftrr her cainc ,I«»Ily June, array!.
All in grvt'iu' leave*, MI he A j UMT were.'

And so in Coleridge's eyes it was 'the leafy month of
June/ and HO it seems to he with nearly all the |x>eU.
But to the gardener it is the month of flowers ; and if
he were asked to di.Htingui.nh the days of June from the
davs of other months, he would answer almost in the
words of Aubrey de Vere, that they are the days in
which

' The glorious nun'* light . . . nhowem
A thousand colours on a thousand floncrs. '
166

LILIES 167

But among the thousand flowers there would be two
great families which would stand out supreme above
all the rest, the lilies and the roses. And that is the
unanimous verdict, not only of gardeners, but of all
who in any degree love flowers. Their high popu-
larity is shown in the way in which so many flowers
which are neither roses nor lilies are so called. In
Miller's Dictionary of English Namts of Plants there are
one hundred and eighty-eight plants named which are
called lilies, of which only seventy are true lilies
(Lilium) • the rest are such plants as lily of the valley,
water-lily, St. Bernard's lily, Mariposa lily, Belladonna
lily, etc. In the same way, but not to the same
extent, flowers are called roses which are no relations
to the genus rose, as the Christmas rose, guelder rose,
rock rose, rose campion, rose of Sharon, etc. To be
called a rose or a lily does not mean that the bearers of
the name are either roses or lilies, but it gives them a
diploma for grace and beauty.

Their popularity is further shown by the great
number of books that have been written on the two
families. The strictly botanical books about them
reach a large number, while the books that sing their
praises incidentally must be almost innumerable. In
all gardening books they necessarily fill a large space,
and in all gardens with the slightest pretence to com-

168 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

pleteness both must be Been in abundance. And just
as Horace thought them necessary in a feast —

' N'cu deaint cpulu rocae,
Ncu vivax apium ncu breve hlium '-

so in every well-ordered garden there must be /i/ki
mix fa rosis.

My subject, then, is the lilies and roses of June, and
the liliea first — a very hackneyed subject, some will
think, and certainly it is, if by that is meant that
already much has l»een written on it, but there is no
finality in gardening or in gardening literature. More
than two hundred years ago Evelyn laughed at those
who gave 'the glorious title of compleat and accom-
plished gardener* to what they have published, as if
there were nothing wanting or further to be expected
from the field, and that Nature had been quite emptied
of all her fertile store,' and he prophesied the great
increase that must IHJ always looked for in our know-
ledge of the products of nature. Thin is so remarkably
the case with lilies, that it is worth while to l«H>k Kick
and comjvire our present abundance of these beautiful
flowers with the very scanty supply which called forth
the loving admiration of our forefathers. Thcophrastus
only mentions one lily, and Dioscorides two ; Pliny
describes three, but it is very doubtful whether they

LILIES 169

are all true lilies. In the Middle Ages the lily must
have been a rare plant, for it is said that no representa-
tion of it in old illuminations is found earlier than the
fifteenth century, though it is certainly represented in
paintings before that time. Gerard, in 1597, described
twelve species, which his editor Johnson about forty
years later increased to twenty-one. Parkinson de-
scribes fourteen, but some of them are varieties.
Bauhin about the same time arranged all the then
known sorts of lilies under twenty-eight species, which
Linnanis reduced to eight. Our latest authority, Mr.
Elwes (in his splendid monograph of the family),
describes forty-seven good species, besides varieties.

Of these forty -seven species none are truly native in
Great Britain, though one (L. intirhtgim) is considered
to be naturalised in Surrey ; but the geographical range
of the whole family is very extensive, HO much so, that
M. de Cannart d'Hamale says: ' I>a nature a voulu
orner de cea talle* fleurs toutes lea contreea du globe, i\
1'exception pcut-t'tre de I'Australie.' They are not,
however, found in Africa, or anywhere within the
tropics. Eight are found in Europe, thirteen in
America, and the remainder in Asia, chieHy in Japan
and the Himalayas.

The cultivation of some of the lilies is difficult, and
nearly all of them are capricious, and refuse to follow

170 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

any fixed rules of cultivation. But they are probably
all hardy in the south of England, and with very few
exceptions they are hardy anywhere, so that it is
rather surprising that they are not more grown than
they are. Yet it is a moat unusual thing to see a
good collection of lilies, and even in gardens which aim
at variety the lilies arc usually represented l»y no more
than three or four specie*. Every one grown roses,
but lilies, which can be as easily and as cheaply
obtained, arc often found best in the cottage gardens.
Thin in e*|H»eially the case with the common white lilv.
There is no more beautiful lily, and none to which are
attached so many pretty legends and stone*, or with so
many associations, historical and poetical. It* native
country i« uncertain, but it is undoubtedly this lily
that has been longest in cultivation in Kurojx?. Virgil'*
lilies were C*<in</b/<i and f /rum/hi, and it was from very
early times the flower of the Madonna. Ho would be
a well road man who could bring together all that has
l»ccn written on this universal favourite, and it would
fill a large volume. Yet, though s«» common and such
a favourite, it will not grow everywhere. In many
gardens it lives a few years and then disappear*. In
my own garden it will only survive if planted almost
under a tree ; and I have a recollection of the envy
with which I once looked at a row of cottages in a

LILIES 171

village under the Wiltshire Downs, where, in the little
gardens in front of the cottages, this lily seemed to
grow like a weed. I believe there are two secrets, or
rather two things, to be remembered in the cultivation
of lilies ; one is that most of the lilies are wood-plants,
and so, though they require sunlight, and free circula-
tion of air, they certainly do better in partial shade ;
and it has been found that the grand golden lilies
(L. avratum) nowhere do better than when planted
amongst rhododendrons, which shade the roots, and do
not prevent the flowers from rising into full sunlight.
The other rule is not to keep the roots long out of the
ground, and, indeed, to keep them, if possible, entirely
undisturbed. This may be one reason why they often
do so well in cottage gardens — they are let alone ; and
this was the rule among the old Dutch gardeners, as
laid down by LauremWgiua in 1632, 'Si cximcmli
tint e terra lilionim bulbi, proteniw aut paucis diebus
interpositis reponantur.'

In my garden I find that the easiest to grow are Afar-
higon and its varieties, Croccum, Tesk\ffumt Pomponium^
fyrenaicum, and Califvrnicum ; but if I had to do with
another garden, I should not be surprised to find that
my experience would be very different.

In one respect roses bear the palm over lilies.
Nearly all roses (except some of the modern hybrids)

172 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

arc sweet-scented, while a very few lilies are so ; moat
of them arc scentless, and some arc quite offensive ;
ami the lily doc* not )>oar picking as the rose does.
A rose-bush in full flower can spare many flowers and
vet not lose its be.iuty ; you cannot pick single flowers
from a spike of lilies without spoiling iu symmetry,
ami it in almost * cruelty to cut clown the spikes
entirely, for they can only be utilised in tall vases.

In another respect, too, lilies are curiously different
from rose*. I know of only two species which produce
double flower*, the white ami the pom pone, and these
doubles are both ugly. Hut the nutes seem to have a
natural tendency to vary with double flower* ; they
can U» counted by hundreds, and are increasing every
year, and they are all beautiful flower*.

Though I know by experience, the difficulty <»f grow-
ing manv of the lilies, and though I recognise that in
some point* they fall short of the popularity «.f the
rose, yet I would advise all to try as many species as
they can procure. They will not succ«fd with all, but
success with any will give a character to any garden.
I am not very successful with them, yet no flowers that
I grow give more pleasure to my friends and myself,
or add so much to the gaiety ««f the garden. I think
that Englishmen never have for the lily the same affec-
tion that they have for the ruse, their feeling for it is

LILIES 173

more of admiration than affection ; but even so, they
are surely worth growing in as large quantities as our
gardens will allow. They are easily obtained ; success
with them is a great delight, and failure with a few
will not involve much loss of labour or money ; and so
I uy again, manibus </</// liliti pleni*.

I must not enter on the poetry of the lily — the field
is far too large. It may safely be said that scarcely
one of our English poets has failed to speak, and to
speak lovingly, of the flower. From Chaucer down-
wards to our own day our poets tell of its beauty and
grace, and with all of them, I believe, the lily alluded
to is the white lily. To take one instance only, and
very shortly. Shakespeare not only expressly wiya
that the lily is white, ' white as a lily,' ' the lily 's
white,' 4 the lily pale,' 4 the lily white,' but he use.s
'lily' as an adjective equivalent to 'white/ *•.//. 'the
lily tincture,' 'lily lips,' 'lily hands,' 'lily livered,'
'lily fingers.'

CHAPTER XVI
K00C0

Double ROM»— WiM ROM*— EgUntine— Home* of the ROM*—
Their ag*— AiutrUn Brier.

' Is May and Juno come rose* of all kind*, except tho
mu*k, which comes later,' nays Kicon ; and though I
AO far follow his lead a* to place the ro*e among
the chief glories of the garden in June, and though it
in in June that they are seen in the fullest abumiancc
and beauty, yet it is one of the great charm* of the
rose that they brighten our garden* for no many months
of the year. We may almost say that, weather per-
mitting, a good garden i* never entirely without rose*
in flower. I have picked good flowers from the monthly
China roses in January, and in isss I picked a good
bunch of fairy roses on Christmas Eve. I know of no
other flower that can come near the rose in thia respect ;
the daisy possibly comes the nearest. This may per-
haps be gathered during nine months of the year, but
very seldom in November, December, and January.

174

ROSES 175

And this must be one of the reasons (independently of
the beauty and scent) why the rose is so dear to us,
and is so closely interwoven with English country life.
It is not only that it is the national emblem, and has
been so from very early times, for other nations have
national floral emblems, which do not enter into their
home-life as the rose does with us ; nor is it because it
is surrounded with so many historical associations — the
red rose of Lancaster, the white rose of York, the
Tudor rose, the musk roses, and the eglantine of
Shakespeare and Milton; — but it is, I think, that from
its easy cultivation, especially in our climate, it is
found in every garden, and can be grown in full beauty
in the great gardens of the rich, but in equal beauty
in the small garden of the poorest cottager. It is the
favourite everywhere ; in the child's garden, and in
the garden of the florist, who watches and nurses
it for exhibition — pruned or unpruned, highly culti-
vated or neglected, it is always beautiful and always
prized.

For the florist there is scarcely more than one typo
of rose, the fine double hybrids which have been pro-
duced from the two species, Rosa Gallica and Rosa
Indica. But I do not propose to speak of them, not
because I do not admire them and value them, but
their beauties and all their points of excellence can be

176 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

found fully deocribed in the page* of Rivers and the
I>ean of Rochester. But there arc three double ro§e«
that are such special favourite* with me for different
reasons that I must nay some little about them, One
is the old cabbage n>sc, a n*se so much neglected that
.i few yearn ago it could only he found in a few old
garden*, and in cottage gardens. Yet it is a rose of
a wonderful scent which no other n*** ha*. and its
historical intercut ut very great. Not only is it the
red rufte of KngUnd and the ' provincial rose ' of
H.unlrt, out it is probably the oldest cultivated
!••*•' we have, so old that iu native country it
unknown. One of it* names with us is the hundred-
leafed HMW, an<l under thai name it was recorded by
Theophrastus and I'liny (*»«*» ««%^»« «/-»mir a «ai «aAotv7u
«*aTo»Ta^>i AAa— Thcoph., ( Vn/i/u/iiiiii f>v»jMf, I'lin. ). It
in the jwirent <»f the inoM m*es and of the j»«»ni|tone,
or *l* M(>\ust and of many other* now gone out of < ulti
vation. A *econd favourite ilouble, or semi double, rose
is the York and Lancaster, of which there arc two
kinds ; one a very old ro*c, in whirh the {totals are
•ioinetime* white and sometimes pink, and sometime*
white and pink in the itame Mower. Thin in without
doubt the ' rote* damaaked, re»l and white/ the rote
'nor red nor white had stolen of l«»th ' «>f Shake*j>earet
and it i* the /». ivr«i^o//T of the ol«l !«otanical writers.

ROSES 177

In the other sort the petals are a rich crimson, flaked
with white ; it is a very handsome rose, comparatively
modern, and is the Rosa Mundi of the Botanical Magazine,
t 1794.1 The third double rose I wish to notice is one
commonly called the yellow cabbage. It has, however,
no relationship to the cabbage rose, and iU origin is
unknown, but it was a great favourite with the old
rote-growers, and is now again slowly coming into
cultivation. It was first described by Clusius, who
noticed it among some coloured paper model* of gardens
sent to him from Constantinople. Limlley describes
the flowers as ' very large, of an exquisitely delicate,
transparent, yellow colour ' ; f and as I write with the
flower before me, just picked, I can answer for the
truth of the description. The weak point is that the
flowers seldom fully open ; they probably require a
hotter sun than they usually get here, both before
and at the time of flowering ; but oven in this
unopened state it was a favourite with the Dutch
painters, especially Van Huysum. There is a fine
picture by him (belonging to Lord Aahburton), in
which this rose in its half-opened state forms part of

* I may refer to a paper In the (j<irdt*fri Magazine for Aug. 12th,
1893, tu which I put together all that I could find of the history of the
York and Lancaster ro««.

1 Lindley called it Ji. ndphurea plena. It* correct name in R.
\emitpkatrica.

M

178 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

the foreground, and which U well known to collector*
of mezzotints as forming one of the fine engraving* by
Earlom in 177?* from the Houghton picture*.

But I leave theac few douMe* to *pe*k of tome of
the wild specie* of ro*o* which, though little grown
except in tatanical collection*, art? full of neauty and
in to rent. There arc al*oul fifty §|»ecic* of the grntu
/.Vi/i, found in all quarter* of the world, hut only in
the north temperate zone. Plenty of r«*e* arr grown
in Australia, New Zealand, ami the Ca|*», Kul they
have l»een introduced l»y colonist*. Of course I can-
not njxvik of all the.*o fifty *j»^< ir.«, I can out select a
few. In (Jreat liritain there are (according to Sir J.
Hooker) neven g«»o«l njxvie* with many varieties, of
which at lea*t two are garden favourite*. One in the
Hurnet ro«o, a very pretty little n*c an found on our
neAfthnrc*, and the parent of all our Set itch n«M»* ; and
the other i» the itweet hrier. Thi* i* certainly the
eglantine of Sj»cn*er, Shake.«|K»an\ Milt«»n, nnd all
the old writer*, and though not common an a wild
plant, it can l»e found in many jiart* "f KngUrul,
r#|M*cially in the chalk district*. It him j»erhap* the
mont delicate perfume of all roae*. and of all Hritinh
plants, and it has the faculty, e*|*-< ully after rain,
which all »weet~*conted flower-* have not. of giving
out it* scent without l»ein«: picked t»r handled. It U

ROSES 179

one of 'the flowers and plants that do best perfume
the air/ 'yield the sweetest smell in the air,' a fact
which Pliny also noticed : * The eglantine will cast
a sweet and pleasant smell, although it reach not farrc
off* (Holland's trans.). The plant seems to have a
special fascination for great lawyers. Bacon, in the
sixteenth century, names it five times among his
favourite plant*, and it seems to he equally acceptable
to a great judge of our own day. Many may have
been surprised, and perhaps a little amused, to find
that at the Hose Conference in 1889, Lord Peiuyince
read an excellent paper, not on the woe« of ' the ag-
grieved parishioner,' but on the delights and capabilities
of the sweet-brier.

From Europe we get the white rose, which ha* IKJCII
so long naturalised in England that it is sometimes
admitted into the English flora. It i« the white rose
of York, and if we could believe the elder 1'liny'n
derivation of Albion, ob TOMS a 11*13 yuibujt abundat, it
would be our oldest cultivated rose. In its semi-double
state it is a favourite cottage rose, and deservedly so,
for the flowers are a very pure white, and the bush,
though large, is never untidy, and requires little or
no management. We also get from the south of
Europe the alpine rose, and its pretty red leaved
variety. This is distinguished from nearly all roses

180 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

by being entirely destitute of thorns, except in the young
ghooU ; and it is one of the parents of the Boreault
rotes, once very popular, which show their parentage
bv being also for the most part thorn less, ROM Gallica
is found in many port* of Europe ; as a single rose
it is not often seen, but it has given rise, not only to
innumerable garden hybrids, but also to some natural
hybrids, of which the old damask rose, much beloved of
our forefathers, is now said to be one.

From Asia we got many of our most beautiful roses.
China, Japan, and the Himalayas have each in turn
sent us their treasure* From China we have the
Macartney n*se, a grand ruse in iu single state, with
pure white |>ctaU, gulden stamens, ami shining leaves,
but H|H>ilt when double. From China also we have
the delightful Ruiksia*, generally the earliest rt>se that
flowers, and with very tweet-scented double white
flowers, but also with double yellow flowers that
arc almost scentless. The single Hankaia in almost
unknown in England, and one of my chief remembered
delights in my garden was the first night of this rarity
in flower in lsi»0. The flowers were a pretty pale
yellow, slightly scented.1 Iloth the Macartney and
the liankaia rose require a wall, but the China roses
(also from China, though called //. /ft</iV<i) are as hardy

ROSES 181

as a bramble. I am very fond of this rose, in all its
varieties ; it is, as I said before, almost ever-flowering,
and it has been the parent of many of the finest hybrid
roses. From Japan comes the beautiful Ramanas rose,
/?. rugosd, a rose unsurpassed where it will grow well,
as it does in my garden, with splendid thick foliage,
and large handsome fruit, which are said to make a
good preserve.

But it is from N. India and the Himalayas that some
of our best species of roses come. This is prolwbly the
native home of the musk rose, as it is of the AVsvr mvlli-
/orn, a charming rose, rightly so named, for though the
flowers individually arc small, the trusses of flowers are
wonderful : I have counted on one truss (meaning by
that the part projecting Ixjyond the leaves) over six
hundred flowers. This species also is the parent of
many hybrids, but in all of them one curious resem-
blance to the parent is always seen in the finely
serrated stipules ; each stipule is like the finest saw.
I can only mention one rose from Persia, though we
get more than one from there, and that is the 11. berberi-
/o/w, a rose that differs from all other roses in having a
single leaf instead of the usual three, five, seven, or
more divisions, and which from its earliest introduction
has been the despair of gardeners. It is now at last
successfully grown at Kew and in the Isle of Wight,

1«2 IN A GLOUCESTRRSHIKB GARDEN

hut how long the succe** will last i* doubtful. It U to
A*ia that botanist* are now looking for new specie*.
It is well known that there are some in Japan which
are an yet not grown in England, ami in 1HR8 a grand
new rose was discovered in Upper Ikirmah by General
Collett, which promise* to be a king of ro*e* ; it is a
pure white single rose, 6 ins, acn«M the petals, and ha*
been well named /*. jyij^.m/Ai,

The rose* of Africa are only found in the north and
are the same as the South Kumpoan sj»eoie*, and I must
not stay long with the American specie*. There are
not many, but there are two At leant that are worth *
plaro in the garden. The /,'. l-...-\l\ forms a rli*e btuh
with deep green shining leave*, bright m*e flowers, and
bright red fruit. Though in America it i* almost A
marsh plant, it will gn»w anywhere, and the double
form produce* the prettiest buds for button hole* that
I know. The /*. C<ifWifi«i is not a showy r»»*e, but it
(lowers late in the autumn, and *•• IA valuable . it tats
also some interesting botanical curi<f»itie«, on which I
cannot now dwell.

Thin in not much m«>re than a very slight sketch of
the wild ruse* — not only of the wild n*e,« in general,
but of those few which I have named I wUh to show
that there is beauty and interest in multitude* of ro*et
which would find no place in a rose show, and with

ROSES 183

this object I will mention two or three point* which
recommend them. They are all very easy of culti-
vation. 'The first quality of the rose,' said St. Francis
de Sales, ' is that it grows without artificial aid, and has
hardly any need of being cultivated, as you see roses
in the fields growing up without any cultivation,' and
on this he founds a good lesson. This is especially
true of the wild species : they are tatter let alone,
they do not require, and indeed they dislike, the knife.
Another point of excellence in them is that, although
(with the exception of the China roses) they are in
flower but a short time, they are followed by fruit of
great variety and much beauty. No one who has not
seen a collection of these roses can have any idea of the
variety and Ixwuity ; they are of nil colours, from black
and green to brilliant red, and of all sizes ami shapes.

The literature of the rose, t>oth Ixitanical and other-
wise, would fill a good space in any library, and I must
not attempt to say more than that a very good selection
of the poetry of the rose was published in 4E V. B.V
pretty little txx>k, Has Kostirum. It was, however, only a
selection, and did not pretend to be more. Hut on one
literary point I must say a few words. Favourite as
the rose is, and always has Ixjen, in England, it has no
English name, and seems never to have had one. I
fancy that its old English name was brier, a true

1 M IN A OLOUCESTEWHIB1 GARDEN

English word, and that it was not till after the tenth
century that the Latin row was applied to the flower,
retaining the 'brier' for the bush. In the Kpinal
glossary (eighth century) there is no roue, but there is
' brear,' and rose first appear* in Archbishop .-Klfric's
glossary in the eleventh century. Then gradually the
'brier* was dropped, and both bush and flower were
rote, but they were still distinguished in Shakespeare1!
time, e.g.—

'Of colour like the rrd ro«« on triumphant brirr. '
1 From off thi» brier pluck a while ro*r with mr.'

Hoses grow to a great age. I have a Hank-iia on my
own house that is certainly seventy years old, am! may
be older, and I have no doubt there are many ro*c« in
England very much older; and if we can l»elieve the
legend, there is a rose at Hildcshcim, in I»wer Saxon v,
that is more than a thousand years old, the cathedral
being built for it and over it in A.n. M.">.

Hoses have a »light economic and medical value, but
their commercial value is very small, except to the
nurseryman. The roseWiM*! «>f cnmmerce does not
como from the rose-tree, but from Hrazilian ami West
Indian trees of very different Uitanical families ; and
the brier-wood pipes, RO dear to smokers, are not made
from the sweet-brier, but from the white- heath (bmvi*re)
of the south of Europe.

ROSES 185

Walking round my garden with a special eye to the
roses, I see that in what I have written above I have
omitted many things that deserve notice ; I therefore
continue the subject, beginning with a rose which
stands alone in colour, not only among roses, but almost
among all flowers ; this is the Austrian brier, and its
whole history is curious. No one knows its origin ; it
is supposed to be a variety of the single yellow rose (It.
/u/*/i), itself a very scarce rose in a wild state, though
said to have been found wild in Germany, France, and
Italy. The earliest notice I have l>een able to find of
it is in Parkinson's Theatrum 7M<ini>uw, 1640, where it
is described as ' the single dwarf e red rose of Austria.'
The colour is quite peculiar : a deep crimson inside, and
yellow, almost golden, outside, and if seen against the
light, the yellow will affect the crimson or the crimson
the yellow, according as it is looked at from the inside
or the outside. I know of only one plant with the
same remarkable combination of colour in the petals,
the Folfntilla Maawbiana, of the same family as the
Austrian brier (the Ifo&iceae). There is, however, a
flower in which the calix is a dull crimson and the
corolla a bright yellow, and, rather curiously, that too
is connected with Austria, — I mean the Abutilon vexilla-
rin//i, which obtained the name of Vexillarium because
the colours are those of the Austrian banner. In

IHfl IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

another reaped the Austrian brier i* different from all
other roues. We naturally connect roses with a sweet
scent : —

' The r«M» look* fair, btjt f airr-r v« it doem
For that §wr«t cxtotir that doth in tt live.'

Yet many of the modern hybrids are quite scentless,
and the Austrian brier ha* actually an offensive scent,
so that it was called by the old writers 4 /to*i /</i</<i/
4 IluM ijr*\r<ft.t\tn.t fimjdfj Aorf fjSuJ ni^ro in/wj /M/^O," while
a modem writer says, ' liay says that the flowers smell
like honrv ; to me thev smdl more lik<> bupi ' I can
<>i»ly say for mys«*If that the ovil smoll is much ex-
aggerated . it exists, but is very »li^ht, and must be
sought f«»r. Hut it is not n |w»pular n»w. because it is
ditlifiilt of cultivation, or rather capricious. The I>ean
«>f IJiM-hivHtor, the threat master in n»«<% growing, has said
that he cannot prow it. I ^row it, but not as well as I
should wish, while in a neighbour's garden it grows
like a wei>|. sending up suckers in every direction , and
in a neighbouring village the rectory house h.id once a
grand specimen [trained to an eo.nt w.-ill. .^ri'l in the
(lowering season (unfortunately a short one) the plant
seen in full sun with many flowers open was really a
gorgeous sighL And that reminds me to say that this
in a very good way of growing the sweet-brier. I do

ROSES 187

not know why it should be so, but the sweet-brier is
seldom grown near the house, probably because it will
grow anywhere, and house-walls are valuable for more
tender plants. Bacon recommended it as ' very delight-
ful to set under a parlour or lower chamber window,'
and so I saw it onco at Tintern — not under a window
only, but trained to the top of the house (a two-storied
one), and surrounding both upper and lower windows.
The effect was very charming, and I was told that
when once established it was very easily kept in
order.

It would bo inexcusable to omit all mention of the
musk rose among the single roses. Its native homo
is the north of Africa, but it must have spread into
Europe in very early times, and it was brought into
England from Italy. So we arc told by Hakluyt:
4 The artichowc was brought in time of King Henry the
Eight, and in later times was procured out of Italy tho
Muske Ho*e plant/ As soon as it came it established
itself as a chief favourite, and became the typical
emblem of floral beauty. Shakespeare makes it tho
special rose of Queen Titania. Milton names it among
the choicest flowers to 1x5 strewn on Lycidas' hearse,
though perhaps he only uses the name in a general
way — his knowledge of flowers was very limited, — for
in Comus he makes the shepherd speak of ' musk roses

188 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

of the vale/ as if they were some wild English roses.
This high estimate of the musk rose —

' The iweet«*t flower wild nature yields,
A fresh-blown musk ro»e '-

is a little surprising to us, for it is not a very attractive
rose, and is now very seldom seen, having l>een sup-
planted by its near relation, K. Brunonii, from Nepal,
probably only a geographical variety of the old musk
rose, but a very handsome rose, especially when allowed
to wander among and over bushes, for it does not like
pruning or training. To these roses I will merely add,
and strongly recommend, a very modern row*, Paul's
single white perpetual. I do not know 'HA history, but
it is a very beautiful single rose, with clusters of large
pure white (lowers, which last in flower a long time, and
I know of few better roses for a pillar.

The more I study roses the more I feel that we
northerners have good reason to be proud of them, and
tol>c thankful for them, and Englishmen especially have
good reason for taking the flower as, aliove all others,
the Hower of England. When Mr. Wallace returned
from the Malayan Archipelago, fresh from all the
beauties of tropical vegetation, he astonished many
English readers by asserting that English wild-flowers
gave a beauty of colour to English landscape which no

ROSES 189

tropical flowers give to their native countries. And so
it is with the rose. In our climate we cannot grow
many of the beautiful shrubs which are so prized in the
gardens of Southern Europe, and our meadows and
hillsides cannot show the abundance and variety of
flowers that are found in Swiss meadows and hillsides,
but we have the rose, and with us it grows both wild
and cultivated with a freedom and beauty that are
nowhere surpassed. William Browne, in 1613, sang its
praises : —

4 A roee, as fair a* ever seen i* the North,

(Jrew in a little garden all alone ;
A sweeter flower did nature ne'er put forth,
Nor fairer garden yet was never known.'

And I am sure that there can be no more beautiful
sight in wild nature than an old English hedgerow
when the untrimmed dog-roses are in full flower, and no
garden can show more beauties in June and July than
an English garden well stored with roses of all kinds.

But the wild roses give us a lesson in growing roses
in the garden. I do not like roses in pots or budded
on high standards. I know their uses when so grown,
and if I grew roses for exhibition I should perforce
grow them in one of those ways, but roses require to
be free and unrestrained to show their full beauty, and
roses grown as lasting ornaments in the garden can

190 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

scarcely 1x5 too much left to themselves. Sonic require
walls, and so nnwt be trained, but they will grow
beautifully against a tree, or over buahc*. The /foai
Bmnonn U de.*eri)>ed an growing in India, with * iu
white flower* appearing on the largest trees, ami filling
the air with a powerful went for lung distance*,' and
Bit it in grown in perfection at Kew, rambling over
bushes ; and I once hod on my lawn a very large old
box -bush, of little lienuty either in aha}** or colour, but
allowed to remain lieeatmc from the centre grew an old
Ayrshire nwc, which in immmer clothed the U»x tree
with wonderful U'auty When the fine die«l I cut the
U>x down. And even the finest hybrid r**o* rejoice in
thin treatment, and they are *o easily propagated that
there ia no difficulty in getting a g'**l stock of pUntu,
which may bv lreate«l in many ditTerent wayn. I>»ng
cultingH from thi* year's H|»eiuMl WIN«! pUntnl deep in
the ojH'n gn>und in November will often prmlucc plant*
that will flower the following year.

I *aid that there wa-t no real KnglUh name f«»r the
nwe, and it i* remarkable that it i* the same in H.iAtern
countries— they al*o have no native name f«,r it. Sj
Sir Dietrich BrandU stated at the K««>e C'onference : —

'The n«M« ha." n«> tru* Sanicnt name. «h;.h |«..nv.| t«> th<»
fact that ro»4«i which foul l>e«-n cultiratoi 1-y the }
for centuries previously werr first intnxiuced \>\ ti.cm

ROSES 191

India after their conquest of that country. In India, in days
long before the Mohammedan Conquest, there were garden*,
and in Sanscrit songs flowers were praised, but the rose was not
amongst them.'

As there must always have been abundance of wild
roses in India, the absence of a name is very remark-
able.

And there is one point in the literature of the rose
that should not be passed by, and that is the complete
change of sentiment with which the French and English
writers have looked on the rose as cornered with the
Greek and Roman writers. By the Greeks and Roman*
the rose was always connected with scenes of revelry
and licentiousness (a few passages on the fleeting char-
acter of the flower notwithstanding). It was dedicated
to Venus, Bacchus, and Cupid, and in the phrase .«M/>
rosA we still perpetuate its connection with IwuiqtietH
and revelry. I believe it is much the same with the
Eastern poets, but I have too little acquaintance with
them to speak positively. Madame de Genlis counted
among the triumphs of Christianity the conversion of
the rose, 'profanee par la mythologie et par le culte
paii:n,' to the uses of the Church. This may be a little
far-fetched, but it is the fact that the feelings connected
with the rose by French and English writers are entirely
different, except in the few cases where the writers have

192 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

copied from the heathen or Eastern poet*. By French
writer* the rose is made to Usach the decay of beauty,
especially of female beauty. By English writers the
lessons have a tone of sadness, and often almost of
sternness. They cannot, and do not try to, escape the
obvious lessons of decay of all that is lovely and
pleasant on earth, but it is curious that it in the thorns
of the rose that seem most to have caught their atten-
tion, and from them they draw two very different
lessons. They love to point to the rose and its thorns
as showing the treacherous character of all earthly
pleasures ; but they love also to point to the thorns as
forming only a part of the rose, and a necessary |wirt,
to perfect and protect the rich flower ; and so, while on
one side the lesson is that no pleasure is without pain,
roM inter f^intis, so, on the other side, there is the
brighter lesson, that troubles lead to joy — per
roM — /*r /ri'Mtu aidum.

CHAPTER XVII
Climbing plants

Clcmatia — Vines — Honeysuckle— SmiUx— Growth of
climbing plant*.

CLIMBING shrubs, when properly used, are great helps
in a mixed garden, and I often wonder that they are
not more used, but they really are very seldom seen,
except when trained to walls. But, in speaking of
climbing plants, I do not mean such as are trained and
nailed to walls, but such as are allowed to climb more
or less by their own unassisted powers over arches,
poles, or some other support ; and I mean to speak of
hardy perennial climbers only, and so exclude annual
and tender plant*, though there are many such that
are very beautiful and useful

First and chief among such climbers comes the
clematis. The name originally meant merely a branch
of a vine, but afterwards was extended as a name for
almost all climbing plants. Pliny included several
such under the name ; Gerard says that clematis is ' a

N

1M IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

certain gencricke name to all woody winding plant*,
having certainc affinitie because of the spreading
branching and semblance of the vino ' ; and Parkinson
baa a chapter headed, 'Clematis, Clamtarcn or
Creepers,1 and the chapter begins ^ith the periwinkle
and ends with the passion flower. Of the true clematis
we have one beautiful representative in the travellers'
joy (C. ri/«i/ki), 'decking and adorning wmies and
hedge*, where people travel, and thereupon I have
named it traveller's joy/ says Gerard . and his name
h.ui clung to it, though it ha* not supplanted the older
name of 'Indie*' bower,' or 'virgin's bower,' the last
name having been given to it in honour of (Jueen
Klizabclh, though it has be*n claimed as one of the
flowers dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and so the flower
of August IT), the festival of the Assumption :-

' Whrn Mary Irft u* h«rv )x>l»w
The Virgin'* Iwwrr bcgiiui U> blow.'

In the late autumn it chango«i it* name to '«*M mAii's
beard,' from the beautiful silky head* «>f WH>*1 which
often cover the banks and hc«ii;«>ji f.»r many van Is in
length with wonderful grace and tnviuty, and which, if
pickini in good time, will keep in )H\itity all the winter.
This lovely climber is found in almost all jx\rU of
Eun>pe, from Holland to the sotith, and its |M>pularity
is shown bv it* having no leas than two hundred differ-

CLINfBING PLANTS 195

cnt names in different European languages. In (treat
Britain it is found in almost every part of the south,
and, though it seems to like the chalk tast, it will grow
anywhere, but it is not found truly wild in Scotland or
Ireland. I must not, however, dwell longer on it, for
it is a wild plant, and I have to speak of garden plants.
I know of no family more useful in the garden of
hardy plants than the climbing, shrubby forma of the
clematis, for there are some herbaceous sjwcies of which
I cannot speak now. But of the climbing s«»rts there
can be had plants of all colours— pure white, derp blue,
pale yellow, purple, and so up to the brilliant scarlet of
the t\ foffintti from Texas. Ami they can IHJ had at
all seasons, for I have often gathered the truces of tho
lovely white <*. .U«W<iM/i from tho Himalayas in March,
while tho South Euroj>ean f '. cirrfutMi will give its pale
buff flowers in midwinter if the season is not severe.
And in all of them the l>eauty is not confined to the
flowers ; the foliage of many is most delicate, and the
seeds almost as beautiful as those of our own wild
travellers' joy.

There arc two very good climbers of a much more
limited range than the clematis, the I'eriplocti and
Aristolofhut, both of which will very rapidly cover
anything to which they are attached. The I'crijtloat
(7r«w<i, which covers the hedges in many parts of

106 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

(? recce, is one of the most rapid and one of our oldest
garden climbers. It was grown and admired by Gerard
and Parkinson, and is sometimes seen in old garden*,
hut it is not common. It in, however, well worth
growing ; it ha* bright green leave*, and an abundance
of trusses of Mick and green flower*, followed by a
curious seed vessel, formed of two pods joined at the
two cnd.H, and open in the centre, and full of pretty
hilky threads ; but I have never seen the fniit except
on planU against walls. The whole plant in full of a
white, milky, j»oisonous juice, ami it has the reputation
of keeping flies away from any room against which it
in planted ; thin I do not fully believe, though it is
certain that this juice, if exuding from a broken spray,
would act liki- birdlime on any insect unfortunate
enough to touch it. The AndolufhM «i/»A/> in a l»etUT
known clim)»er, very rapid in it* growth, with Urge,
hcart-0ha|ied leaves, and curious flowers, 'Ihitchman'i
pi pen,' which are fatal to numberless small insect*, the
intern.il construction being exactly similar to an eel-
trap. It is a native of America, and was brought to
Kngland a)»out the middle of the last century, and
grows well in and near towns. There are many
species, Imt this in the hardiest.

Vines make beautiful creepers, and though, when
grown away from a wall, they produce few or no

CLIMBING PLANTS 197

grapes, they are all worth growing for the beauty of
the foliage — beautiful in the various shapes of the
leaves, and most beautiful in their autumnal colours.
Some take this colour very early in the season,
especially the claret vine, which often takes its rich
claret colour before the end of June, and keeps it till
the frost strips the tree. I grow several vines simply
for the beauty of their leaves, and I especially recom-
mend the old parsley-leaf vine, of very delicate foliage,
and often ri|>cning it* clusters of small, black, and
sweet grapes, and the sweet-scented vine of America.
I need not say how much of historical and legendary
interest attaches to the vine, which makes it doubly
attractive, but on which I must not even enter.

But of all hardy climbers I supj)ose the most uni-
versal favourite is the honeysuckle ; and it is a truer
climber than any I have mentioned. The clematis and
the vine can l»c made to climb easily, but they require
some help ; the honeysuckle will cling to anything near
it, and clasp it tightly, whence its old name of wood-
binde, a name, however, which it shares with other
wild climbers, as the ivy, clematis, etc. But the name
is very appropriate ; for every boy knows, and every
wood-labourer likes to cut, the sticks (generally hazels)
round which the honeysuckle has grown, 'oftentimes
winding it selfe so straight and hard about that it

198 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

leavetb his print upon those things so wrapped '
(Gerard). Our British species may well find a place in
any garden, and for sweetneM it will scarcely have a
rival ; but there are others of great beauty, such as the
scarlet trumpet honeysuckle from South America, and
the Dutch honeysuckle, and there is one from China,
L. fra<jranti*simrtt which can l>e grown as a climber, but
will also form a bush, and which has the great merit of
producing its orange scented, though small, flowers in
January. licforc leaving the honeysuckle it may be
worth mentioning that the name is one of our oldest
English names— it is found in the A/WKI/ GtasMry at
the beginning of the eighth century — but has not yet
U»cn satisfactorily explained.

With a few more climbers from different |»arU of the
world I will conclude my li*t, though it might !>e much
extended, and I must dcAcril»c them very shortly.
The Canadian moonseed (Menifpemwn (?<IH<I<//»JIV) is an
excellent climber, with long wreaths of very pretty
foliage. The flowers are greenish, and of no lieauty,
and I have never seen the seed, which gives the name
to the plant, as it is di<rciotis, and I have only the male
plant, but it is described a** bearing berries like frosted
grapes, with a moon-shaped stnne inside. The Ahbia
</ui;ui/<i is another rapid climber, with beautiful, five-
leaved foliage and almost black flower*, very *weet-

CLIMBING PLANTS 199

scented — these are not often produced, however, unless
the plant is grown against a wall ; but it is quite hardy,
and was one of Fortune's discoveries in China.

I have reserved to the last two plants of extreme
beauty, but very seldom seen. One is the smilax or
sarsaparilla, which I think in all ita forms is the most
beautiful climber I know. The flowers are small and
inconspicuous, and I never saw the berries produced in
England, but the foliage of all the species cannot be
surpassed, growing, as it does, in long wreaths, bearing
leaves of exquisite shape and bright green colour. The
South European S. asptra is well known, and in the
Riviera the sprays with the bright berries form the
most useful Christmas decoration ; but there are other
species from China, Japan, America, and Australia, of
greater beauty and equally hardy. And with the
smilajc I join the asparagus — not our common edible
sort, but some of the many little-known, but most
beautiful kinds, of which some can be grown as hardy
plants. For the most part, gardeners know only the
edible species and two or three grown as greenhouse
basket-plants ; but Mr. Baker's list (our latest and best
authority) gives ninety-seven distinct species, of which
some may rank among our best hardy climbers. I
grow three such, and have no doubt there are others
equally good and hardy. The three I grow are A.

200 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

Vertirillata, which here is deciduoiiB, but by the end of
May it produce* grand shoots, 1 4 ft or 1 5 ft. in length,
clothed from top to bottom with lovely sprays of deep-
green feathery foliage, which kst all the summer till
cut down by frost Another is .-/. (fitf/i/ofi'tut, not so
beautiful and not so hardy, as it seldom doea well away
from a wall, but evergreen ; and the thin! is A. mtdtth
loidts (Mtdfola asparagoidf3\ from the Cape of Good
Hope, a universal favourite, generally grown in green-
house*, but perfectly hardy.

As to the way of growing the*e creepers, it must be
left to the taste of each gardener. They may be
grown on arches of iron or chain, or on arcades built
after the fashion of an Italian pergola. Either of these
ways will give pleasant shade, and when pro]>erly
treated become g«>od addition! to any garden. Hut I
prefer poles of oak or fir, roughly trimmed, Wausc I
think the plants prefer them. They may IKJ placed
singly in the centres of flower-tain, or bv the hides of
paths, or two or three together, with different plants
to each, allowed to intermingle. These rapidly get
covered, and form excellent ornaments to a garden,
taking up very little room.

It is impossible to speak of climbing plants without
a short reference to Darwin's researches into their
nature, aa shown first in his paper on the Muremtnk and

CLIMBING PLANTS 201

Habits of Climbing Plants, published in 1865, and then
in his larger work on the Power of Movement in Plants,
published in 1880, a work which, though not perhaps
so popular or so well known as some of his other works,
yet shows, I think, almost more than any other, his un-
tiring patience in observation, and his wonderful power
of drawing out great principles from the most minute
and (to others) insignificant properties of organic life.

I must note, also, an interesting point connected with
the philology of climbing plants. In America all
climbing plants are called vines ; and it sounds strange
to us to see the name given to such different things as
the vine, the Wistaria, the clematis, the ivy, the honey
suckle, the scarlet runner, etc. But the name is not
a modem Americanism, and I am inclined to think
(though I cannot prove it for certain) that the airly
settlers brought it from England.1 The writers of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries called many plants
vines; and Halliwell, in his Dictionary of Archaic Word*,
says that vine is the name for 'any trailing plant bear-
ing fruit,' but he gives no authority for the statement.
"We have, however, a record of it in the old plant-
names — white vine, wild vine, wood vine, blood vine,
hedge vine, Isle of Wight vine, etc.

1 'Vine' is so used in 2 Kings iv. 39: 'found a wild vine, and
gathered thereof wild gourds. '

202 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

I will conclude by going back again to our own
beautiful wild climber, the traveller's joy, that I may
quote Bishop Mant's address to the flower:—

4 The traveller*! joy !
Mottt beauteous when iu flower* aacume
Their autumn form of feathery plume —
The traveller'! joy ! name well bestowed
On that wild plant, which by the road
Of Southern Kngland, to adorn
FaiU not the hedge of prickly thorn,
Or, wilding rote bush apt to creep
O'er the dry limestone's craggy eic«p ;
There still a gay companion near
To the wayfaring traveller.'

CHAPTER XVIII
(Fatten

Cheddar Pinks — Cacti— Alpine plants— Stonecrops —
Emblems from wall- plants.

AN old garden wall is a very precious possession to a
gardener. If he finds himself placed in a new garden
surrounding a new house he may by much expenditure
of labour and money soon got a well-filled garden, but
if ever ho goes into the garden of a friend who owns
an old garden, surrounded or bounded by an old wall,
be feels that his own garden wants something which
only time can give him. For an old wall is, or may be,
very useful to gardeners ; I do not mean for training
trees — a new wall will do for that as well, or better —
but for planting on it many things which there find
their most congenial home. Nature teaches us the
lesson by the way she clothes, and clothes rapidly, old
ruins; but I do not wish to say anything of this
natural clothing of old walls, except that it is well
worth noting how many plants seem to prefer these

204 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

old walls even to well- tilled ground near them. I
never saw the beautiful small white periwinkle (an
uncommon plant anywhere, and even doubtfully native)
so luxuriant as I once saw it on the walls of Tintern
Abbey. As it grew there I could easily fancy that it
was an escape from, and perhaps the last remnant of,
the oM Abbey garden, and for the first time I realised
how well adapted the plant was to form the ' garlands
of Pervenke set on his heaed ' that Chaucer and other
old writers sing of ; but the plant is no longer there,
having been destroyed by a succession of admiring and
greedy visitors. And many of us recollect with plea-
sure the South European Smtfio A/IM/M/II.* at Oxford.
It prolwibly escaped from the botanic garden, and now
clothes, not only the grand old coped wnll of the
gardens (a wall that is almost unequalled as a garden
wall), but also the walls of the park of Magdalen, and
even grows freely on the stringcourses of Magdalen
tower.

Any one who possesses an old wall will find plenty
of plants that will grow there as well, and in many
cases even letter, than on the borders ; and it seems
to make little difference of what material the wall
is made. I have seen granite walls almost as well
covered as those made of a softer stone, and slate walls
soon get covered ; but the best walls for the growth of

GARDEN WALLS 205

plants are those made of oolite or sandstone. In many
parts of the country, especially in the sandstone dis-
tricts, the wall is finished with a thin layer of stones
slightly projecting, and upon this projection are placed,
vertically, stones of various thickness and height, which
thus in time form * pockets ' of old mortar mixed with
much vegetable matter arising from dead leaves and
weeds, which make happy homes for many good
plants.

Chief among such plants I place the Cheddar pink.
In its native home on the Cheddar cliffs it grows
chiefly in small tufts on projecting ledges of the cliff,
and brought into the garden it is not an easy plant to
grow in the open bonier, but it can be easily grown if
its root uninjured (as it seldom is when bought at
Cheddar) is inserted under the coping-stone of a wall.
In that position it will flower freely, and increase by
growing downwards ; and such plants I have on the
wall of my garden, which have prolxibly been there for
more than sixty years, and live and flower without any
attention or protection ; and in a garden near Bath I
have seen a plant which, originally placed on the top
of an old freestone wall, now hangs down in a beauti-
ful mat, more than five feet in length, and three feet
across. And I believe the same treatment is good for
all the tribe of pinks. We learn this from our own

206 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

wild carnation (Dianthus earyophyUus), the parent of all
our carnations, and the gillyflower of our ancestors;
this is only found wild on our old castles, and never, I
believe, in hedge* or fields. To me it has always been
a plant of great interest, because knowing it to be
an alien, and having seen it in great abundance on
William the Conqueror's own Castle of Falaise, I like
to think that it was introduced cither by him or some
of his followers ; though iu seeds or some plants may
have been imported with the Caen stone. But I men-
tion it now because this gives an excellent hint for
growing carnations. As usually grown, they are sadly
Htitf, and a txxi of carnations shows almost as many
sticks as flowers. But in Switzerland they are grown
(especially the crimson cloves) in the window-boxes of
the chalets, and are allowed to hang down, and so
grown they are very beautiful ; and exactly the same
treatment may be given to all carnations. They may
he placed either on the top of a wall, or in the
chinks, and will there grow naturally with excellent
effect.

The hardy cacti will grow well in holes of old walls,
and generally with greater vigour than when grown in
the open ground without shelter. But it is well to
give them some protection from snow, for snow will
rot them, and the protection can easily be given by a

GARDEN WALLS 207

slate or piece of glass, or by inserting them under the
shelter of the coping-stones. Their chief enemy then
will be the snails, who manage to get at their succulent
leaves in spite of the poisonous spines with which they
are protected. And, indeed, this is the chief objection
to old walls; they are the favourite haunts of many
enemies to the garden. In course of time the mortar
decays, and the wall is full of holes ; where these are
at all large they are apt to get filled with colonies of
snails. If the holes are in the lower part of the wall,
mice will take possession of them, and I have found
slow-worms even in the higher holes, but these do no
harm. But it is to the insect world that all the holes
in an old wall become most attractive, their warmth
and dryness exactly suiting them. Alphonso Karr, in
his Tour round my Garden (in spite of its discursive-
ness, still one of the pleasantest of gardening books),
has a special chapter on an ' Old Wall ' ; but, while he
gives a few lines of praise to its vegetable beauties —
1 in the crevices of its top extends an absolute crown of
yellow wallflowers and ferns, and at its foot vegetate
pellitory and nettles in all their beautiful green ' — yet
his chief delight is in the animal life of the wall — the
lizards, caterpillars, and spiders.

But it is for the growth of alpines that the old
wall is especially useful. In many gardens it is found

208 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

very difficult to grow the beautiful cobweb stonocrope
(Semperrivum arachnoideum}. But the late Mr. Wilson
Saunders, a most successful cultivator of rare and
difficult plants, used to grow it well on a bare stone
without any soil, and in such a position I have grown
it several times, till it gradually gets destroyed by the
damp atmosphere. The first time I saw it growing
wild was on a narrow ledge of the old bridge at Hos-
penthal near Andermatt, and there it was so feebly
attached to the stone that the slightest touch dis-
lodged it. I have no doubt it would grow on any
wall, but if put high up on the wall its wonderful cob-
webs would be invisible ; yet it might be worth grow-
ing even there if it would produce its flowers, which
are of a rich crimson colour, but it is a shy bloomer
out of doors in most jxarts of England.1 Many of the
saxifrages are very difficult to grow out of doors, but
two of the most difficult and most beautiful, £'. /oru-
IcnUi from the Maritime Alj>s, and .Sf. longi/olia from
the Pyrenees, are now grown successfully and easily at
Kew by inserting them in the horizontal crevices of
a wull-like rock-work. Another alpine that can be
treated in the same way is the edelweiss. Not many
years ago it was considered almost impossible to grow

1 See paper on Wall -gardening at M. Boisaien in Gard, Chron.,
June 1890, p. 791, and September, p. 265.

GARDEN WALLS 209

this plant away from its alpine fastnesses; now it is
found to grow easily if raised from seed, and at the
gardens at Trinity College, Dublin, it is grown as a
wall-plant, in projecting hollow brackets specially used
for it and other plants like it. Another alpine which
is very apt to * miff off' if grown in the open border is
the Erinus alpinus, yet I once saw the fine old brick
coped wall which bounds the garden of Denton Hall, in
Buckinghamshire, completely covered with this pretty
alpine in full flower, and since that I have seen it on
other walls, but not in such abundance as at Denton.
I have no doubt that many of the alpine primulas and
androsaces would grow on old walls, but I have not
tried them ; and, indeed, I think that most plants
which can stand drought and delight in bright sun-
shine would be worth trying, but it would bo of little
use to try bulbs, though some tuberous plants, such as
the dwarf irises, would certainly grow in such posi-
tions. I say nothing of wallflowers, snapdragons, and
foxgloves, for they are native plants which will sow
themselves ; but seeds of the better sorts are worth
sowing, and I will only name one more flower which
should be planted on every wall where it does not
grow naturally, the wall toad-flax, Linaria cymbalaria.
This is not a true native, and is said to have been
brought from Italy, though found wild as far north as

0

210 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

Holland, but it is completely naturalised in many parts
of the United Kingdom. It is one of the most grace-
ful wall-creepers that I know, and with me it grows
naturally ; but if it did not I should certainly plant it.
The flowers are usually a pretty purple, but I have
found it with pure white flowers, and there is a varie-
gated form ; all are lovely ornaments for any wall.

King Solomon knew 'the diversities of plants and
the virtues of roots/ and he wrote of ' the hyssop that
springeth out of the wall/ as well as of ' the cedar tree
that is in Lebanon,' and since his time many writers
have followed his example, and have written of wall-
plants, not only or chiefly from the botanical point of
view, but for the obvious lessons which such plants
teach. I have seen in some old book of emblems (but
I cannot now recall the name) the emblem of a flower-
ing plant springing from a wall, with the motto,
'Rebus in arduis servare mentem/ and this has been
the keynote with all such writers — the springing forth
of healthy life, and the growth of beauty in places
where, naturally, we should least expect to meet with
them. I must find room for a few such. In the
middle of the seventeenth century T. Bailey, Sub-Dean
of Wells, was imprisoned in Newgate. While there
he published (in 1650) a queer romance, 'A History
which is partly True, partly Romantick, morally

GARDEN WALLS 211

Divine/ which he called Herba Parietis; or, the Wall
Flower as it Grew out of the Stone Chamber belonging to the
Metropolitan Prison of London, called Newgate. The title-
page is an interesting engraving of old Newgate, and
from the hood mouldings of the upper windows on
each side of the gateway there spring wallflowers in
full flower. The idea is the somewhat conceited idea
of a beautiful work coming from a dreary place. The
other instances which I will quote are pleasanter,
because not so conceited. In The Antiquary, Sir Walter
Scott makes Edie Ochiltree, when hiding in the ruins
of St. Euth, moralise pleasantly on 'the wallflowers
and siccan shrubs as grow on thae ruined wa's,' and to
draw from them 'a parable to teach us not to slight
them that are in the darkness of sin and tribulation,
since God sends odours to refresh the mirkest hour,
and flowers and pleasant bushes to clothe the ruined
buildings ' (ch. xxi.). But of all references to flowers on
the old walls I think there is none more touching than
in Cardinal Newman's account of his departure from
Oxford in 1846. I must give it in full : —

{ I took leave of my first college, Trinity, which was so dear
to me. ... Trinity had never been unkind to me. There
used to be much snapdragon growing on the walls opposite
my freshman's rooms there, and I had for years taken it as
the emblem of my own perpetual residence, even unto death,

212 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

in my University. On the morning of the 23rd I left the
observatory. I have never seen Oxford since, excepting its
spires as they are seen from the railway.'— Apologia, p. 369. l

It would be unpardonable in speaking of the litera-
ture of wallflowers to leave unsaid Tennyson's well-
known lines, with which I may conclude my paper :—

' flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies ;
Hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower— but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is. '

i See also a Poem on the Snapdragon in Verses on Various Occa-
sions, p. 17, by J. H. Newman, 1827.

CHAPTER XIX

autumn

Maples— Salisburia— Tulip-trees— Medlars — Creepe
Value of autumn tints.

PLANT-LIFE is full of mysteries, and none greater than
the changing and falling leaves in the autumn. We
know many facts about it, and we can mark many of
the changes which come before and after, but there
still remains a vast amount of mystery which we can-
not solve. I cannot even attempt to write on the
general physiology of these great changes, but I can
say something of the great pleasure that every gardener
can (and, as I think, should) take in the wonderful
beauties of autumnal foliage. American writers tell us
that we in England are not qualified to speak of the
beauty of trees in autumn, that we must go to their
great forests if we want to see the fulness of beauty
that autumn can show. They tell us that, while in
England * a soft pale yellow is all one sees in the way
of tints along the borders of the autumn woods,' in

213

214 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

America there are 'six weeks of Indian summer all
gold by day, and, when the moon comes, all silver by
night;' and 'when the maples have burst out into
colour, showing like great bonfires on the hills, there is
indeed a feast for the eye ' : — l

1 Arrayed in its robes of russet and scarlet and yellow,
Bright with the sheen of the dew, each glittering tree of the

forest
Flashed like the plane-tree the Persian adorned with mantles

and jewels.'— LONGFELLOW.

From all accounts, this is not an exaggerated descrip-
tion, and to American eyes our woods in autumn must
seem tame in colour ; but they have a beauty of their
own, and —

'The pale descending year is pleasing still.' — THOMPSON.
And though I wish to speak chiefly of the foliage in the
gardens, I cannot altogether pass by the beauties of
trees in our woods and hedgerows. One of the first
trees to put on autumnal colours and to drop its leaves
is the horse-chestnut ; in some seasons the leaves take
the colour of old gold, and when they fall the curious
horse-shoe mark at the junction of the leaf with the
branch is so distinct that it is not surprising some
should think the name of the tree is derived from
that, with which, however, it has no connection.
The elms and beeches soon follow the horse-chestnut,

1 Burroughs.

AUTUMN LEAVES 215

and colour the woods and hedgerows with large
masses of pale gold and the richest russet red. The
hedges themselves do not show much colour, unless
they are old ; then they are coloured with the spindle-
tree, the black berries of the privet, and especially the
maple. Some old hedges are now composed entirely of
maple, and are very beautiful in their autumnal tints ;
yet it is quite certain that the maple was never planted
as a hedge-plant, and it has often been a puzzle to me
how it could have established itself so as to have
strangled all the original plants. I think I have found
the explanation in Evelyn's Sylva, a book now, I be-
lieve, very little read, but in Sir Walter Scott's opinion
it should be ' still the manual of British planters, and
the author's life, manners, and principles as illustrated
in his memoirs ought equally to be the manual of
English gentlemen' (Kenilworlh). He says that the
maple ' is observed to be of noxious influence to sub-
nascent plants of other kinds, by reason of a clammy
dew which it sheds upon them.' This clammy dew
gives the maple a great advantage in the struggle for
existence, and we get the benefit of it in the autumnal
beauties of our old hedges filled with maple.

But I must leave the woods and hedgerows for the
garden. The late Miss Marianne North had seen trees
in all parts of the world, and with an artist's eye, and

216 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

she often told me that she knew nothing in foliage
more beautiful than the Salisburia in its autumnal tints.
I know of few better trees for a lawn ; in its early
stages it grows very slowly, but when fully established
it grows rapidly, ami becomes a tree always of a good
shape, and with light, graceful foliage. Botanically it
is a most interesting tree. Though closely allied to
the yew, it is as unlike a yew as possible, and the
leaves have a really wonderful resemblance to the
maidenhair fern. It comes from China and Japan,
and ofu»n bears its Japanese name, ginkgo, but it
is more commonly known as the maidenhair-tree. I
have never seen the flowers or fruit, and they are
seldom produced in England ; l and it has the further
interest that, though only introduced a little over a
hundred yearn, it is an old inhabitant of England, Iwth
the leaves and fruit being found in some of the carboni-
ferous strata. In some years the autumn foliage is of
a rich golden colour ; and the leaves are so slightly
attached to the branches that even in midsummer a
high wind or a sharp shower will almost strip the tree,
and bring down a 'rustling shower of yet untimely
leaves ' (Thompson).

1 In a few instance* the fruit has tx»en produced in RngUnd by
grafting the two M>xea on the Mine tn*. By tin* mean* fruit hat
been produced at Wortwtor.

AUTUMN LEAVES 217

Almost as beautiful in the autumn is the tulip-tree,
and it has the advantage of holding its leaves for a
long time after they are well coloured ; and both for
flowers and foliage (also of a very peculiar shape) it is
a noble tree for a lawn, but care should bo taken not
to have a flower-border near it, for its roots spread far,
are very near the surface, and are very exhaustive,
and will soon starve any plants with which they come
in contact.

Parrottia Prrsica is a beautiful shrub, or small tree,
to grow on the lawn or in the shrubbery for its
autumnal effects only. It is still a rare tree, though it
has been introduced from the north of Persia alxnit
fifty years, and in spring and summer it is not an
attractive tree, but in the late autumn each leaf be-
comes a splendid mixture of rich brown and crimson
and yellow, while the l>ase of the leaf very often
remains a deep green, so showing a combination of
colour that exists in no other shrub. It is perfectly
hardy, but if grown against a wall the leaves remain
longer on the trees, and the colours are rather richer.
It is named after Professor Parrot, who made the first
ascent of Mount Ararat in 1829, and not in allusion to
the colours.

I think no lawn should be without a medlar-tree.
It is a tree that always throws itself into a good shape,

218 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

and in the south of England is worth growing for its
fine white flowers ; but even where it does not flower
it becomes a fine mass of golden yellow in the autumn,
and the leaves will remain on the tree till frost comes.

Another shrub well worth growing for autumn is
the flowering currant (Riles sanguineum), of which the
autumn foliage is as beautiful as the spring flowers.

The Virginian creepers are too prominent on many
houses to need more than a passing notice. The
different sumachs are very fine objects in autumn, and
I name them to recommend one of great beauty, the
low-growing Rhus glabra laciniata, and to warn all
gardeners against another, the North American poison
oak, E. venenata, which is splendid in autumn, but
which is a most dangerous plant to have in a garden.
I must also add that some herbaceous plants have very
richly coloured autumn foliage, as the broad-leaved
Statices, some of the meadow rues (Thalidrum), and
especially the autumn cyclamen (C. hederaefolum), which,
though not of a brilliant colour, must be reckoned
among the best of autumn foliage plants, for the leaves
do not show themselves till the autumn, and they
remain in wonderful beauty till the spring.

I often think that botanists do not take sufficient
notice of the colouring of the leaves in autumn ; so far
as I know they do not notice it at all, I mean in the

AUTUMN LEAVES 21

scientific description of the plants. It is now a canon
in scientific botany that the entire structure of a plant
has reference only to the forming and perfecting of the
seed, and when that work is done, the different offices
of roots, stems, branches, leaves, and flowers are at an
end. Mr. Euskin will not even go so far as that, but
limits all the useful life of a plant to the formation of
beautiful flowers. Yet surely the tinting and the fall
of the leaves must have their uses in the life of a plant,
and the autumnal tints of our trees and shrubs are so
distinct, one from another, that many of them are more
easily distinguished in autumn than in summer. And
we may remark that many trees which can show no
beauty in flowers, show a beauty in autumn surpassing
the flowers of many flowering shrubs, of which the elm
and the beech are good examples; and many of our
exotic trees which have become naturalised never bear
seed (the common elm never ripens seed in England),
and yet we cannot say that their life has been in vain.
And I like to think that the tree has not done its full
task till it has delighted us with the brilliancy of its
autumn leaves ; in other words, I think that the energy
of the plant has been all along directed to the per-
fection of its life in autumn, quite as much as to its life
in spring and summer, and that the autumn tint is as
specific a character as the colour of the flowers. One

220 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

effect of the fall of the leaf is very manifest : if our
trees kept their leaves all the winter they would
probably all be weeping trees. Few people realise the
great weight of leaves. I have on my lawn a mulberry-
tree with a flower-border very near. To give light to
the border, the tree was trimmed one winter, so that
every bough was at least five feet from the grass. But
when the leaves came the boughs bent down to less
than fifteen inches from the ground ; when the leaves
are gone the boughs rise again ; but if they remained,
the tree would very soon assume the character of a
weeping tree. And what has occurred and been noticed
with that tree must be more or less true of all.

It is a great puzzle why the tints in some years are
much brighter than in others. In some way it must
depend on the amount of rain and sunshine, and pro-
bably it depends chiefly on the amount of sunshine,
for the bright summer of the Jubilee year ended in a
richly coloured autumn ; and I suppose that the same
atmospheric conditions which are needful for the ripen-
ing and colouring of our fruits are also needful to the
ripening and colouring of our leaves; and as the
botanist carefully notes the forms and colours of the
ripe fruits, it seems to me that he leaves part of his
task unfinished when he takes no notice of the forms
and colours of the ripe leaves.

AUTUMN LEAVES 221

Poets and moralisers in all ages have said so much
of the fall of the leaf in autumn that a large volume
might easily be filled with this one subject. But it
would be a very sad volume, for few seem to have
been able to escape from the obvious lessons of decay
and death. A few there have been who have taken
brighter views of the season ; as Forbes Watson
noted : —

'The last leaves shiver from the trees, and the last ripe
fruit drops pattering to the earth, and these relics do not tell
us of a dreary time, and the very sadness of autumn is
swallowed up in the sense of its more than earthly loveliness.'

But most of the writers seem to have taken the one
text only, 'We all do fade as a leaf,' and to have
written accordingly. And yet the coloured and the
falling leaf is not a sign of death, it is rather a sign
of the fulness of life and vigour. It is only when a
branch is dead that its leaves are dull and wrinkled,
and cling to the branch all the winter, but the full-
coloured and falling leaf shows that it has left behind
it a plump, vigorous bud, into which its life has passed,
and which holds in itself a colony of leaves, and
flowers, and fruit. Every gardener knows that a
cutting which keeps its withered leaves will come to
nothing, but that if they fall it shows that there is
full life behind. I wish more of our writers could

222 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

have seen how much of good allegory might be drawn
from this view of the fall of the leaf instead of the
more dreary view that all is over. Yet I know of
none that have so looked on it. Cowper came rather
near it in the ' Winter's Walk at Noon,' but he missed
it ; and the nearest approach to it that I know is to be
found in Homer's well-known lines, ofy -n-tp <t>v\\n)vt
etc., which I will give in the old translation of
Chapman :—

1 Like the race of leaves

The race of man is, .... the wind in autumne strowes
The earth with old leaves, then the spring the woods with new
endowes. '

Place de> Palmiers, H.veres.

CHAPTER XX

and JBambootf

Origin of the names— Different species — Hardiness of
Bamboos — Biblical references.

I JOIN these two families together, for though they have
no botanical relationship, they are always associated
together when writers speak of tropical scenery, and
they are the only plants in our gardens which in any
way recall the tropics to those who have seen anything
of tropical countries. But I wish to speak chiefly
of those which can be called hardy; they constitute
a very small portion of the two families, but they
are beautiful objects in any garden; they are easily
obtained, and when once established are most easy of
cultivation; yet it is a most unusual thing to see
a good collection of them.

It is only in recent years that either palms or
bamboos have had a place in English gardens, and
their exotic character and modern introduction are
well shown in their names. Many exotic plants

224 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

have been so long established that they have good
old English names, but there is nothing English either
in palm or bamboo, yet there is an interesting history
in both the names. It is not easy to see why the
Romans should not have taken the Greek name <£ow£
for the palm ; yet for some reason they did not, except
to a very small extent, but they took a part of it.
They rejected the name of the fruit fcucrvAot (whence
our * dates'), but instead of the fingers they took the
Greek name for the whole hand (TraAa/^), and so called
the tree paltna, and from that we took our 'palm.'
The name bamboo is even more curious. The native
name for the plant, or the name by which it was first
known in Europe, seems to have been ' marabou,' and
so it is called by Gerard and Parkinson, and that was
easily changed into bamlxx). But that was not all ;
the native name was Latinised into lambusa (I believe
by Liniueus), and is one of the very few native names
of exotic plants that have been so used ; tobacco
(Latinised into tabacum) and potato (latinised into
Ixitatas) are other instances, but these are both given
to distinguish a species and not a genus.

It is not easy to say when our ancestors first became
acquainted with the palm as a living plant. It was
described by Theophrastus, Aristotle, and Pliny, and
the plant described by all of them was the date palm ;

PALMS AND BAMBOOS 225

for though Pliny says that there were many sorts of
palms, it is evident from his descriptions that he was
only speaking of varieties of the date palm. In English
literature the word occurs in all the old vocabularies,
but simply as a translation. Neckham described it,
but probably had never seen it ; but from the frequent
allusions to it in the Bible, the early Eastern travellers
took full notice of it and described it minutely. It
seems very certain that neither Shakespeare nor Milton
had seen the living tree, for Shakespeare only speaks
of it as a proverbial and legendary tree, and Milton's
only epithet for it (in three places) is ' the branching
palme,' a most unfitting epithet, for it is the character-
istic of almost all palms, except the doom palm, to
be unbranched, and he speaks of a 'palmy hilloc'
in connection with lawns, and downs, and groves,
thornless roses, and grapes. Both Parkinson and
Gerard describe the trees, but do not say that they had
seen them, though they both tried, and not success-
fully, to rear young plants from the fruits, which, under
the name of finger apples, had been imported into
England from very early times. When the living
plant was first grown in England I cannot discover;
but Miller grew the date palm in 1731, and in 1768
five species are recorded to be growing at Kew.

It would be too long a task to enter into all the
P

228 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

scientific botany of the palms, but two points may be
shortly noticed, one connected with the geography of
the plant, and the other with the history of scientific
botany. The geography of the plant is curious. Its
chief home is in the tropics, but it stretches into the
borders of the northern and southern temperate zones.
It is found in Asia, Africa, and America, Australia and
New Zealand ; but in Europe the only species is the
Chamarops humilis, which grows near Nice, the extreme
northern limit of the family, while the extreme southern
limit is marked by a single member in the southern
island of New Zealand. But the curious thing about
the geographical distribution of the family is that of
the vast number of species and varieties (there are
said to be nearly 1200 species of palms, and in North
Africa alone nearly 40 varieties of the date palm),
each species (with very few exceptions) occupies a dis-
tinct and limited area, within which only it is found.
It is as if each county in England hud a separate rose
or bramble, found nowhere else but in that particular
county.

In the history of scientific botany the palm holds a
remarkable position. The plants are for the most part
(though not always) diacious, the male and female
flowers being borne on different plants. Linnams is
generally credited with having discovered the different

PALMS AND BAMBOOS 227

sexes of plants ; but Theophrastus, Aristotle, and Pliny
were all taught by the palm that there were male and
female flowers, and that the one could not produce
fruit without the other.1 They do not seem, however,
to have carried their observations in this direction
much further than the palm, though Pliny says —

'All learned men who are deeply studied in the secrets of
nature he of opinion and doe teach us, that in all trees and
plants, nay, rather in all things that proceed out of the earth,
even in the very hearbs, there are both sexes. But there is
no tree whatsoever in which this distinction of male and
female appeareth more than in palme trees.' — xiii. 4, Holland's
Translation.

And he proceeds to describe both the natural and
artificial fertilisation of the flowers. But the idea did
not take root. Parkinson was well acquainted with
Pliny's works, and in describing the palm, he says—

' The ancient writers have set down many things of dates,
that there is male and female, and that they both beare fruite,
so that they be within the sight one of the other, or else they
will not beare, but I pray you account this among the rest of
their fables.'— Theat. Bot., 1547.

In 1662, Johnston, in the Dendrographia (ii. 5), said,
' Palma fructifera vel est mas vel foemina,' and described

i The bisexual character of the palm and the arti6cial fertilisation
were certainly known to the ancient Assyrians and Babylonians. See
Flora of the A ssyrian Monuments, by Dr. Bonavia, p. 74 ; and The
Dawn of Civilisation, by Professor Maspero, p. 555.

228 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

the process of fertilisation, and evidently believed in it.
Yet still the idea was not accepted by botanists till
Linnaeus fixed it, and found that what was true of the
palm was true of all other living plants

I said that there were 1200 different species of
palms ; but of this large number only three or four
can be at all considered hardy in England. The
hardiest is without doubt the Chusan palm, Truchycarpus
Fortunci, introduced a little over forty years ago by
Fortune. It was not at first tried as a hardy plant,
but the experiment was soon made (I believe first at
Osborne), and it was found to be perfectly hardy ; and
when it has been established eight or ten years it will
commence flowering, and will generally flower every
year. It is a very beautiful and graceful plant. All
it asks for is protection from wind, and it should be
planted where it can have some screen from the pre-
vailing winds, but it does not mind frost or snow. In
my own garden it grows al>out ten foot high, and forms
splendid leaves. The only other species that can be
considered hardy is Chanurrops hinnilis, but it will not
compare with C. Fortunei, and is not so hardy. Jub&a
spcctobilis, from Chili, will grow in Cornwall, and
PritcJmrdia Jilifera has survived some winters in
very favoured places. Brahea nitida is said to be
the hardiest palm in the Riviera, and Cooes australis

PALMS AND BAMBOOS 229

at Genoa, but I have not heard of their being grown
out of doors in England, and Erythcea armata (Brdhea
Roezelii), from the Rocky Mountains, may perhaps
prove hardy.

The cultivation of the hardy palms is perfectly easy.
The Arabs say that they require to have their feet in
cold water and their head in a furnace. This combina-
tion we cannot give them, nor is it necessary ; they only
require to be planted in good soil, to be protected from
wind, and not disturbed, and when once established
they give no further trouble, and they give a continual
delight to the grower.

It is easy to pass from palms to bamboos, for though
they are not botanically related, yet they seem almost
to pass into each other at some points : —

4 Their relationship will probably be thought rather distant
by those who, from want of other materials, compare the
meadow-grasses of the temperate zone with the cocoa-nut
treea of the tropics ; but it will become more apparent when
the huge bamboo, as the representative of the grasses, is
placed by the side of some small rattan, as that of the
palms.' — SEEMAN.

The rattan, or ratoung, which provides the canes of
commerce, as well as the 'Penang Lawyers' and the
Malacca canes, are all the produce of palms and not of
bamboos. The bamboos are true gigantic grasses, and

280 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

they come botanically about half-way between our
common meadow-grasses and wheat and barley. They
are very widely distributed, being found in large
quantities in Asia and America, but there are none wild
in Europe and only one in Africa. The family does not
consist of so many species as the palms, but General
Munro in his excellent monograph, published by the
Linnaean Society in 1866, described one hundred and
seventy species, which were increased in 1879 to two
hundred and twenty species by Messrs. Riviere in their
book, Lts Bambous, a pleasant book specially devoted to
the culture of the hardy baml>oos.

Of these two hundred and twenty species perhaps a
dozen or more may be described as quito hardy, and
about as many more as doubtfully so, but all well
worth growing. The first that was introduced as a
hardy plant was, I believe, the Thamnofakimus Fal-
eo;im, from the Himalayas, one of the most elegant,
though not the finest, and that was introduced about
forty years ago. But it was not till the introduction
of the Chinese arid Japanese species that they were
recognised as amongst the very best of hardy plants,
and plants that perform a part in the garden which no
other plants can. I cannot describe or even name all
the hardy sorts. I find the hardiest are B. mttake
and B. niijra, and I think the most beautiful is B.

PALMS AND BAMBOOS 231

Castttlonis, which promises also to be one of the
hardiest. It belongs to the section in which one side
is flattened, and the flat side is a brilliant green, while
the round portion is a golden yellow, forming quite a
lovely combination both in form and colour. It is said
to produce the four-sided shoot, so much used in
Japanese furniture, and I find that many of the shoots
on my plant are so, but not all All the hardy sorts
are most easy of cultivation when once established, but
they dislike division and removal ; and they are said
to take root better when planted horizontally on the
ground, with both stems and root covered, but I cannot
speak of this from experience. They will bear heat or
cold, drought or wet, and are not injured by wind ; in
fact, I know of no plants that give such an amount of
beauty, and of usefulness too, with so little trouble.
They seldom flower in England, and it is not desirable
that they should, for the flowering is generally followed
by death. This is well known in India, and the manner
in which whole districts are laid bare has been
often described ; but in England I have never seen any
in flower but the Himalayan thamnocalamus, which
flowered about twenty years ago, not in one or two
gardens only, but throughout England, and in many
European gardens at the same time, and in every case
of flowering the plant died.

232 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

It may be well to mention two fine hardy plants, to
which the name of bamboo has been given. One is the
false bamboo, Arundo donax^ from South Europe and
North Africa, a very grand bamboo-like plant, which is
very hardy, and which has been a favourite in English
gardens for nearly three hundred years, and of which
the variegated form is perhaps the most beautiful of all
variegated plants, but not hardy. The other plant is
the so-called sacred bamboo of Japan (Xandina domestiai),
which is not a bamboo at all, but is closely allied to the
barberry, and is a most beautiful hardy shrub, and an
especial favourite with Japanese gardeners and artists.

In one respect palms and hamboos may well be
linked together. Wherever they are found they are
each of them the most useful plants that grow. Their
uses are in fact almost endless, and have l>een often
enumerated. All I can say of them here is that it is
well worth a visit to Kcw, if only to see in the museum
the many various uses to which palms and K-imlioos are
put, and have been put from the earliest ages, while in
the grand palm-house and in the open garden there is
a collection of palms and bam)>oos such as no other
European garden can show.

But in another respect palms rank far alx>ve bamboos.
The bamboos have no literary interest, at least in
English literature, while the palms have a surpassing

PALMS AND BAMBOOS 233

interest. From the times of the Greeks and Romans
(and probably earlier) the palm has been the accepted
symbol of victory ; and the reason given was that how-
ever much the palm-leaves are laden with heavy weights
they do not break, and are with difficulty bent, and if
bent at all they soon rise up again. I have seen this
prettily illustrated in severe winters when the heavy
snows have bent the tough leaves of the Phormium tenax
so that they could not rise again ; at the same time the
large yuccas were rotted, and cedar branches broken,
but the broad leaves of the palm carried the heavy load
of snow, and immediately the snow was removed the
leaves sprang up and the plants were quite uninjured.
The old emblem writers made good use of this character
in the palm; and Mary Queen of Scots took for her
device a palm bending under a heavy weight, with the
motto, 'Ponderibus virtus innata resistet.'

But it is from the Biblical references that the palm-
tree has for us its chief interest. As we admire our
palm-trees we think of the historical trees; of the
seventy palm-trees that formed the pleasant oasis in
the desert and marked the site of the refreshing wells ;
we think of the palm-trees of 'Jericho, the city of
palm- trees'; of the palm -tree of Deborah; of the
* carved figures of palm-trees ' that adorned the Temple,
and especially of the palm branches that strewed the

234 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

way in the triumphal entry into Jerusalem. And when
we admire the beauty and majesty of the palm, we
think how it is used as the type of all that is good
and lovely : —

1 1 have never found in Holy Scripture' (says S. Francis de
Sales) * that the palm was made use of to represent anything
but perfection, and it always serves as a similitude for high
and excellent things.'

And so it is 'as the palm tree the righteous shall
flourish,' the Moved of the Canticles is 'of stature like
a palm tree,' and, best of all, in the great vision the
' groat multitude ' of the redeemed were shown to the
In-loved disciple 'clothed with white robes and with
palms in their hands.'

CHAPTER XXI

Brambles; and

Types of useleosness — Brambles in cultivation — Species of
Thistles— Their edible qualities.

WHEN Milton published his scheme of ' A Compleat
and Generous Education,' he described the education
then existing as a scheme by which

* We have now to hale and drag our chiefest and hopefullest
wits to that aainine feast of sow-thistles and brambles which is
commonly set before them, as all the food and nourishment of
their tenderest and most docible age.' — Of Education.

In this way he showed his contempt for thistles and
brambles, but he was, as usual, speaking more as a
Biblical scholar than from personal knowledge of the
plant. In the Bible, thistles and brambles are always
spoken of as the proverbial types of bad husbandry,
and the pests of cultivation, because throughout the
Holy Land the general tendency of the native plants is
to be thickly set with thorns, unpleasant both to the
husbandman and to the traveller, so that Newton,

235

236 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

writing in 1587 on the plant* of the Bible, says no
more than what later travellers have noticed, that

4 Thyslles, brier*, and brembles, which grow out of the
ground themselves, without planting or hu»banding, yeelde in
a manner no kind of commodity for the u«o of man, but rather
detriment and annoyance both to man by their prickle*, and
to gnvine both by their ill company and neighbourhood.'

Arid so, having taken the palms and Kimboos a* type*
of all that is most beautiful and useful in the vegetable
world, I will now take brambles and thistle* as being
the proverbial tvjxjs of usclessness and annoyance.

l»ut it in only as proverbial t VJR»S drawn from Biblical
associations that bramble* and thistles are thus at once
condemned, for as s<*>n as we get away from Eastern
and Hiblical associations the case is changed. To begin
with brambles. Without quoting many passages in
which /^'«rc>< and Hulmji arc mentioned, and never in
contempt, and without entering into the question how
far they are identical with our bramble, I will only
name one line in Virgil where he connect* the bramble
with the delicate a

' Rubua ct fcrat a»per amomum ' (Ed. hi. 99):
and one in Pliny —

* Neither hath Nature produced bramble* for nothing els
but to pricke and do hurt ; but such i* her bounty that the

BRAMBLES AND THISTLES 237

berries which they beare are man's meat, besides many other
medicinable properties.'

And he gives a list of their virtues.

Clearly these writers did not despise the bramble,
nor did our English ancestors ; and while I claim for
our wild bramble — ' the scorned bramble of the brake '
—that it is one of the most beautiful of our native
plants, I claim also for the family at large that almost
every species is well worthy of a place in the mixed
garden. Our wild bramble, of course, must be kept out
of the garden, or it will soon monopolise the whole, and
we can admire its grace and beauty in any hedgerow,
where it soon takes possession of every untidy corner ;
yet, though I think Walt Whitman's description, that
1 the running blackberry would adorn the parlours of
Heaven,' is exaggerated, I should not object to it as a
very lovely ornament of a garden if it were not for
this 'running ' quality. Many brambles, and our wild
one especially, have the power and the habit of bending
their shoots to the ground and there rooting, and so
travelling and increasing at a very rapid rate. These
long shoots rooting and then making fresh plants are
strictly analogous to the runners or stolons of the
strawberry, with which the bramble is closely allied ;
and for this reason they were (and perhaps still are)
used for binding down graves, a custom which, though

238 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

it had the wine t ion of Jeremy Taylor, can scarcely be
recommended, an such a covering, unices very closely
watched, would soon become a mass of untidiness. But
if we cannot admit our wild bramble into our gardens,
we may well admit it when it puu on variegated leaves.
This it does in many different way*, and such brambles
make beautiful bushes, which are easily kept in order ;
and there are two beautiful forms with double flowers,
white and pink, which are exactly like branches of small
roses, and flower in the autumn.

The family of the bramble is a large one, containing
more than a hundred well defined specie*, with a Urge
number of varieties*, being found in nearly all extra-
tropical countries, though chiefly found in the northern
hemisphere, and stretching from the extreme north in
the Arctic Circle to the Falkland Inland* in the smith.
Of the*o then? are four distinct «pccic* in (»roat Hritain,
with many varieties of the common bramble ; and it is
my belief that of the whole numW there i« not one
that JH not beautiful cither in foliagp or rt«»wer or fruit.
I will name a few whi<h I *hnuld not willingly lose
from my garden.

I think the finest of all is the Ntitka Sound bramble
(/i1. .YM/J'finuA with large leave*, and large, pure white
Mower*, looking like a fine single r«*e, and remaining
in bloti&om a long time. (I need scarcely *ay that the

A Devonshire Lane.

BRAMBLES AND THISTLES 239

brambles and roses are closely allied ; even their names
Rubus and Rosa are said to come from the same root,
signifying red, and the most perceptible difference is in
the fruit, which in the brambles is a fleshy, juicy fruit,
borne on the calyx, and in the roses is the tube of the
calyx itself, enlarged and coloured.) The R. odoratus,
also from North America, is like the Nutka Sound
bramble, but it is not so large, and the flowers are
purple ; it is more or less in flower all the summer.
Both of these are thornlcss, and so is the I!, deliciotus
from the Rocky Mountains, with fine white flowers, but
not, in my opinion, equal cither in foliage or flower to
/?. Aulfcinitt. Of the high-growing brambles I should
•elect two — the white-skinned bramble (R. biflonis\
from Nepal, which, with its very white stems and
leaves, is a striking object grown among other shrubs,
and the red-haired bramble (R. phoenifohisius) from
Japan, a very curious and beautiful plant. The flower
is a poor one, but the long calyx-lobes and other parts
are covered with red hairs ending in a gland, curiously
like the sun-dew, and like that very destructive to small
insects. The It. laciniutus is also a high-growing bramble,
with beautiful leaves and fine black fruit, which the
birds do not seem to fancy. Its native country is
unknown, but it is said to be naturalised on Chislehurst
Common and in parts of South Wales. Of the lower

240 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

and more bushy brambles, the pink North American
R. spcctabilis would make a pretty bush if it had more
flowers ; but a far prettier little bush is the /?. roswfolius,
which, though it comes from the East Indies and
Mauritius, is perfectly hardy and has pretty double
rose-like flowers. It flowers, however, so late in the
autumn that in many years it does not flower at all,
and I never saw the fruit, which in its native countries
is said to be delicious. There are also a few low-growing
prostrate brambles well worthy of a place in the garden.
The Arctic bramble is remarkable for its fruit, which it
only produces very sparingly in England, and indeed
the plant ia in most places difficult to establish ; but in
Sweden and Norway the fruit is produced in great
abundance, and is largely used to make a very popular
preserve. Very different and very curious is the
Antarctic bramble (//. <n/>7n;/w), which in New Zealand
assumes many different forms ; but in the form best
known in England the trifoliate loaves are reduced to
the three hard midriks, which, lieing thickly studded
with delicate white thorns, give the whole plant a
very pretty and uncommon effect.1 To these two I
should add a creeping bramble from the Himalayas,
K. nutan,*, with handsome deep green foliage, and a
single white nodding flower on an upright stem, very

1 In the variety with perfect leaves the thorns are black.

BRAMBLES AND THISTLES 241

unlike any other bramble flower, and making an excel-
lent plant for covering bare surfaces, even under trees.
I must not dismiss the brambles without some notice
of the fruit, which in all the species is wholesome, and,
as far as I know them, pleasant, and all more or less
ornamental. If we had not the bramble in every hedge
we should certainly grow it for the beauty and excel-
lence of its fruit ; and we may remember that the
dewberry, which used to be considered a distinct
species, but is now classed as a variety of the common
blackberry, was considered by Shakespeare a fitting
plant for Queen Titania to order for her love, and
worthy to be placed with apricots, figs, grapes, and
mulberries. The raspberry we have brought into our
gardens, though it is a true native bramble, and by so
doing we have improved the fruit, though in its wild
state the fruit is excellent, and in some parts of
England so abundant as to give quite a valuable harvest
well worth gathering. Of late years the American
blackberries have been introduced into our gardens,
but with very partial success. They seem to do well
in some soils, and to bear good fruit, which comes in
the Autumn ; but speaking generally, they have turned
out failures, and even in America, where they "are much
cultivated, the latest report is ' that in our so-called
improvement of fruits we have generally failed to

Q

242 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

improve the quality. Our most productive black-
berries are large and beautiful, but they are inferior
in flavour when compared with the wild ones found
along the fence-rows of back pasture lots.' I have
never succeeded in getting fine fruit on them, and the
few I do get are always taken by the birds before they
are fully ripe. And so I must leave the brambles, but
not before I have quoted two stanzas from Eben.
Elliott's pretty poem on the wild bramble : —

' Though woodbines flaunt, and roses grow

O'er all the fragrant bowers ;
Thou needst not be ashamed to show
Thy satin-threaded flowers—

For dull the eye, the heart is dull,

That cannot feel how fair
Amid all beauty, beautiful,

Thy tender blossoms are. '

I have left myself too small a space to speak of
thistles as I should wish, for I think them as well
worthy of admiration and cultivation as the brambles ;
and I mean by thistles all those members of the com-
posite family which, though divided into many genera,
have a common resemblance as having prickly stems,
leaves, or flowers, with the flowers arranged in a more
or less globular shape, and the sea-hollies and the
teazel, which, though of different families, may well
be ranged for our purpose in the same ranks. Of the

BRAMBLES AND THISTLES 243

thistles, we have in England four genera : the thistle
proper (Carduus)> the plume thistle (Cnicus), the cotton
thistle (Onopordum), to which the thistle of Scotland is
now generally referred, and the carline thistle (Carlim),
and they are all beautiful in shape or colour, or both •
and if it were not for their evil habit of producing
abundance of seed, and scattering them in every
direction by means of the exquisite thistledown,
many of them would be welcome ornaments in any
garden. As it is, I never pass the grand wayside
woolly-headed thistle (Carduus eriophorus) without ad-
miring the splendid foliage, which is almost equal to
the classical acanthus, while the c great, whitish, round,
prickly head, flattish at the top, and thick set with
wool, doth so well resemble the bald crown of a fryer,
not only before it be in flower, but especially after it
had done flowring, that thereupon it deservedly received
the name of the Fryer's Crown Thistle ' (Parkinson) ;
and if I lived where goldfinches abound (but I do not),
I should be tempted to grow thistles simply for the
sake of the beautiful little birds to whom the thistles
are so attractive. But I must confine myself to the
garden species, and with something of the same apology
that Parkinson felt compelled to make : —

'You may somewhat marvel to see me curious to plant
thistles in my garden, when, as you might well say, they are

244 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

rather plagues than pleasures, but when you have viewed
them well what I bring in, I will then abide your censure.'

Among these I should select the different species of
Echinops. These are well named from the echinus or
sea-urchin, as, like that, the perfect flower-heads are
exact globes set with spines ; they are mostly European
and perfectly hardy, and they are probably among the
longest lived of any herbaceous plants. How long they
will live and flourish in the same place I cannot say,
but I have plants in my garden which I am sure have
been in their present places for seventy years, and are
as fresh and flourishing as if they had been planted
this year. When fully perfect, the flowers are either
blue or white, and 'they make a fine show, much
delighting the spectator.' But their near allies, the
Eryingia, are even handsomer. They are for the most
part blue or white, and some of them, especially Eryn-
gium amethystinum and E. oliverianum, are of a rich
metallic blue colour both in flowers and stems, which
I know of in no other flower whatever. All the
Eryngia are handsome plants, most easy of cultivation,
but there is one which I think is unsurpassed as a
hardy plant where it likes the soil and is well grown.
This is the E. giganteum from the Caucasus ; it is only
a biennial (as so many of the thistles are), but it sheds
its seeds freely, and when once established in the

BRAMBLES AND THISTLES 245

garden is not easily lost. Its great beauty is in its
second year, when it bears a large head of flowers
which I can compare to nothing but a grand frosted-
silver candelabrum. I know of no plant that is so
attractive to strangers who see it for the first time,
and it is a most attractive plant also to bees, both
honey and humble bees.1

Having mentioned the edible uses of brambles, I
may say that thistles also have their uses. The arti-
choke is a thistle, and I suppose was more esteemed by
our forefathers than it is by us, for Evelyn says that
shortly before his time they were * so rare in England
that they were sold for crowns apiece ' ; and as an
ornamental plant it is a grand object planted singly on
a lawn. Even the common thistles in Evelyn's day
were in good repute, being 'about May sold in our
herb markets, and is a very wholesome sallet eaten
with oyl, salt, and pepper.'

Brambles and thistles do not sound likely subjects
for a well-tilled garden, but I have specially chosen
them as my subject because I believe there is no living
organism that has not in it both beauty and interest,
and among the vegetable organisms I believe there is
none that may not with judgment be made to serve
either to our use or pleasure, or both. The interest
1 For a further account of thistles see p. 81.

246 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

and beauty of any garden is not to be gauged by the
amount of money spent upon it, and many a garden of
homely and common hardy plants may give more
pleasure to the owner, and be of more interest to
visitors, than a grand garden which depends for its
beauties on hothouses and conservatories and a host of
gardeners. I once knew a man who was an excellent
gardener and scientific botanist, who devoted a large
part of his garden to docks. Of course he was laughed
at, and his garden was called a dockyard, but it gave
him much real pleasure, and he did good scientific
work in it. I do not advocate the growth of docks,
but I do think that our forefathers showed some wisdom
in contenting themselves with 'a garden of simples, 'and
that even now, with all our wealth of flowers gathered
from all quarters of the world, we need not despise
such humble additions to our garden as we may find in
brambles and thistles. The ' day of small things ' still
has its value — inest sua gratia parvis — and Chaucer's
description of the ' poore persoun of a toun ' (i.e. a
parish priest) will also describe a good gardener who
is content with something less than grandeur in his
garden : —

' He cowde in litel thing have suffisance.'

CHAPTER XXII

(n t

Gardens in a wood — What trees to exclude — Cedars and Yews
— Flowering trees — Choice of situation.

A GARDEN without trees scarcely deserves to be called
a garden, and if I had to build a house for myself, with,
of course, a garden attached, I have often thought that
it would be very delightful to build the house in an
old wood, and gradually form the garden by cutting it
out of the wood. Such a thing has often been done.
The late Mr. Halliwell-Phillips built what he called a
homely wooden Bungalow in Hollingbury Copse, near
Brighton, and made a garden in the copse; but how
far the garden was a success I do not know. In a
wood, at Wisley, near Weybridge, Mr. Wilson has
made a wood-garden, which has almost an European
reputation ; but it is not a garden, it is still a wood,
in which a large number of plants are grown most
successfully, and, as it is four miles from the house, it
certainly is not a home-garden, and I can only think of

247

248 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

a garden as an adjunct to a home. In America also it
is not uncommon for rich men to build for themselves
a large house in an uncleared forest, and to clear the
forest only so far as to make it a park in which the
house stands. A small portion round the house would
be kept as a lawn, but this does not constitute a
garden. Trees by themselves will not make a garden,
but a garden lacks more than half its proper beauty
if without trees ; and so I propose to talk of trees, what
are and what are not suitable for gardens.

I should lay it down as a strict rule never to plant
English forest trees in a garden. If they are there
already, there may be good reasons for keeping some
of them, but in a garden of limited extent (and it is of
such I am speaking) it seems a waste to plant trees
which can be had in perfection in the woods and
hedgerows outside of the garden, to the exclusion of
the many fine exotic trees which can only be grown in
gardens. And even in retaining British forest trees
that may be on the ground, I think nothing can be said
for them unless they are of some special excellence.
There is perhaps no grander deciduous tree than the
English oak, when it has past its first manhood and is
bordering on old age, and it does seem cruel to cut it
down. Yet it takes up too much room when in its
full grandeur, especially in certain soils. In some soils

TREES IN THE GARDEN 249

it grows to a great height, with a clean straight stem,
and not a great spread of branches, as in the grand
oaks at Bagot's Park, in Staffordshire, and if it would
always grow like that it might be admitted into any
garden, but the general habit is wide-spreading, and I
have seen an oak at Southgate, near London, of very
moderate height, but the branches cover a circle of
which the diameter is over 120 ft. There are very
few gardens that could admit such a tree.

On no account should an elm be admitted in or near
a small garden, though it is hard to exclude a tree
which so rapidly takes a beautiful shape, and which in
the late autumn puts on such golden tints. But pro-
bably no tree takes possession of a large extent of
ground so rapidly as this Italian stranger, for it is not
a true native. It sends up suckers at a considerable
distance from the parent tree, and these, if let alone,
soon become trees. About forty years ago a Scotch
forester surveyed a part of South Devon to report on
the growth of hedgerow timber, and he reported that
in the parish of Clyst St. George the hedgerow elms
occupied three-quarters of the parish, for though only,
or chiefly, in the hedgerows, their roots extended so far
into the fields that they met and even overlapped
in the middle of the fields, so that only one-quarter of
the parish could be considered free from the elm roots.

250 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

Beeches must be excluded, for nothing will grow
under or near them, and though the copper beech is
much admired by many, I could never like it. There
are many different shades of copper beeches, of which
some may be less ugly than others, and for a few days
in the spring the colour of the young leaves is very
brilliant, quite equal to the Japanese maples, but a
black tree is to my eyes a monstrosity, and sufficiently
ugly to justify Wordsworth's complaint, that there
were only two blots in his beautiful vale, a copper
beech and Miss Martineau. There is, however, one
beech, the fern-leaved, which makes a beautiful lawn
tree, and has lovely tints both in spring and autumn.

I dismiss at once the horse-chestnut, the sycamore
(though, for a few days, when the flowers come out
before the leaves, the whole tree is of a rich gold
colour), the lime, the plane, and even the Spanish
chestnut and the ash, as all better outside the garden
than inside; but I would admit one upright poplar
(and not more), for its unlikeness to everything around
it, and a birch for its exceeding lightness and pretty
bark. Of the other native deciduous trees I should
be inclined to admit only the hornbeam. Though
little grown as an ornamental tree, it makes, when not
disturbed or clipped, a very beautiful lawn tree, with
a very wide spread of branches which give a pleasant

TREES IN THE GARDEN 251

shade, the foliage not being too thick to admit glimpses
of sun and light. The best sort is the hop hornbeam,
with curious fruit exactly like hops, which are very
ornamental, and remain on the tree a long time.

I am not fond of conifers in any part of a small
garden; they are for the most part too formal in
shape, too thick to give a pleasant shade, and too
monotonous in colour. In a park or in large planta-
tions they are very valuable, and in such places I can
admire even the Araucaria excelsa (the puzzle-monkey),
which when seen too near is the most artificial-looking
tree in nature, the leaves and branches having almost a
cast-iron texture. But there are two evergreen conifers
which may be welcomed anywhere. The cedar of
Lebanon is one, which (quite apart from its many
associations, Biblical and otherwise) is the most de-
lightful tree to grow on a lawn, and if it is in good
soil it very soon takes a good shape, so that if I was
limited to one tree I should choose a cedar of Lebanon.
The deodar of the Himalayas, and the Atlas cedar are
probably only geographical varieties, and are fine trees,
but not equal to the cedar of Lebanon. The second
evergreen conifer which I would not willingly be with-
out is our own British yew-tree. I am not sure that I
should plant one, for its growth is so very slow that it
will scarcely give nepotibus umbram, and until it gets to

252 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

a good age there is not much beauty in it ; but I could
scarcely cut down an old one. I am happy in having
two old ones on my lawn growing near together, and
far beyond the memory of the oldest inhabitant they
have carried a swing, and it is pleasant to think to
how many generations of the children of the village
these yew-trees with their swing have been a never-
failing delight. They are represented in an old paint-
ing quite two hundred years old. Besides these two
evergreen conifers there are two deciduous ones, of
which single specimens might claim a place. The
larch, brought into England from the European Alps
about two hundred and fifty years ago, is very beauti-
ful in spring, and is almost the first of the deciduous
trees that comes into leaf, and an old larch covered
with lichen is a pretty sight; it is also one of the
fastest-growing trees we have, and will grow anywhere.
The Salisburia, or jingko-tree, from Japan (a near ally
of the yew), is another deciduous conifer that should
be on every lawn. It is very slow of growth in
its earlier years, but its foliage (so like the maiden-
hair fern) is always pretty and interesting, and in
a fine, dry autumn the autumnal tints are magnifi-
cent.1

I think we are all too shy of planting fruit-trees on

i See p. 216.

TREES IN THE GARDEN 253

our lawns. It is not easy to say why we should not
plant apples, which bear (especially the pippins) such
lovely flowers in great abundance, and which are
equally if not more beautiful when covered with their
fruit in autumn ; as a summer tree there are certainly
many more beautiful. The cherry-tree also is a de-
lightful tree both in flower and fruit, and the autumnal
tints are very rich, though not so rich in the cultivated
as in the wild cherries, which in some counties, espe-
cially in Oxfordshire, are marked features in the woods
and on some of the village commons, and in a mild
autumn the leaves cling to the trees for a long
time. For a short time in the spring the almond has
a special beauty, but the flowers are very short-lived,
and the tree is more suitable for a shrubbery than for a
lawn.

But I must speak more of the many fine exotic
flowering trees, which I said should be planted on our
lawns in preference to our British forest trees. I sup-
pose there is really no more beautiful flowering tree
than the horse-chestnut, but I should not admit it into
the garden; for though it has only been introduced
about two hundred years, it has become one of our
commonest hedgerow trees, and may be admired there;
and although the foliage is very grand, the general out-
line and growth of the tree is too heavy and cumber-

254 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

some for a lawn. But of all exotic flowering trees
there are none to equal the magnolias. We generally
grow them as shrubs, or against a wall, but in many
places they will grow, and not at all slowly, into fine
trees. I remember one magnificent magnolia (I believe
M. yrandiflora) standing alone, and as large as a fine
elm, near the old Roman Villa at Brading, in the
Isle of Wight. This may be considered a favourable
spot, but at Edgbaston Botanic Gardens, near Birming-
ham, which are in a very exposed and cold situation,
there are some grand magnolias which may well take
rank as forest trees. They are not the large-flowered
species (M. grand iflora), but M. acuminata, M. macro-
phylla, M. auriculata, and M. jmrpurea, and the finest
specimen of M. acuminaia is nearly 50 ft. high, and
35 ft. through. The tulip-tree (Liriodendron tulipi-
fera), from North America, is botanically closely allied
to the magnolia, and is a most excellent lawn tree. Its
large, quaintly shaped leaves, which in autumn turn to
a rich yellow and brown, and its handsome, sweet-
scented flowers, make it very attractive; it is also a
rapid grower, and there are many trees in England
from 100 ft. to HO ft. high. The Catalpa syringcefolia
is another beautiful tree for a lawn, allied to the big-
nonia, but with trusses of beautiful white and purple
flowers, which are unlike any other flower. The draw-

The Garden of an Italian Villa.

TREES IN THE GARDEN 255

back to it as a lawn tree is that it is so short a time in
leaf. In a backward season the leaves will not appear
till the end of June, or even the beginning of July, and
will fall with the first frost ; but as long as they last
they are large and handsome, and the habit of the tree
makes it a good tree for shade. The fruit is not often
produced in England, but it is very curious, like a long
French bean. I had abundance of seed in the Jubilee
year, but never before or since ; and in the same year
the Kohlreuteria, from Japan, was also covered with
handsome golden fruit. If this tree always produced
its fruit I should recommend it, but it will only do so
in such exceptional years, and so I do not recommend
it for a small collection. Somewhat similar in foliage
and even in flower to the catalpa (though not botani-
cally allied) is the Paulownki imperialis, from Japan;
but not so much to be recommended as the catalpa,
because though a magnificent tree with beautiful purple
flowers like a foxglove, the flowers come out before the
leaves, and are seldom produced at all except in the
mildest parts of England. For this reason I grow it as
a shrub, or rather as a herbaceous plant, cutting it
down to the ground every autumn. Under this treat-
ment very strong shoots are produced in the spring,
which carry throughout the summer immense leaves
(I have measured them two feet across) of a very

256 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

delicate colour and texture, so making one of the hand-
somest foliage shrubs I know.

It would be easy to make the list much larger, but I
have in my mind a garden of a small extent, and for such
the trees I have named would be almost sufficient. I
do not mention such beautiful trees as thorns of many
kinds, hollies, or service trees, because I should rather
rank them as tall shrubs than as trees. But before I
close the list I must mention two great favourites,
which should be on every lawn, the medlar and the
mulberry. I never saw a medlar that was not of a
beautiful shape, and it makes a more natural tent or
arbour than any other tree; the flower is handsome,
and the fruit very acceptable to those who like it. Of
the mulberry-tree we cannot say too much. The flowers
are inconspicuous, but curious and well worth study-
ing, and the fruit is delicious when we have a hot sum-
mer, and the tree is beautiful in shape and colour. An
old mulberry-tree is an ornament to a lawn that any
owner may be proud of, and it is so easily grown that
large limbs cut off and stuck into the ground will grow.
Among old gardeners it bore a very high character.
Pliny thought that

* It seemeth to have some sense and understanding, as if it
were a living and sensible creature, for of all civile and
domesticall trees it is the last that doth bud, and never before

TREES IN THE GARDEN 257

all the cold weather is past, and therefore she is called the
wisest of all others.' l

Some may think that of the trees I have recom-
mended a few only are suitable for all parts of Eng-
land, while others are only fit for the warm sheltered
situations of the south. But I believe they are all
perfectly hardy anywhere if planted in proper situa-
tions, and a little attended to when young. I fancy
that our forefathers were wiser than we are in their
choice of situation for tender trees and shrubs. We
are in the habit of putting them in the warmest corners
we can find, while they chose the coldest. Leonard
Mascall was a very practical gardener, and in 1590 he
published A Eooke of the Arte and Manner, How to Plant
and Graffe all Sorts of Trees, etc., and this is his advice : —

'Commonly the most part of trees doe love Sunne at
Noone, and yet the South Winde (or vent d'aual) is very
contrary against their nature, and specially the almon tree, the
Abricote, the Mulberie, the Figge tree, the Pomegranate tree.'

I am sure there is much in this. It is quite certain
that all Japanese trees like shade and a north aspect ;
and the finest and most fruitful old mulberry-tree
that I have ever seen is at Rochester, growing in a
corner where it looks to the north and east, and is
thoroughly protected from the south and west.

i In the P. B. version of the Psalms 'the mulberry-trees were
destroyed with the frost' — but the translation is wrong; the tree
named is the Sycomore.

CHAPTER XXIII

Birdg in tfc* (Parden

Sparrows — Birds and insects — Flying flowers — Garden
music— The Nightingale.

IF I wore to ask the question whether birds were
useful or hurtful in the garden, I should get many
different answers. The professional gardener would
answer, without any hesitation, that he would be glad
to have them all cleared away. And certainly it is a
vexing thing to have to wage constant war with them,
from the sowing of the seed till the crops are gathered,
and generally to be beaten by them, for most of them
have no respect for gardeners, and no fear of any sort
of scarecrows, or if they ever have a fear, a very short
acquaintance with the scarecrow soon breeds contempt,
and they use it for a point of vantage. Yet there is
much to be said for the birds, even from the gardener's
point of view, and, without writing any general account
of the birds that haunt, or may from time to time be
found, in our gardens, I wish to say something for

258

BIRDS IN THE GARDEN 259

them, not only as beautiful additions to, but even as
helps in, our gardens.

Of all garden birds, I suppose the house-sparrow is
everywhere the most abundant, and it is not easy to
say much in his favour. He makes himself at home
not only in the countries of which he is a true native,
but in America and Australia, to which he has been
taken by English settlers, he increases and multiplies
till he has become a subject of national importance ;
and wherever he is his character is unaltered, he is
everywhere the proverbial type of boldness, impudence,
and familiarity. His robberies in the garden extend to
almost everything, beginning with the flowers of the
crocus in the spring, and sparing nothing till he leaves
the gardens for the wheat-fields, where he literally
takes tithe of the corn, for his robberies are said to
extend in some seasons to quite one-tenth of the crop.
Miss Ormerod, who is our great authority on injury to
crops by animals of all sorts, gives her verdict against
the sparrow in the strongest terms, and advises his
wholesale destruction; and the old churchwardens'
accounts, and the many sparrow clubs existing through-
out the country for the express purpose of diminishing
their number, if not of annihilating them, bear witness
to the general belief that they are mischievous and
useless. Yet I like the sparrow, and much may be

260 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

said in his favour. His very impudence is attractive,
and it is hard to say why the love for human society
and human habitations should be condemned in the
sparrow as impudent familiarity, and should be wel-
comed in the robin-redbreast as a charming confidence.
Yet so it is, though it has not always been so. I
suppose the Roman passer was our house-sparrow, and
perhaps also the Greek or/>ov0os. It is now generally
agreed that the sparrow of the Psalms and of the New
Testament is not our sparrow. Yet it was so long
identified with it in common belief, that it seems
wonderful that the Psalmist's mention of it in con-
nection with the holiest places, and still more our
Lord's referring to it as a special object of the Father's
love, should not have done as much in winning affection
for the sparrow as the ballad of the 'Babes in the
Wood ' has undoubtedly done for the robin. But long
before the ' Babes in the Wood ' the sparrow had found
his poet, and as long as sparrows are allowed to live
among us, the two odes of Catullus, ' In passerem
Lesbitf,' and ' Luctus in niorte passer is? will plead some-
thing in his favour. And in spite of his mischievous
habits there is much to be said for him. The amount
of flies and other insects which he destroys is wonder-
ful ; and when we speak of the insects destroyed by
the sparrows and other birds, we must remember that

BIRDS IN THE GARDEN 261

most of them existed as caterpillars, and would be the
parents of large families of caterpillars, and it is in the
caterpillar stage that all insects are most destructive in
the garden, and everything which can reduce the
caterpillar in our gardens should be welcomed. My
chief objection to the sparrows is the way in which
they drive away other birds by taking possession of
their nests. Swallows and martins are driven away by
them in this way, and so far they must be condemned ;
but I will not say more about them, for I must go to
other birds.

There may be some doubt about the usefulness of
the sparrow in the garden; there can be very little
about the thrush. I suppose our greatest enemies in
the garden are slugs and snails, and the destruction
which the thrush works among the snails at all times
of the year is very great. How he finds them in their
hiding-places is something of a mystery, but he makes
no mystery of his method of destroying them ; indeed,
as he takes them to some well-seen stone, and there
gives notice of what he is doing by his breaking the
snails against it, he almost invites you to witness his
work, and he seems so proud of it, and so conscious
that he is doing good service, that for the time he lays
aside his shyness and will let the gardener come very-
near looking watchfully at him, but not stopping in

262 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

his work. And the thrush is, I believe, almost the
only wild bird that does us this good service ; ducks
will eat a large quantity, but do mischief in finding
them; and I know of no other bird that eats slugs,
though hedgehogs eat them, and the shrewmouse and
the slow-worm are said to catch and eat many.

With the thrush, especially under his old names of
' the throstle, with his note so true,' who

' By breaking of the day
Chants to his sweet full many a lovely lay ' ;

or 'the mavis, that sings sweetly in the bush,' we
always associate the blackbird : —

' The ouzel cock, so black of hue,
With orange-tawny bill.'

They are closely connected: they are both lovers of
gardens ; they are both great robbers of strawberries,
cherries, and, indeed, of all fruit that they can get at,
but I claim for both of them that they earn much of
what they rob by their constant destruction of insects
and caterpillars, and both of them fully pay for the
fruit they take from us by their unwearied power and
beauty of song. But I have never seen the blackbird
eating snails as the thrushes do, nor have I ever seen
the starlings, though they are said to eat them; but
the quantity of worms and insects that the starlings
destroy must be very large, and they are beautiful

BIRDS IN THE GARDEN 263

objects on a lawn, in which they seem to take an
especial delight, though their favourite hunting-ground
is in the pastures in front of cows and horses, to whom
they certainly do good service in freeing them from
flies. At one time it was supposed that starlings were
much diminishing in England, but they are in sufficient
numbers now, and we could ill afford to lose them. In
my own neighbourhood they roost in great flocks in a
large wood, which is a well-known fox cover, and I am
credibly informed that when they roost in the brush-
wood, which forms the larger part of the wood, the
foxes catch them in large numbers.

It would be hard to guess at the number of flies that
the different fly-catchers destroy every day. They
are not afraid of man, and when they have a brood,
both the parent birds will occupy some low branch or
post within easy reach of their nest, and there, un-
deterred by any visitors, they will spend the whole day
in catching flies and taking them to their nest. I can-
not say anything now on the other fly-catching birds,
as the robin, wren, swallows, swifts, etc., except that
they are all useful and all beautiful. Of the larger
birds, the cuckoo will at times come into the garden,
and, I believe, never touches fruit; but the jay, the
magpie, the rook, the jackdaw, and the wood-pigeon,
are all inveterate thieves. The jay is now a scarce

264 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

bird, except in very wooded districts, but the others are
not only constant thieves, but generally confine their
thefts to the very early morning before the gardeners
are up, and at that time they manage to gather much
booty; I believe a jackdaw will very soon strip a
walnut-tree. Yet I should welcome them all, and am
sure they do work which none but large birds can do,
in the destruction of the larger caterpillars, and especi-
ally the wire-worm and the larva of the cockchafer.

But, allowing that the birds take toll of our fruits,
and to a very large extent, can we do without them ?
William Lawson, in 1618, wrote of the * 1000 delights
that are in an orchard and garden,' and named as a
special delight 'abroode of nightingales,' 'the gentle
robin redbreast,' and ' the silly wren,' and added : —

' The blackbird and the threstle sing loudly on a May morn-
ing, and delighte the eare much (and you neede not want
their company if you have ripe cherryes or berries), but I had
rather want their company than my fruit.'

I do not agree with him ; a little trouble in netting
will do much to protect the fruit, and a garden without
birds wants one of its best ornaments. I do not know
who it was that called birds moving and flying flowers,
but they may well be so called, and they are flowers
that last in beauty all the year.

And their songs — can we do without them ? Faber

BIRDS IN THE GARDEN 265

once addressed a poem to Cambridge, telling of its
beauties and worth, but ending with ' Thou art a voice-
less place ; thou hast no bells ' ; but a voiceless garden,
a garden without the singing of birds, is far more
incomplete than a town without bells. It would scarcely
deserve the name of a garden, certainly not of *a
pleasaunce,' or a paradise. Addison, writing to the
Spectator (No. 477), in the assumed character of an
eccentric or unfashionable gardener, describes his ideal
garden : —

' My garden invites into it all the birds of the country by
offering them the conveniency of springs and shade, solitude
and shelter. I do not suffer any one to destroy their nests in
the spring, or drive them from their usual haunts in fruit-
time. I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds
than cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs.
By this means I have always the musick of the season in its
perfection.'

The perfection of such garden music where it can be
had, and while it lasts, is the nightingale's ; and of all
song-birds none surpasses the English nightingale.
Pliny gives an excellent description of the Italian
nightingale, but when Philemon Holland translated it
he showed his love of the English bird by a translation
so free that it is not easy to detect in it much of the
original Latin. The whole passage is delightful, but

266 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

much too long to extract in extenso. I must, however,
give the first part : —

1 Is it not a wonder that so lowd and cleere a voice should
come from so little a bodie ? Is it not as straunge that she
should hold her wind so long and continue with it as shee
doth ? Moreover, shee alone in her song keepeth time and
measure truely ; shee riseth and falleth in her note just with
the rules of musicke and perfect harmonie ; for the while in
one entire breath she draweth out her tune at length treat-
able ; another while she quavereth and goeth away as fast in
her running points ; sometimes shee makes stops and short
cuts in her notes ; another time shee gathereth in her wind
and singeth descant between the plaine song ; she fetcheth her
breath againe, and you shall have her in her catches and
divisions ; anon all on a sodaine, before a man would think it,
she drowneth her voice that one can scarce heare her, and then
shee seemeth to record to herself, and then shee breaketh out
to sing voluntarie. In summe, she varieth and altereth her
voice to all keys ; one while full of her largs, longs, briefes,
semibriefes, and minims ; another while in her crotchets,
quavers, semiquavers, and demisemiquavers ; for one time you
shall heare her voice full and lowd, another time as low ; and
anon shrill and high ; thick and short when she list, drawne
out at leisure againe when she is disposed ; and then (if shee
be so pleased) she riseth and mounteth up aloft as it were with
a wind-organ,' etc., etc., (x. 30).

A bird that gives us such music as this may not only
plead for a place in our gardens for herself, but also for
her fellow-birds, however mischievous they may be.

BIRDS IN THE GARDEN 267

And if we cannot have nightingales we all have
thrushes, and in one respect the song of the thrush is
a greater addition to the garden than the song of the
nightingale. The nightingale is with us for a very
short time, the thrush is with us always, and his song
not only lasts all day, and in summer far into the
night, but he begins it again with the earliest dawn.
This early song of the birds is, I think, one of the
most charming of the mysteries of bird-life. A good
hour before dawn the thrush sings out his morning
song of praise, his laudes matutince, and then he seems
to go to sleep again and not to wake till the sun has
risen, and then he begins his full rich song, and con-
tinues at it more or less all the day. But I must say
no more on the song of birds ; the subject is much too
large.

There is another side of the whole question. The
American poet Emerson was once asked the use of the
beautiful Rhodora growing in wild places far away
from the sight of men. His answer was : —

1 Why thou art there, thou rival of the rose,

I never thought to ask, I never knew,
But in my simple ignorance suppose,

The self -same Power that brought me here, brought you,'

The longer I live, and the more I study my garden,
the more I feel the truth that underlies the poet's

268 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

words. He is a bad gardener whose garden is kept
only for himself. Paradise was not made for Adam
only, but for ' every beast of the field and every fowl
of the air that was brought unto him ' there. And we
add largely to the pleasure of our gardens when we
look on them not only as pleasant homes for our flowers
and fruit, but also as the homes of many lovely and
interesting living creatures. We cannot spare the
birds, though we may have to pay largely for their
beauty and their song. We cannot spare the butter-
flies and moths, though as caterpillars they are most
destructive. I should be sorry not to have the little
spider which weaves such a net-work of beauty on our
shrubs in the early autumn mornings; and even our
greatest enemies, the slugs, snails, and mice, which may
be caught and killed without mercy, add to the interest
of our garden, and most assuredly, though we may not
see it, they have their use.

CHAPTER XXIV

Plants with Biblical interest — Historical associations — Plant
literature — Scents — Legends.

I THINK that February is almost the most interesting
month of the year to the gardener : in no other month
are there so many changes. Every day, and almost
every hour, shows some old favourite coming to cheer
and delight us with the same beauties as before, and
yet not the same; and as I go round the garden, I
often try to puzzle out some of the mysteries of the
long sleep and the awakening of plants, and always
with the same result, that it is all a mystery which
hitherto has utterly defied our research.

Everything connected with the sleep of plants is full
of interest, and especially the sleep during hard frost,
for we are very ignorant of the action of frost on plants,
we cannot say for certain how the destruction begins
or ends, nor can we in any way tell from the structure
of a plant that it will or will not be able to resist frost.

270 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

We can speak learnedly of the bursting of cells, and
the breaking up of protoplasm, but that only puts the
question one step further back : it explains ignotum per
ignotius, and no more; and until the impossible man
comes who can understand all mysteries and all know-
ledge, it will always remain a mystery, and one of the
chief charms of a garden is that it is a great storehouse
of mysteries.

I have heard gardeners say that a plant is not worth
growing unless it has beauty of flower or foliage or
scent. I should say that many plants are worth grow-
ing for several other reasons, such as botanical or
historical interest. I would not willingly be without
the green rose, or the four-petalled Himalayan rose (R.
sericea), or the Plymouth strawberry, or the one-leaved
strawberry (Fragaria motiophylla), for though none of
these have any special beauty to recommend them,
they have great botanical interests. But the great
charm of many flowers lies in their associations, which
of course vary with different people, but there are some
which are common to all. It is of these associations
that I wish to speak in this paper.

Foremost among such plants I place all that have a
Biblical interest. I have often had the pleasure of
taking round my garden parties of mechanics, young
men's associations, school teachers, etc., the greater

GARDEN ASSOCIATIONS 271

part of them without any botanical or horticultural
knowledge, and I always find that no plants interest
them so much as the plants of which they have read in
the Bible. The Christ's thorn (Paliurus aculeatus)
deeply interests them. Whether it is really the plant
of the crown of thorns may be doubtful, but few other
plants so well satisfy the requirements ; and when I
show them the pliant branches so easy to weave into a
crown, and so thickly set with sharp thorns in every
direction, they generally show their interest by asking
for pieces to take away with them. Abraham's oak
(Quercus pseudo-coccifera) is another plant almost as
interesting, and the terebinth was another, but this is
somewhat tender, and I have lost it for many years.
Other plants of Biblical interest which I grow are the
cedar of Lebanon, the palm, the fig, the olive, the
willow of Babylon, the styrax (supposed to be the
poplar of the Old Testament), the pomegranate, the
mandrake, hyssop, and spikenard, the almond and the
quince.

Other plants have historical associations. The white
rose of York, the Irish shamrock, and the Scotch
thistle, are instances ; and the broom of the Planta-
genets ; the Alexandria laurel, which formed the crown
of the Greek conquerors ; the acanthus, which gave the
model to the Corinthian capital ; the papyrus of Egypt

272 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

(not hardy), get their chief interest from their historical
associations. Other plants have a commercial and
officinal interest, but to write of these would be quite
beyond the limits of a short paper; others have a
geological interest, and others a geographical. By
plants of geological interest I mean plants that are
strictly limited to particular strata, like our Cornish
heath, which clings to the serpentine formation ; and by
plants of geographical interest I mean plants that are
specially interesting from their localities as wild plants,
such as the American plants which have found a home
for themselves on the west coast of Ireland, or the
Spanish plants on the south coast. It is very pleasant
to be able to show growing together the Antarctic
bramble with its curious skeleton leaves and white
thorns, and the Iceland poppy from the Arctic Circle,
which is reported to be the most northern flowering
plant known, — so extremely northern that I was told
by one of the officers in the North Pole expedition,
that if there was land there he should expect to find
the Iceland poppy.

Even the names of plants supply many associations,
and in this respect, I think, plant growers are more
fortunate than students of some other natural sciences
(say, for instance, entomology), because the names
often supply much information either of the structure

Cedars in Bitton Vicarage Garden.

GARDEN ASSOCIATIONS 273

of the plant or its native locality, or its discoverer.
Thus, Winter's bark (Drimys Winteri) will not only
recall Admiral Winter's great voyage of discovery
round Cape Horn and through the Straits of Magellan,
where the shrub was found, but it will also recall some-
thing of the history of Cinchona, for which it was long
a substitute. But plant names form too fascinating
and lengthy a subject to enter on here.

An endless amount of interest is gathered round the
literary history of plants. I like to grow any plant
that is mentioned by the old Greek and Latin writers
— such as Theophrastus, Aristotle, Virgil, or Pliny;
and still more do I delight in the plants of English
literature. I doubt if any national literature has been
so full of flowers as our own, and especially in our
poetry. Among the older writers, Gower, Chaucer,
Spenser, and Shakespeare, and, indeed, almost all, love
to speak of gardens and flowers. The plants named by
them are far more than most people are aware of, and
a very slight acquaintance with their writings will add
much to the pleasure of a garden. And this love of
gardens and flowers was not confined to the older
poets ; it rather languished in the eighteenth century,
but in our day flowers have been fully honoured by
our poets. Of course, modern poets have naturally
loved the old flowers, but they have not hesitated to

274 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

speak lovingly also of the newer introductions. The
latest addition to the flora of the poets is the yucca,
and, as I have always grown this plant largely, I am
glad to see it so honoured. I wonder it has so long
remained unsung, for it was a very early introduction
from the New World, and was grown in England by
Gerard in 1597 ; yet, as far as I know, no poet has
noticed it before the late poet-laureate, and he has
done so in his latest work : —

' My Yucca which no winter quells,

Although the months have scarce begun,
Has pushed towards our faintest sun
A spike of half -accomplished bells. '

To Ulysses. Demeter, p. 113.

It is a well-known fact that nothing recalls the past
like scents, and this is so especially true of the scent of
flowers, that I suppose most of us can name instances
in our own experience. I never gather a leaf of the
fine-leaved form of the oak-leaf geranium without at
once going back in memory to a pleasant home in the
Midlands, where the genial host was so fond of the
leaf that it always formed a part of the * button-hole '
of his guests. Elwanger, in The Garden's Story, carries
this too far when he says that the ' perfume of Lilium
auratum, stealing from the spotted petals, recalls the

GARDEN ASSOCIATIONS 275

reedy jungle and the spotted tiger.' Mr. Savage

Landor says more truly —

' Sweet scents

Are the swift vehicles of still sweeter thoughts,
And nurse and mellow the dull memory,
That would let drop without them her best stores.'

But best of all was the excellent use that the late
Miss Hope, of Edinburgh, made of her sweet-scented
flowers. She was indefatigable in providing comforts
for the sick in hospitals, and among the comforts she
included a plentiful supply of flowers, but with the
proviso that the flowers should be common flowers, and
always accompanied with a sprig of some woody,
aromatic plant, for the special purpose of recalling
memories of home.

Of all the associations which flowers keep for us, none
can equal those connected with persons or places. Of
the way in which flowers bring back the memory of
friends little can be said; in the pleasure they thus
bring they must vary according to the memories they
recall, and in not a few cases these memories may be
full of sadness and sorrow. But the memories of
places which flowers bring back to us must always, I
think, be more or less pleasant ; and to pick flowers or
to collect plants in various places, and then to be able
to grow them in our own gardens, adds much to the

276 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

pleasure of travelling. My beech-fern recalls Cader
Idris to me, and my oak-fern Snowdonia, though it is
many years since I collected them ; and my Osmunda
recalls North Donegal and Slieve League, not because
my plants come from there, but because I never saw
them elsewhere so beautiful; my saxifrages recall
Switzerland, and my pinks the Castle of Falaise ; my
pulsatilla recalls the beautiful hillside near Thring,
which I once saw studded with the flower in a luxuri-
ance that I fear is now a thing of the past ; while my
sedums recall a pleasant afternoon in the Botanic
Gardens at Angers, where the pleasant old curator, M.
Boreau, made that family his special study, and gave
me an excellent collection; and as to other gardens,
both public and private, they are recalled to me most
pleasantly in almost every yard of my garden. And
these associations have what I may call a reflex char-
acter that doubles the pleasure. I can remember my
delight when I first saw the beautiful Campanula barbata
in the Swiss valleys ; it had always been a special
favourite with me as a garden beauty ; and now, when
I see it, I call to mind a delightful walk up the Flegere,
where this lovely flower grows in the greatest abund-
ance, in all shades of white and blue, from the com-
mencement of the ascent in the valley of the Arve till
the pine woods are passed. Tennyson records the

GARDEN ASSOCIATIONS 277

same double pleasure brought to him in connection
with one small flower : —

' We took our last adieu,
And up the snowy Splugen drew,
But ere we reached the highest summit,
I plucked a daisy, I gave it you ;
It told of England then to me,
And now it tells of Italy.'

And these memories and associations that our flowers
give us are independent of seasons or of age. They
come to us as well in autumn and winter, in spring
and summer ; and as to age, the older we get the more,
from the very nature of things, do these memories
increase and multiply.

I have said nothing of the legendary associations of
flowers, they are too numerous ; but I will just name
the forget-me-not, that with it I may bring this paper
to a close. All admire the pretty flower, and like to
tell of the pretty, though modern, legend. But in my
garden, and I know it is the same in the gardens of all
who love flowers, nine-tenths of my plants and flowers
are forget-me-nots, and have their legends, which they
tell to me over and over again, and which I often like
to repeat to others. There are trees on my lawn which
were planted when children were born; there are
hundreds of plants which tell me of the liberal help

278 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

given by such gardens as Kew, Edinburgh, Dublin, and
many other public gardens, both British and foreign ;
there are hundreds of others which speak to me of
delightful private gardens, and of the pleasant free-
masonry that exists among true gardeners; there are
flowers which tell of pleasant travels, and long walks,
and beautiful spots which I shall probably never see
again ; there are others which bring to memory voices
which I shall never hear, and faces which I shall never
see again in this world ; and hundreds more which in
their several ways have their own memories, and their
own associations, which make each and all forget-me-
nots of the highest value and beauty. And in looking
on our flowers with these thoughts there is nothing
mawkish or sentimental, the thoughts are good and
wholesome ; and though some of the memories con-
nected with our flowers may be sad, and some of the
associations may be even painful, yet meminisse juvat is
written upon them all ; and that our flowers can give
us such memories, and can be linked with such associa-
tions, we may, indeed, be thankful.

CHAPTER XXV

(Bartoen

Laws of the plant-world— Our ignorance — One touch of nature
— The economy of nature.

THE lessons which can be learned from flowers are
almost as numerous as the flowers themselves ; quite as
numerous, if, as I believe, every plant has its own
separate message and lesson. Into these, of course, I
cannot enter, I can only point out a few which are
more or less taught by all, and I leave out all spiritual
and religious lessons, for I am not writing a 'Flower
Sermon.'

The great lesson that our gardens teach us is, that
everything in nature is subject to the strictest law, for
this is taught by plants almost more surely than by
anything else ; because most living organisms, such as
men and animals, having powers of moving, and of
exercising will, thought, or instinct, can change their
surroundings, and so in many cases can change their

279

280 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

special characters. But the plant-world is governed by
strict, unchanging, and, we may say, eternal laws.
What I mean is this : — If I take two sets of small seeds
in my hands, they may at first sight seem absolutely
the same, yet one may be the seed of a small annual,
the other the seed of a large tree ; and if I know the
history of the plants that produced the seeds, I can
foretell with certainty the whole future life of the
seeds, the shape and nature of the leaves, the size of
the plants, the colours of the flowers, the shapes and
uses of the fruit, and the length of life which will be
allotted to each. Every plant that grows is produced
and lives by the strictest law ; like has produced like
from the beginning, and will do so to the end. And
this is so perfectly true, that there can be no doubt
that the flowers we admire now are identical with those
which were grown by Greek and Eoman, Egyptian or
Assyrian gardeners, identical in every respect, shape,
colour, foliage, and scent. Keble carries the idea
to its furthest limit, and identifies his own 'sweet
nurslings of the vernal skies ' with the flowers of
Paradise : —

' Relics ye are of Eden's bowers,

As pure, as fragrant, and as fair
As when ye crowned the sunshine hours

Of happy wanderers there.

GARDEN LESSONS 281

Your first and perfect form ye show,
The same that won Eve's matron smile
In the world's opening glow. '

But though the laws of plant-life are so strict that it
is impossible for a plant to grow except in obedience to
the laws, yet, within certain limits, it is possible for
man to produce changes, or for the plant itself to show
varieties, which may be more or less permanent, and it
is to these changes and variations that we owe many
of our most beautiful garden flowers. But the limits
of varieties are strictly defined, and however many
varieties may be produced, the original typical plant
goes on just the same. The wild potato on the coast
of Chili is the same that was found in the sixteenth
century. The wild scarlet pelargonium, from which our
numberless varieties have sprung, may still be found at
the Cape. And so strict are the limits of variation,
that in spite of all efforts, these two plants have never
become in the least degree hardier than when first
introduced, and probably never will be ; and though
the gardeners have so much altered the pelargonium
that it is now a flower with five almost equal petals,
yet the original irregular form cannot be entirely
obliterated, and the one larger petal of the typical
plant is always shown by the curious hole at the base,
which no hybridising has completely destroyed, but the

282 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

use of which has never been satisfactorily accounted
for. Some of these variations are so different from the
parent type that they used to be ranked as monstro-
sities. They are no longer so ranked, for one of the
good services which Darwin did for the natural sciences
was to show us that there are no such things in nature
as monstrosities. What are called by that name are
only hints of the possibilities of nature, and are even
proofs of the strict laws under which plant-life exists,
for these monstrosities never go beyond well-defined
limits, and in course of time often revert to the
parent type. And that this waa so had not escaped
the notice of other deep thinkers before Darwin.
Nearly two hundred years before, Isaac Barrow, in his
twelfth sermon on the Creed (a sermon well worth the
study of all students in natural science), said—

1 That which we call a monster is not unnatural in regard to
the contexture of causes, but arises no less methodically than
anything most ordinary ; and it also hath its good end and
use, well serving to illustrate the beauty and convenience of
nature's usual course.'

And he quotes Aristotle — ovStv yivcrai irapa.

Another excellent lesson which my garden teaches
me is my own ignorance. I once asked one of our
most learned botanists a simple question about some

GARDEN LESSONS 283

flowers. His answer was, ' I cannot tell you, and I
have come to the conclusion that I know nothing
whatever about flowers.' A few days after I asked
another friend's advice about a plant that was not
doing well. His answer was, ' Oh yes, I can tell you
all about it ; I can tell you at once what is the matter
with a plant.' I very soon reached the bottom of his
knowledge, or rather of his ignorance. As I walk
round my garden, I read in every plant my own
ignorance of its real history. Take the flowers now so
popular, and so beautiful, the hellebores, or Christmas
roses. The pure white flower is not, as it seems to be,
the corolla, but the sepals of the calyx. The true
petals are curious little things shaped like trumpets, set
round the ovaries, and soon falling off. The petals of
the yellow aconite are the same, and by old writers
they were called nectaries ; and if by nectary is meant
the part which holds the bait that attracts the insects,
the name is a good one. Both hellebores and the
winter aconite belong to the same great family of
Ranunculacece, but in no other member of the family,
and as far as I know in no other family, do we find
these trumpet -shaped petals. What can be their
special use in the economy of the plant I cannot say ;
I can only guess that as these plants come into flower
always in cold weather, and often in the depth of

284 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

winter, a special protection for the * nectar ' might be
required, and would be given by these little trumpets ;
but this is the merest guess. To one, however, who
wishes to puzzle out a difficult but not unpleasant
subject, I would recommend the study of the petals of
the Ranunculacece. It is a very large family, and is not
a difficult one; but throughout the family the petals
are curious, running as they do through the no-petals
of the clematis, the bright petals of the buttercups, and
the quaint petals of the columbines, larkspurs, and
monkshoods. I have one small piece in my garden, in
which I delight to puzzle my botanical friends. Close
together I have three plants growing, each of which
has its puzzle. There is the Galanthus scharloki, a poor
snowdrop, but very interesting to me, because, instead
of having a simple spathe, and one pure white flower,
as all snowdrops should have, it has a two-leaved
spathe, and sometimes two flowers, and a green
external spot, so coming near to a snowflake. Next to
it is Heuchera or Tolmicea Meiziesii, from North America,
a plant of no great beauty, but also interesting, because,
besides increasing by seeds or offsets as all the rest of
the family does, it produces young plants in abundance
on the top of each leaf. And next to that is Accena
pulchellay an excellent little trailer for covering banks.
The fruit of all the Accenas are burs ; but they all differ

GARDEN LESSONS 285

in their special ways of clinging to the passer-by. In
Accena microphylla the little thorns are sharp, simple
points. In some of the others they are hooks, but in
Accena pulchella they are beautiful little arrows with
double barbs. Now, in all these three plants there is a
hidden history which would tell us what there was in
the original surroundings that caused these differences
and has perpetuated them ; but the history is a hidden
one, and so must remain, and when any one tells me
that he knows all about plants, I have but to show him
some little and apparently such insignificant points as
these, and the most learned at once confess their
ignorance.

Another lesson which the garden teaches is how
nearly connected we all are with every other living
organism. This is a very large and a very deep
subject, which I am quite unable to enter into fully,
and it is difficult to state even the slight hints of it
that the garden gives. That there is between human
life and plant life something closer than and different
to the simple connection between the cultivator and
the crop seems to have been felt by many. Something
of the sort must have been in Shakespeare's mind when
he said, ' One touch of nature makes the whole world
kin,' which is not, as generally quoted, a mere platitude
about benevolence, but, as the whole passage shows, is

286 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

a statement of the relationship existing between all
parts of nature, or, as Wallace puts it —

* The forces of life appear to be fundamentally the same for
all organisms, as is the material of which all are constructed ;
and we thus find behind the outer diversities an inner relation-
ship which binds together the myriad forms of life. Each
species of animal or plant thus forms part of one harmonious
whole.' — Darwinism, c. xi.

Wordsworth felt this very strongly, affirming that
flowers laughed, and showed gladness or sorrow as
much as he did himself. Longfellow had the same
feeling, and, speaking of 'the stars of earth, those
golden flowers,' he said —

* In all places then and in all seasons

Flowers expand their light and soul-like wings,
Teaching us by most persuasive reasons
How akin they are to human things.'

Many will find it difficult to realise this ; but I think
all who love flowers and live much amongst them have
felt how flowers seem to sympathise with their own
feelings, how different they look when all is bright and
happy to what they look when sorrow and trouble are
upon us, and I think that the old bell motto is really
true of flowers, 'Gaudemus gaudentibus, dolemus
dolentibus.'

But I must leave this subject, only thus touching its

GARDEN LESSONS 287

fringe, for one more commonplace. I learn from flowers
the perfect usefulness of every part of creation. I do
not mean the usefulness to man only, measured by
what it can buy him in comforts or in pounds, shillings,
and pence, but I mean that every created thing has its
own allotted place in the world, and fills the particular
place which it fills better than anything else could.
People who are not gardeners look on botany as an
abstract science of no great practical use, but even in
the matter of commercial utility the results are really
very striking. In Mr. Jackson's Commercial Botany of
the Nineteenth Century, recently published, there is a
long and most interesting list of plants of different
sorts that have been introduced into commerce during
the present century, and of nearly all of them there is
the record of most material assistance given by the
scientific staff at Kew. But this is not all; plants
which apparently are of no use to man, and plants
which are even hurtful to man, have yet their uses in
the economy of nature ; and it is no proof to the con-
trary that we have not yet been able to find them out.
We have only to think of the hundreds of thousands of
square miles on the globe's surface where man never
comes, but which are covered with the full vegetation
suitable to each part, and we soon realise that plants
must have their uses though no man sees them. On

288 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

this subject I cannot do better than again quote Isaac
Barrow: —

'Everything contributes somewhat to the use and benefit
or to the beauty and ornament of the whole ; no weed grows
out of the earth, no insect creeps upon the ground, which hath
not elegancy and yields not its profit ; nothing is abominable
or despicable, though all things are not alike amiable or
admirable.3 — Sermon on the Creed, x.

And very much to the same effect, Friar Laurence,
in Romeo and Juliet, describes the ' baleful weeds and
precious-juiced flowers ' which he is going to gather :—

* Many for many virtues excellent,
None but for some, and yet all different.
0 mickle is the powerful grace that lies
In herbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities ;
For nought so vile that on the earth doth live
But to the earth some special good doth give.'

CHAPTEK XXVI

(Parting— && Clerum

Parsons and plants — Parishioners and their Parson — The
pleasures of Botany — The Manse garden.

I OFTEN regret that George Herbert did not add another
chapter to his Country Parson, and tell us his views of
the parson in his garden. With his high views of the
importance of the parson's character showing itself in
the minutest details of daily life — c he leaveth not his
ministry behind him, but is himself wherever he is ' —
it would have been pleasant to have been taught by
him how the parson could manage his garden, not only
*in the knowledge of simples, wherein the manifold
wisdom of God is wonderfully to be seen,' but also
' like a parson, thus raising the action from the shop to
the Church.' That he had not only a love of flowers
and gardening, but also a full knowledge of them, is
shown by many passages in his poems ; and in the
chapter on * The Parson's Completeness ' he considers
a knowledge of plants to be necessary in a parson —
that he would be incomplete without it.

T

290 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

And a country parson without some knowledge of
plants is surely as incomplete as a country parsonage
without a garden. Certainly he deprives himself of
much pleasure, and in some respects of usefulness. I
am thankful that my own lot has been cast for me in
the country, yet I can fully understand and appreciate
the actual pleasure which an active earnest clergyman
finds in the crowded, unlovely streets, and even in the
slums of a densely populated city cure, and I can even
sympathise with his dislike to the quiet stagnation (as
he would call it) of a country parsonage ; but I cannot
understand a clergyman whose lot has been cast in the
country, and who has accepted the lot, shutting his
eyes to all the beauties which surround him and which
come up to his very doors, and to whom the change of
seasons, and even the changes from day to day that he
must see, are only changes from one kind of dulness to
another. Such a man must be wretched in a country
•parsonage, but I have not much pity for him.

I need not describe the ideal English parsonage and
its garden. It has been described over and over again,
and indeed it has passed into a proverb, so that when a
house is described as ' like an ordinary English parson-
age,' as Wordsworth's home is described, we know at once
what it means. We picture to ourselves a building of
moderate size — not pretentious — neither a mansion nor

PARSONAGE GARDENS— A D CLERUM 291

a suburban villa (Parva sed apta domino is the inscrip-
tion on an old Wiltshire parsonage), and of an old
foundation; yet with many additions and accretions
of different dates, each bearing some impress of the
successive owners; and the garden is of the same
character, often standing (and always in the ideal par-
sonage garden) near the church and churchyard, so
that the church forms the feature in the garden. The
parsonage garden is not large, seldom exceeding two
acres, and more often not exceeding one, with little
glass, and no pretension to a high-class garden, but with
a good spread of old lawn and many old trees and
flowering shrubs, all suggestive of repose and quiet,
pleasant shade, and freedom from the bustle of the
outside world. The parsonage garden some years ago
was a home for hundreds of good old-fashioned flowers,
but I am afraid no gardens suffered more from the
bedding craze, which swept them clear of all their old
long-cherished beauties, and reduced them to the dull
level of uniformity with their neighbours' gardens,
or to miniature mockeries of Trentham or Clieveden.
That craze has to a great extent passed away, and the
parsonage gardens are gradually recovering their old
features, and fortunately they are able to do so more
easily than some other gardens, because in most of
them the trees and shrubs were spared, and have been

292 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

a valuable help in the restoration to a better and more
healthy style of gardening, and one more in keeping
with the character of the country parson's garden.
There are hundreds of such good old gardens scattered
throughout England, of which Charles Kingsley's
garden at Eversley and White's garden at Selborne are
well-known typical examples.1

That such gardens are a real pleasure and refresh-
ment to the owners we all know, and they are none the
less so when the refreshment is taken in hard manual
labour, for many a country parson can bear witness that
' the very works of and in an orchard and garden are
better than the ease and rest of and from other labores '
(William Lawson, 1608). But I said also that par-
sonage gardens had their usefulness, by which I mean
they may be made useful to the clergyman in his
parochial work. How this may be done I need not say
at any length, because the method that would be very
useful in the hands of one would be perfectly useless in
the hands of another. I would only say generally, that
the love of flowers and gardening is so universal
amongst the English peasantry that a country parson
will often find a better introduction to a cottager
through his garden than by any other means. And

1 White's garden at Selborne was a typical parson's garden, but it
was not the real parsonage.

PARSONAGE GARDENS— 4Z> CLERUM 293

though the love of flowers is so universal, and the
garden may be such a useful adjunct to the cottage,
yet there is very great ignorance of the right principles
of gardening, and the parson may be of great use to his
poorer neighbours, not only by teaching, but still more
by showing them better ways in his own garden. For
the parsonage garden gate should be always open, and
every parishioner welcomed ; there need be no fear of
any undue advantage being taken of the free permission
to enter — the one difficulty will be to induce them to
come in. And the parson may do much to brighten the
gardens of his parish, and so to increase the interest in
them by giving plants from his own garden. I have
for many years been a cultivator of hardy plants, and
have been able to gather together a large number of
species ; and I was long ago taught, and have always
held, that it is impossible to get or keep a large collec-
tion except by constant liberality in giving. 'There
is that scatter eth, and yet increaseth/ was Solomon's
experience, and it certainly is so with gardening ; and
the parson who is liberal with his plants will find the
increase not only in the pleasant intercourse with his
neighbours, but also in the enlargement of his own
garden, which thus spreads beyond his own fences into
the gardens of the cottages. Some clergy can do more
than this by giving actual instruction in the wonders of

294 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

plant-life, as was done some years ago most successfully
by Mr. Henslow, and also by Mr. Dawes, the Dean of
Hereford, who gave object-lessons in his garden at
King's Somborne ; but this requires a special knowledge,
and these two men were specially gifted with great
knowledge, and with the happy power of imparting
their knowledge to others.

There is one way in which I am sure the country
parson might make his garden useful to himself in his
ministerial work : —

'I am not in the least ashamed' (says the Rev. John
Laurence in The Clergyman's Recreation in 1714) 'to say and
own that most of the time I can spare from the necessary
care and business of a large parish, and from my other studies,
is spent in my garden, and I cannot but encourage and invite
my reverend brethren to the love of a garden, having myself
all along reaped so much fruit both in a figurative and literal
sense.'

The figurative fruits are the spiritual lessons he had
learned from his flowers and garden ; and I think the
old writers and the old gardeners were more alive to
these lessons than we are now. St. Francis de Sales
was very fond of drawing his illustrations from flowers,
and his notices of flowers and their lessons have been
collected into a 'Mystical Flora/ Joachim Camerarius,
an excellent botanist, published in 1590 a Centuria of
Emblems from plants; and with its pretty plates and

PARSONAGE GARDENS— AD CLERUM 295

excellent scholarly and religious descriptions it makes
a charming little volume. In 1657 Ealph Austin,
1 practiser in the art of planting,' published The Spiri-
tual Use of an Orchard or Garden of Fruit Trees set forth
in divers similitudes between Natural and Spiritual Fruit
Trees, in which, though the similitudes are often far-
fetched, and the lessons strained, there is much that
is well worth reading ; and a little later was Flavel's
excellent little book of a similar character, Husbandry
Spiritualised. In our own day, The Catholic Florist
(1851) is a pleasant little book on the spiritual
lessons of flowers, and their association with different
saints and saints' days, though sadly marred by fictitious
quotations ; and later still we have had similar lessons
pleasantly taught to us by Mrs. Gatty and Mrs. Ewing.

Much might be said on the great pleasures that the
science of botany will give to a country life, and much
more might also be said on the special advantages of a
knowledge of the science and the practical uses of a
garden to the country parson, but I will content myself
with some words of others who have written on the
subject. I have already mentioned The Clergyman's
Recreation by Laurence. It is a good little book, but
except in the Preface has little specially for the clergy.
The Preface is, however, written ad clerum :—

1 To recommend the art of managing a garden to those of

296 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

my ovrn order, the clergy, not to make them envied by mag-
nificence, but to make them happy by loving an innocent
diversion suitable to a grave and contemplative genius. . . .
This I suppose most people will allow, that as there are some
sports and exercises not suitable to a divine, so gardening is
a very agreeable and commendable recreation — viz. pruning,
planting, sowing, grafting, and inoculating, and sometimes
digging, ad ruborem but not ad sudorem.'

In 1796 Three Dialogues on the Amusements of Clergy-
men was published, professing to be the views of Bishop
Stillingfleet, communicated to Dr. Josiah Frampton.
It is rather an amusing book, and can scarcely be taken
seriously, but is quite worth reading. All amuse-
ments are more or less forbidden, except battledore
and shuttlecock in the tithe barn. Gardening natu-
rally forms one of the subjects of discussion, and he
has little to say about it except that c there cannot be
a more clerical amusement,' but he gives the good advice
that the clergyman should try to make his garden the
best in the parish, a model garden to his neighbours.

But the best book on clerical gardening is Tlie Manse
Garden, a book published nearly seventy years ago, and
now, I believe, out of print, but well worth reprint-
ing. The author was the Rev. N. Paterson, at that
time minister of Galashiels, and afterwards a leading
member of the Scotch Free Kirk. It is altogether a
delightful book, full of quaint sentences, shrewd good-

PARSONAGE GARDENS— AD CLERUM 297

sense, and quiet humour, and the cultural directions
are admirable. I mention it more particularly here
because throughout the book the clergyman is never
lost sight of, and though written for Scotch ministers
and Scotch manses, it is equally suitable for English
country parsons and country 'parsonages. The one
chapter on ' The Minister's Boy,' which concludes the
book, will come home to many an English country parson.
There are many passages which I should like to extract
showing the pleasant humour and practical character of
the book, but I must content myself with one in his
more serious strain, as having a closer reference to
my subject, and showing something of the ministerial
aspect of the book : —

'You will find iii the very nature of the work a new
interest communicated to your life, and which, relieving the
pressure of cares and lightening the burden of toil, will tend
to no worldliness of spirit. Thus conferring as well as receiv-
ing good, and incurring no evil, let our gardens and every
corner of our glebes be adorned ; and if we have to lament,
on the part of those having large possessions, that too little is
done, let us at least set an example, though it be but in the
model style, and have our home a paradise of fruit and
flowers, of shelter and shade, endeavouring still to make the
place the more worthy of ourselves, and ourselves more
worthy of the place.'

One point must not be left unnoticed. It seems
almost unnatural for a country clergyman to be with-

298 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

out some love of flowers and gardens ; and the study
of them comes recommended not only as a refreshment
and from its practical usefulness, but also for its scien-
tific and literary associations. Yet it has its snares, of
which the chief is that it may become too interesting
and too absorbing. Its very innocence may help on
and even conceal the snare; but the snare is there
as it is in everything else in this world, however
good, and I never think of it without remembering
Newman's striking poem on Jonah. We know that
his great refreshment to mind and body was found
in music, yet he says —

' Our choicest bliss, the green repose
Of the sweet garden shade ' ;

and that, too, in the poem which commences with the
beautiful yet almost stern stanzas with which I may
well close this chapter :—

' Deep in his meditative bower,
The tranquil seer reclined,
Numbering the creepers of an hour,
The gourds which o'er him twined.

To note each plant, to rear each fruit
Which soothes the languid sense ;

He deemed a safe, refined pursuit —
His Lord, an indolence.'

— Lyra Apostolica. ' Jonah. '

INDEX

ABRAHAM'S OAK, 79, 271.
Abutilon Vexlllarium, 185.
Acaena, 284.

Aconite, winter, 16, 288.
Addison, 265.
Akebia quinata, 198.
Alaternus, 160.
Almond, 88.
Alstraemeria, 112.
Anemone, 36, 155.

— pulsatilla, 36, 276.
Anthologia Palatina, 24.
Aristolochia sipho, 195.
Arnold, Matthew, 49.
Artichoke, 81.
Arundo donax, 232.
Asparagus, species, 199.

acutifolius, 79.

verticillatus, 67.

Asters, 97, 114.
Austin, Ralph, 294.
Austrian briar, 70.
Azara, 39.

B. (E.V.), 4, 183.
Bacon, 150, 174.
Bailey, T., 210.
Bamboos, 84, 223.

species of, 230.

Barberries, 109, 162.

Barrow, Isaac, 282, 288.

Beckman, 60.

Beech, 250.

Benedicite, 140.

Biblical plants, 233, 235, 270.

Blackbird, 262.

Bowles's ' Flora,' 129.

Box, 88.

Brahea, 228.

Brambles and their species, 289.

Brandis, Sir D., 190.

Brier, 188.

Brier-wood pipes, 184.

Bright, Lancashire Garden, 4, 127.

Broom, 161.

Browne, W., 189.

Burroughs, 56.

Buttercups, 54.

CACTI, 206.
Cages, iron, 141.
Calverley's Theocritus, 12.
Camerarius, 294.
Campanula barbata, 276.
Carlina, 80, 81.
Carnations, 206.
Caryopteris, 113.
Catalogue of plants, 148.
Catalpa, 67.
Catullus, 260.
Cedar, 251.
Celandine, 81.
Chamaerops, 228.
Changes in garden, 122.
Chaucer, 46, 214.
Cheddar Pink, 205.
Cherry, 253.
Chestnut, 214, 216, 259.
Chimonanthus, 151.
Chionodoia, 158.
Choysia, 162.
Cinchona, 142, 273.
Citrus trifoliata, 52, 66, 168.
Clematis, species, 194.

cirrhosa, 136, 150.

1 Clergyman's Recreation,' 294.

300

IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

Clusius, 177.

Cobcea scandens, 91.

Coles' ' Eden,' 36.

Coltsfoot, 150.

Conifers, 132, 251.

Cornus mas., 28.

Corydalis, 86.

Cotoneaster horizontalis, 108.

Cowper, 27, 140, 222.

Crocus, 19, 33, 152.

Crown imperial, 49.

Currants, 142.

Cyclamen, 7.

Cynara, 80, 81.

Cytisus, 162.

DAFFODILS, 26, 82.

Dandelion, 54.

Daphne Mezereon, 27.

Darwin C., 10, 41, 91, 102, 200, 282.

Darwin, Erasmus, 14.

Datura, 101.

Dawes, Dean of Hereford, 298.

De Genlis, Madame, 68, 191.

Dentaria, 35.

Denton Hall, 209.

De Vere, Aubrey, 82, 166.

Dewberry, 241.

Dicentra spectabilis, 51.

Dog's-tooth violet, 34.

Drimys, Winteri, 273.

EDELWEISS, 208.

Eglantine, 175.

Elliott, Eben., 242.

Elm, 249.

Elwanger, 274.

Elwes' ' Lilies,' 137, 169.

Emerson, 267.

Eomecon, 42.

Erica, 27, 186.

Erinus alpinus, 209.

Eryngium, and species, 80, 244.

Erythsea, 229.

Erythronium, 85.

Euonymus, 98.

Evelyn, 160, 168, 215, 245.

Ewing, Mrs., 61, 295.

Exochorda, 53.
Experiments, 142.

FABER, 264.

Falaise, 206.

Ferns, 184.

Fly-catchers, 268.

Forsythia, 38.

Frampton, on amusements, etc., 296.

Fritillaries, 47.

Fruit trees, 252.

Fuchsia, 92.

Funkia, 78.

GAGEA, 117.

Galanthus Scharloki, 287.

— species, 22.
Genista, 53, 65.

Andreana, 64.

virgata, 65.

Gentiana asclepiadea, 84.
Gerard, 75, 193, 198, 225.
Gingko, 216.
Gorse, 161.

Grey-leaved plants, 89.
Gypsophila, 84.

HALLIWELL-PHILLIPS, 247.

Hamamelis, 28.

Hawthorn, early blooming, 58.

Hawthorne, N., 56.

Hazel blossom, 28.

Helianthus, 113.

Helleborus, 13, 15, 151, 288.

Henslow, 293.

Hepaticas, 26.

Herbert, George, 289.

Heuchera, 284.

Hibiscus, 93.

Holland, Philemon, 227, 266.

Hollies, 183.

Homer, 222.

Honey-dew, 74.

Honeysuckle, 197.

Hope, Miss, 275.

Horace, 168.

Hornbeam, 250.

INDEX

301

IRIS HISTRIOIDES, 16.

orchioides, 36.

reticulata, 6, 54.

species, 68.

stylosa, 54.

Ivy, 114, 133.

JACKSON, ' Economic Botany,' 287.
Jasminum nudiflorum, 131.
Johnston, ' Dendrographia,' 227.
Joret, M., 70.
Jubsea, spectabilis, 228.

KARR, ALPHONSE, 207.
Keble, 152, 280.
Kingsley, 292.
Kohlreuteria, 67, 85, 255.

LANDOR, SAVAGE, 275.

Lathrea, 41.

Laurel, 132.

Laurembergius, 171.

Laurence, Rev. J., 294.

Laurustinus. 125, 186.

Lavender sea, 88.

Lawson, W., 264, 294.

Leucojum, 24, 25.

Lilies, 168.

Lilium candidum, 137, 170.

Linaria cymbalaria, 209.

Longfellow, 214, 286.

Lonicera fragrantissima, 40, 151, 1

MAGNOLIA, 52, 254.

Mahonia, 27.

' Manse Garden,' 296.

Mant, Bishop, 202.

Maple, 215, 217.

Mary, Queen of Scots, 233.

Mascall, Leonard, 257.

Medlar, 215, 217, 256.

Menispernum Canadense, 198.

Mice, 34.

Milner, ' Country Pleasures,' 4.

Milton, 70, 235.

Monstrosities, 282.

Mulberry, 256.

Munro, General, 230.
Musk rose, 187.

NANDINA DOMESTICA, 110, 232.
Narcissus, 26, 32.
Neckham, 225.
Newman, J. H., 211, 298.
Newton, 235.
Nightingale, 265.

OAK, 248.
Oenothera, 72.
Olearia, 163.
Onnerod, Miss, 259.
Osmunda, 276.
Outside gardens, 116.
Ouviranda fenestralis, 107.
Oxford Botanic Garden, 204.

P.EONIA CORALLINA, 110.

Pseonies, 51.

Paliurus aculeatus, 271.

Palms, 223.

Parkinson, 111, 157, 185, 194, 227.

Parrottia Persica, 28, 217.

Paterson, Rev. J. , 296.

Paulownia, 255.

Periploca Graeca, 195.

Periwinkle, 204.

Philadelphus, 74.

Phormium tenax, 233.

Physalis alkekengi, 106.

Plant names, 272.

Pliny, 10, 74, 176, 193, 225, 236, 256,

265.

Plums, French, 142.
Plymouth strawberry, 270.
Poppy, Iceland, 172.
Potentilla anserina, 55.

Macnabiana, 185.

Primroses, 153.

Pritchardia, 228.

' Punch ' on Christmas roses, 15.

Pyrus Japonica, 37.

QUERCTJS PflEUDO-COCCIFERA, 79, 271.
RANUNCULACEJE, 284.

302

IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN

Rapin, 11.

Rhododendron, 89, 161.
Rhodora, 267.
Rhus, 218.

— cotinoides, 119.
Ribes sanguineum, 88, 218.

— speoiosum, 124.
Rubus Australis, 107, 240,

— d«liciosus, 168, 240.
Rosa Banksia, 45, 69, 180.

— Lamarque, 71.

— Mundi, 177.

— Sericea, 270.

— Souvenir de Malmaison, 96.
Roses, 174.

Rose seeds, 99.

SALES, S. FRANCIS DE, 234, 294.

Salisburia, 216, 252.

Salix lannU, 89.

Sarsaparilla, 199.

Saunders, W. Wilson, 208.

Saxifrages, 208.

Scilla, 158.

Scott, Sir W., 215.

Seeds of plants, 97, 280.

Seeman, 229.

Semporvivura arachnoideuui, 208.

Senecio squalidus, 204.

Sexes in plants, 226.

Shakespeare, 16, 95, 178, 176, 187,

225, 241, 288.
Shrubberies, 160.
Sisyrinchium, 86.
Sleep of plants, 269.
Slite, 11.
Smilax, 199.
Snapdragon, 211.
Snowdrop, 22.
Snowflake, 25.
Sowbread, 12.
Sparrows, 83, 259.
Spenser, 18, 47, 105, 160, 164, 166.
Starlings, 262.
Statice, 83, 218.

Statice Cosyrensis, 103.
Sumachs, 218.
Sweet-brier, 178.
Syringa, 75.

TALLIES, GARDEN, 144.

Tea, 142.

Tennyson, 20, '21, 25, 123, 125, 126,

128, 212, 274.
Thalictrum, 218.
Theophrastus, 155, 176.
Thistles, 80, 242.
Thrushes, 261, 267.
Tintern, 187, 204.
Trees, anatomy of, 119.

— transplanting, 120.
Tulips, 59.
Tulip-tree, 216, 254.
Turner, 12.

ULKX SAM'S, 125.

VARIEGATED SHRUBS, 188.
Vaughan, H., 87.
Vines, 196.

American, 201.

Virgil, 74, 236.
Virginian creepers, 218.
Voles, 84.

WALLACE, 188, 286.
Walpole, Horace, 116.
Watson, Forbes, 21, 25, 28, 221.
Weeds, 58.
White, Gilbert, 292.
Whitman, Walt, 287.
Willows, 89.
Wilson, O. F., 247.
Wordsworth, 286.

XANTHOCERAS eoRBiroLiA, 78.

TEW, 251.

York and Lancaster Rose, 176.

Yucca, 274.

Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to Her Majesty
at the Edinburgh University Press

IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN.

In One Volume. Crown 8vo, doth, gilt top. 6s.

OPINIONS OF THE PRESS.

Guardian. — 'All lovers of nature will be grateful to Canon Ella-
combe for this delightful book. To read it is like going round his
garden with the author and having a part in his keen enjoyment of the
beauty of plant life, and of his quick perception of the many wonders
of vegetable physiology. The book may be warmly recommended to
all who love gardens, while it also cannot fail to interest even the
horticulturally unlearned. It is written in a style that is clear, bright,
and simple, and from beginning to end there is not a dull or wearisome
sentence. '

Pall Mall Gazette.— •' A most delightful volume. We have much
pleasure in recommending In a Gloucestershire Garden, both to those
who possess a knowledge of plants, and to all those who love pleasant
talk about flowers. The book is a worthy companion to Mr. Bright's
Lancashire Garden, and to E. V. B.'s Days and Hours.'

Athenesum.—tCo.nQn Ellacombe knows what he is writing about,
and he knows how to write. He tells us all about his garden and the
treasures it contains, but his book is no mere descriptive catalogue.
It is permeated with a pleasant literary flavour, and the many refer-
ences to the works of poets and prose writers are introduced because
they are apposite and suggestive, not because they happen to be
registered in the author's commonplace book. A series of miscel-
laneous essays constitutes the second part of this very readable and
satisfactory book. '

Westminster Gazette.—' Canon Ellacombe's latest volume is full of
attractiveness, not only to lovers of flowers for their beauty, but to all
who take an interest in the history, peculiarities, and associations of
the denizens of our gardens. Altogether a charming book. '

Times. — ' It certainly ought to appeal to a wide range of readers,
for it is written in a most pleasant style, and, without any parade of
science, is evidently the fruit of long personal observation. Canon
Ellacombe is a scholar, and writes as a scholar.'

Western Morning News.— 'To those who have enjoyed Milver's
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St. James's Gazette,— -'Mr. Ellacombe's book on the delights of
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writer knows his plants personally, so to speak, and intimately, and
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he did not know a stamen from a pistil, and yet he is deeply versed in
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By COLONEL R. F. MEYSEY-THOMPSON.
Large crown 8vo., los. 6d.

' A book which is at no point otherwise than diverting, and which is crammed with good
stories of men and horses that should render it a valued addition to every sportsman's library.'
-World.

'Will be welcomed by all sportsmen as a valuable contribution to sporting literature.' —
Sporting Times.

' A most entertaining record of a life of varied activities.' — Referee.

'One of the most interesting and versatile books we have seen for some time.' — Land and
Water.

'Of all his experiences Colonel Thompson has good stories to tell, for, besides being a keen
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easy style, abundant kindliness, and a ready humour.' — Pall Mall Gazette.

' One of the sprightliest books given to sportsman for years past.' — Yorkshire Post.

Hunting Reminiscences of Frank Gillard, with
the Belvoir Hounds, 1860 to 1896.

Recorded and Illustrated by CUTHBERT BRADLEY.
Large 8vo., 155.

' A most complete history of the Belvoir for the last thirty years. To us the book has proved
intensely interesting.' — Land and Water.

'This ought to be a good book considering the worthiness of the si'bject, and the verdict of
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and judiciously, for the most part leaving the veteran Gillard to tell his own story.' — Pall Mali
•Gazette.

'A book which should be sure of a hearty welcome from all hunting n>en. Gillard describes
many a notable run, and records many interesting incidents of the chase and anecdotes of
hunting men.' — Truth.

Recollections of a Highland Subaltern

During the Campaigns of the 93rd Highlanders in India, under
Colin Campbell, Lord Clyde, in 1857-1859.

By LIEUTENANT-COLONEL W. GORDON ALEXANDER.
With numerous Illustrations and Plans. Demy 8vo., i6s.

' In his graphic and luminous accounts of all these momentous operations Colonel Alexander
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' Colonel Alexander's contribution to the histories of the Mutiny may be cited as one of un-
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' Colon il Alexander's simple and soldier-like narrative will be found enjoyable by any
intelligent reader, while it must prove itself invaluable to those exact chroniclers who love
precision on its own account.' — Saturday Review.

1 A thrilling record.' — Liverpool Post.

The Life of Henry Morley, LL.D., Professor of the

English Language and Literature at University College,
London.

By the REV. HENRY SHAEN SOLLY, M.A.
With two Portraits. Large 8vo., 123. 6d.

' Mr. Solly's " Life of Henry Morley " ought to be bought by public libraries, presented by
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1 Mr. Solly has done his work well. This biography of his father-in-law is admirably written,
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' Henry Morley's life was well worth writing, even as a record of pluck, perseverance, and
sel f- reliance. ' — Westminster Gazette.

' It is an entirely satisfactory and eminently readable biography of a most lovable personality
—Daily Mail.

Tropics and Snows. A Record of Sport and Adventure in
Many Lands.

By CAPTAIN R. G. BURTON, Indian Staff Corps.

With numerous full-page Illustrations. Demy 8vo., i6s.

' The accounts Captain Burton gives of his hunting expeditions are very diverting. A faculty
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possessed by sportsmen's tales.' — Pall Mall Gazette.

' One feature of " Tropics and Snows " we would lay stress upon : the majority of really good
books on Indian sport deal with the India of a past generation : Captain Burton landed in India
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an interest and value which sportsmen of the day will know how to appreciate. It is a genuinely
good book.' — Asian.

The Frank Lockwood Sketch-Book.

Being a selection of Sketches by the late Sir FRANK LOCKWOOD,
Q.C., M.P.

Third Edition. Oblong royal 4to., los. 6d.

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Tails with a Twist.

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Oblong demy 4to., 35. 6d.
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The Modern Traveller.

By H. B. and B. T. B., Authors of 'More Beasts (For Worse Children).'

One vol., 4to., 35. 6d.

1 Imagine the palter and topical songs at a pantomime written by some one with a real literary
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drawings are as good as the verse. There is humour, wit, and fancy in every line and every bi
of shading. ' — Spectator.

BY THE SAME AUTHORS.

More Beasts (For Worse Children).

New Edition. One vol., 410., 35. 6d.

Newcastle-on-Tyne : its Municipal Origin and
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By the HONOURABLE DAPHNE RENDEL. With Illustrations, I vol., 8vo.,
3s. 6d.

Verses.

By MAUD HOLLAND (MAUD WALPOLE). Crown 8vo., 35. 6d.

Some of these Poems have already appeared in the Spectator, the Speaker,
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Various Quills.

A Collection of Poems, Stories, and Essays contributed by the members of a
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Gentlemen's Fancy Dress. How to Choose it.

By ARDERN HOLT, Author of ' Fancy Dresses Described.'

New and Revised Edition. With Illustrations. Paper Boards, 2s. 6d. :
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Composite Book-Plates.

A reproduction in facsimile of 60 book-plates specially designed for those vhose
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Eight are by Theodore Simson, of Paris, five by Frank Bramley, and
the rest by E. Bengough Ricketts, member of the Ex-Libris Society.
One volume. Svo. Paper, 6s. net.

7

IRew anb popular IRovels,

Moonfleet.

By J. MEADE FALKNER, Author of 'The Lost Stradivarius.'
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' An admirable romance. " Moonfleet " is a book to be read, and those who read will find that
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' This is an excellent bit of work. It is well written, and the interest of the story increases
almost to the end." — Pall Mall Gazette.

' Mr. Falkner is one of the very few of Stevenson's followers in whose pages we find the true
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The Delusion of Diana.

By MARGARET BURNESIDE.

Second Edition. Crown 8vo., 6s.

'Amid a desert of commonplace it is refreshing to come across a novel like " The Delusion of
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' Unusually clever is the leading impression of "The Delusion of Diana." In this story the
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' A brilliant study of the modern, up-to-date young woman.' — Tablet.

The False Chevalier.

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Bean Ibole's Morfcs.

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Faith which Worketh by Love. A Sermon Preached
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professor Xlo^fc Morgan's TKHorfca.

NEW AND CHEAPER EDITION. REVISED THROUGHOUT.

Animal Life and Intelligence. By Professor c. LLOYD

MORGAN, F.G.S., Principal of University College, Bristol. With 40 Illus-
trations, crown 8vo. , 7s- 6d. [/« Preparation.
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An Illustrated School Geography. By ANDREW j.

HERBERTSON, F.R.G.S., Lecturer in Geography at the Heriot • Watt
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several hundred Illustrations, Relief Maps and Diagrams, large 4to., 55.

9

1Recentl\> publisbeb anb Stanbarfc

SCHOOL HISTORY.

Harrow School.

Edited by E. W. HOWSON and G. TOWNSEND WARNER. With a Pre-
face by EARL SPENCER, K.G., D.C.L., Chairman of the Governors of
Harrow School. And Contributions by Old Harrovians and Harrow
Masters.

Illustrated with a large number of original full-page and other Pen-and-
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gravure Portraits and reproductions of objects of interest. One
vol., crown 4to., One Guinea net. A Large-Paper Edition, limited
to 150 copies, Three Guineas net.

The volume contains articles by the following contributors :

E. E. BOWEN ; H. MONTAGU BUTLER, D.D., Master of Trinity College,
Cambridge, and late Headmaster of Harrow School ; EDWARD M. BUTLER ;
C. COLBECK ; Professor W. J. COURTHOPE, C.B. ; the EARL OF CREWE ; Rev.
J. A. CRUIKSHANK; Sir HENRY S. CUNNINGHAM, K. C.S.I. ; Sir CHARLES
DALRYMPLE, Bart., M.P. ; Rev. B. H. DRURY ; SPENCER W. GORE;
E. GRAHAM ; W. O. HEWLETT ; A. F. HORT ; E. W. HOWSON ; the Right
Rev. BISHOP JENNER ; B. P. LASCELLES ; Hon. E. CHANDOS LEIGH, Q.C. ;
Right Hon. W. H. LONG, M.P.; Rev. HASTINGS RASHDALL; C. S. ROUNDELL,
Governor of Harrow School ; the EARL SPENCER, K.G., D.C.L., Chairman of
the Governors; P. M. THORNTON, M.P. ; G. TOWNSEND WARNER; and the
Rev. J. E. C. WELLDON, Headmaster of Harrow School.

' Nothing could be more comprehensive or more satisfactory. The various topics suggested
by the fabric and history of the school are here admirably exhausted. Altogether, this is a
volume worthy of Harrow, and of which Harrow may well be proud.' — Globe.

' Not only Harrovians, past and present, but all who are interested in the history and inner
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'This volume is a model of its kind. Handsomely p inted, profusely and charmingly
illustrated by the clever pencil of Mr. H. M. Marshall, and carefully edited by Harrovians in
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Daily Telegraph.

WINCHESTER COLLEGE. Illustrated by HERBERT MARSHALL.
With Contributions in Prose and Verse by OLD WYKEHAMISTS. Demy 410., cloth,
255. net. A few copies of the first edition, limited to 1,000 copies, are still to be
had.

GREAT PUBLIC SCHOOLS. ETON — HARROW — WINCHESTER —

RUGBY — WESTMINSTER — MARLBOROUGH — CHELTENHAM — HAILEYBURY —
CLIFTON — CHARTERHOUSE. With nearly 100 Illustrations by the best artists.
Popular Edition. One vol., large imperial i6mo., handsomely bound, 35. 6d.

10

ART-BOOKS.

Old English Glasses.

An Account of Glass Drinking-Vessels in England from Early Times to the end
of the Eighteenth Century. With Introductory Notices of Continental
Glasses during the same period, Original Documents, etc. Dedicated by
special permission to Her Majesty the Queen.

By ALBERT H ARTSHORNE, Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries.

Illustrated by nearly 70 full-page Tinted or Coloured Plates in the best
style of Lithography, and several hundred outline Illustrations in
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' It would be difficult to overestimate the value of this book to the collector. It would be but
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while its half-vellum binding is in admirable keeping with the care and taste which has been
lavished upon the interior." — Standard.

' An important contribution to the library of the serious antiquary and collector.' — Times.

' Mr. Hartshorne has been fortunate in finding a subject about which literally nothing was
known, even by wou!d-be connoisseurs, and he has risen to the height of his opportunity in a
wonderful way. A fortnight ago the collector of old English Glasses was working in darkness
. . . to-day such a collector has but to become the possessor of this sumptuous quarto and the
whole sequence of glass-making, not only in England but on the Continent, from primitive times
to the end of the last century, is before him. It is a monograph which must remain the one
authority on English glasses.' — Daily Chronicle.

1 No more sumptuous monograph on any artistic subject has been published this year than
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Clouston. THE CHIPPENDALE PERIOD IN ENGLISH FURNI-
TURE. By K. WARREN CLOUSTON. With 200 Illustrations by the Author.
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Freshfield. THE EXPLORATION OF THE CAUCASUS. By
DOUGLAS W. FRESHFIELD, lately President of the Alpine Club and Honorary
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140 Illustrations in the text, chiefly from Photographs by VITTORIO SEI.LA, and
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Sparkes. WILD FLOWERS IN ART AND NATURE. By J. C. L.
SPARKES, Principal of the National Art Training School, South Kensington, and
F. W. BURBIDGE, Curator of the University Botanical Gardens, Dublin. With
21 full-nage Coloured Plates by H. G. MOON. Royal 4to., handsomely bound,
gilt edges, 2 is.

II

BIOGRAPHY AND HISTORY.

Talks with Mr. Gladstone.

By the Hon. L. A. TOLLEMACHE, Author of 'Benjamin Jowett, 'Safe
Studies,' etc.

With a Portrait of Mr. Gladstone. Large crown 8vo., cloth, 6s.

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' Reams have been written about Mr. Gladstone within the last few weeks, but no sketch of
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BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

BENJAMIN JOWETT, MASTER OF BALLIOL. A Personal Memoir.
Third Edition, with portrait. Crown 8vo., cloth, 35. 6d.

Many Memories of Many People.

By Mrs. M. C. SIMPSON (nte NASSAU-SENIOR).

Fourth Edition. One vol., demy 8vo., i6s.

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Letters of Mary Sibylla Holland.

Selected and Edited by her Son, BERNARD HOLLAND.
Second Edition. One vol., crown 8vo., 7s. 6d. net.

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'This book is one of a rare type in English literature. For its counterpart we must tu»n to
French memoirs, to the touching story of " Regit d'une Sceur," the Life of Madame Swetchine
or the Journals of Eugenie de Guerin.' — Literature.

12

A Memoir of Anne J. Clough, Principal of Newnham
College, Cambridge.

By her Niece, BLANCHE A. CLOUGH.
One vol., 8vo., I2s. 6d.

' Her niece's work as editor has been done with admirable skill. Those who knew and loved
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'The memoir is thoroughly worthy of its subject, and must earn the gratitude of every reader.
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Oman. A HISTORY OF ENGLAND. By CHARLES OMAN, Fellow of
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Pilkington. IN AN ETON PLAYING FIELD. The Adventures of
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Kansome. THE BATTLES OF FREDERICK THE GREAT. Extracted
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Reynolds. STUDIES ON MANY SUBJECTS. By the Rev. S. H.
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Rochefort. THE ADVENTURES OF MY LIFE. By HENRI RCCHE-

FORT. Second Edition. Two vols., large crown 8vo., 255.

Roebuck. THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND LETTERS of the Right
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Santley. STUDENT AND SINGER. The Reminiscences of CHARLES
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Sherard. ALPHONSE DAUDET: a Biography and Critical Study. By
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'3

Recollections of Aubrey de Vere.

With Portrait. Third Edition. One vol., demy 8vo., i6s.

1 The most genial, charming, and amusing volume of reminiscences of the year.' — Truth.

1 It presents the portrait of a noble figure, a man of letters in a sense peculiar to a day now
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Benson and Tatham. MEN OF MIGHT. Studies of Great Characters.
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Cawston and Keane. THE EARLY CHARTERED COMPANIES.
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Fowler. ECHOES OF OLD COUNTRY LIFE. By J. K. FOWLER, of
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Hare. MARIA EDGEWORTH : her Life and Letters. Edited by
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Lane. CHURCH AND REALM IN STUART TIMES. A Course of
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Lecky. THE POLITICAL VALUE OF HISTORY. By W. E. H.
LECKY, D.C.L., LL.D. An Address delivered at the Midland Institute,
reprinted with additions. Crown 8vo., cloth, 2s. 6d.

Le Fanu. SEVENTY YEARS OF IRISH LIFE. By the late W. R.
LE FANU. Popular Edition. Crown 8vo., 6s.

Macdonald. THE MEMOIRS OF THE LATE SIR JOHN A.
MACDONALD, G.C.B., First Prime Minister of Canada. Edited by JOSEPH
POPE, his Private Secretary. With Portraits. Two vols., demy 8vo., 325.

Twining. RECOLLECTIONS OF LIFE AND WORK Beirg the
Autobiography of LOUISA TWINING, One vol., 8vo., cloth, 155.

TRAVEL AND ADVENTURE.

With the British Mission to Menelik, 1897.

By Count GLEICHEN, Captain Grenadier Guards, Intelligence Officer to the

Mission.
With numerous Illustrations by the Author and a Map. Demy 8vo., i6s.

1 Count Gleichen has produced a book which deserves to be read by everyone \i ho cares for
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1 A thoroughly entertaining book. Count Gleichen's book will be read by all who are
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' To predict that the flash-light photograph of Abyssinia produced by Count Gleichen's
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Bacon. BENIN, THE CITY OF BLOOD. An Account of the Benin
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Balfour. TWELVE HUNDRED MILES IN A WAGGON. A Narra-
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Beynon. WITH KELLY TO CHITRAL. By Lieutenant W. G. L.
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Bottome. A SUNSHINE TRIP : GLIMPSES OF THE ORIENT.
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Bull. THE CRUISE OF THE ' ANTARCTIC ' TO THE SOUTH
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Chapman. WILD NORWAY, By ABEL CHAPMAN, Author of ' Wild
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Colvile. THE LAND OF THE NILE SPRINGS. By Colonel Sir
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Demy 8vo., i6s.

Gordon. PERSIA REVISITED With Remaiks on H.I.M. Mozuffer-
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McNab. ON VELDT AND FARM, IN CAPE COLONY, BECHUANA-
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Map. Second Edition. Crown 8yo., 300 pages, 35. 6d.

Fire and Sword in the Sudan.

By SIR RUDOLF SLATIN PASHA, K.C.M.G. Translated and Edited
by SIR F. R. WINGATE, K.C.M.G. Chief of the Intelligence Department
Egyptian Army.

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Pike. THROUGH THE SUB-ARCTIC FOREST. A Record of a
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Portal. THE BRITISH MISSION TO UGANDA. By the late Sir
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Portal. MY MISSION TO ABYSSINIA. By the late Sir Gerald H.
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Smith. THROUGH UNKNOWN AFRICAN COUNTRIES. By A.
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AMERICAN SPORT AND TRAVEL.

These books, selected from the Catalogue of MESSRS. RAND McNALLY & Co., the
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Aldrich. ARCTIC ALASKA AND SIBERIA. By HERBERT L.

ALDRICH. Crown 8vo., cloth, 43. 6d.

AMERICAN GAME FISHES. By various Writers. Cloth, 103. 6d.
Higgins. NEW GUIDE TO THE PACIFIC COAST. By C. A,

HIGGINS. Crown 8vo., cloth, 43. 6d.
Leffingwell. THE ART OF WING-SHOOTING. By W. B. LEFFING-

WELL. Crown 8vo., cloth, 45. 6J.
Shields. CAMPING AND CAMP OUTFITS. By G. O. SHIELDS

('Coquina'). Crown 8vo., cloth, 55.
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Writers. Edited by G. O. Shields ('Coquina'). Cloth, 155.
Thomas. SWEDEN AND THE SWEDES. By WILLIAM WIDGERY

THOMAS, jun., United States Minister to Sweden and Norway. Cloth, 163.

i6

THE SPORTSMAN'S LIBRARY.

Edited by the Right Hon. Sir HERBERT MAXWELL, Bart., M.P.

A Re-issue, in handsome volumes, of certain rare and entertaining books on
Sport, carefully selected by the Editor, and Illustrated by the best
Sporting Artists of the day, and with Reproductions of old Plates.

Library Edition, 153. a Volume. Large-Paper Edition, limited to 200 copies,
Two Guineas a volume.

't VOLUME I.

Smith. THE LIFE OF A FOX, AND THE DIARY OF A HUNTS-
MAN. By THOMAS SMITH, Master of the Hambledon and Pytchley Hounds.
With Illustrations by the Author, and Coloured Plates by G. H. JALLAND.

Sir RALPH PAYNE-GALWEY, Bart., writes : ' It is excellent and beautifully produced.'

' Is sure to appeal to everyone who has had, or is about to have, a chance of a run with the
hounds, and those to whom an unkindly fate denies this boon will enjoy it for the joyous music
of the hounds which it brings to relieve the winter of our discontent amid London fogs.' — Pall
Mall Gazette.

' It will be a classic of fox-hunting till the end of time.' — Yorkshire Post.

' No hunting men should be without this book in their libraries." — World.

VOLUME II.

Thornton. A SPORTING TOUR THROUGH THE NORTHERN-
PARTS OF ENGLAND AND GREAT PART OF THE HIGHLANDS
OF SCOTLAND. By Colonel T. THORNTON, of Thornville Royal, in
Yorkshire. With the Original Illustrations by GARRARD, and other Illustrations
and Coloured Plates by G. E. LODGE.

' Sportsmen of all descriptions will gladly welcome the sumptuous new edition issued by Mr.
Edward Arnold of Colonel T. Thornton's " Sporting Tour," which has long been a scarce book.'
— Daily News.

1 It is excellent reading for all interested in sport.' — Black and White.

' A handsome volume, effectively illustrated with coloured plates by G. E. Lodge, and with
portraits and selections from the original illustrations, themselves characteristic of the art and
sport of the time.' — Times.

VOLUME III.

Cosmopolite. THE SPORTSMAN IN IRELAND. By a COSMOPOLITE.
With Coloured Plates and Black and White Drawings by P. CHENEY ix TRENCH,
and reproductions of the original Illustrations drawn by R. ALLEN, and engraved
by W. WESTALL, A.R.A.

' This is a most readable and entertaining book.' — Pall Mall Gazette.

1 As to the "get up " of the book we can only repeat what we said on the appearance of the
first of the set, that the series consists of the most tasteful and charming volumes at present
being issued by the English Press, and collectors of handsome books should find them not only
an ornament to their shelves, but also a sound investment.'

VOLUME IV.

Berkeley. REMINISCENCES OF A HUNTSMAN. By the Hon.
GRANTLEY F. BERKELEY. With a Coloured Frontispiece and the original
Illustrations by JOHN LEECH, and several Coloured Plates and other Illustrations
by G. H. JALLAND.

'The latest addition to the sumptuous "Sportsman's Library" is here reproduced with all
possible aid from the printer and binder, with illustrations from the pencils of Leech and G. H.
Jalland.'— Globe.

' The Hon. Grantley F. Berkeley had one great quality of the raconteur. His self-revelations
and displays of vanity are delightful.' — Times.

VOLUME V.

Scrope. THE ART OF DEERSTALKING. By WILLIAM SCROPE.
With Frontispiece by EDWIN LANDSEER, and nine Photogravure Plates of the
original Illustrations.

' With the fine illustrations by the Landseers and Scrope himself, this forms a most worthy
number of a splendid series.' — Pall Mall Gazette.

' Among the works published in connection with field sports in Scotland, none probably have
been more sought after than those of William Scrope, and although published more than ntty
years ago, they are still as fresh as ever, full of pleasant anecdote, and valuable for the many
practical hints which they convey to inexperienced sportsmen.' — Field.

VOLUME VI.

Nimrod. THE CHASE, THE TURF, AND THE ROAD. By NIMROD.
With a Photogravure Portrait of the Author by D. MACLISE, R.A., and with
Coloured Photogravure and other Plates from the original Illustrations by
ALKEN, and several reproductions of old Portraits.

' Sir Herbert Maxwell has performed a real service for all who care for sport in republishing
Nimrod's admirable papers. The book is admirably printed and produced both in the matter
of illustrations and of binding." — St. James's Gazette.

'A thoroughly well got-up book.' — World.

VOLUME VII.

Scrope. DAYS AND NIGHTS OF SALMON FISHING. By WILLIAM

SCROPE. With coloured Lithographic and Photogravure reproductions of the
original Plates.

' This great ciassic of sport has bean reissued by Mr. Edward Arnold in charming form. —
L Herat ure.

A Mingled Yarn. The Autobiography of Edward Spencer
Mott (NATHANIEL GUBBINS). Author of ' Cakes and Ale,' etc.
One vol., large crown 8vo., 12s. 6d.

' It is most interesting reading, and gives you glimpses of many strange byways of life and of
all sorts and conditions of men. — Truth.

' Uncommonly good reading.' — St. James's Gazette.

' Lively anecdotes crop up, like poppies in the corn, wherever one lo^ks into this most enter
taining book. — Referee.

f A very readable autobiography.' — Literary Worl.l.

distance. RIDING RECOLLECTIONS AND TURF STORIES.
By HENRY CUSTANCE, three times winner of the Derby. One vol., crown 8vo.,
cloth, 2s. 6d.

Hall. FISH TAILS AND SOME TRUE ONES. By BRADNOCK HALL,
Author of ' Rough Mischance.' With an original Etching by the Author, and
twelve full-page Illustrations by T. H. MCLACHLAN. Crown 8vo., 6s.

Maxwell. MEMORIES OF THE MONTHS: Leaves from a Field
Naturalist's Note-Book. By the Right Hon. Sir HERBERT MAXWELL, Bart.,
M.P. Crown 8vo., with five Photogravure Illustrations, 6s.

i8

GENERAL LITERATURE.

Style.

By WALTER RALEIGH, Professor of English Literature at University College,
Liverpool, Author of ' Robert Louis Stevenson,' etc.
Third Edition. One vol., crown 8vo., 55.

' Professor Raleigh has produced a finished masterpiece, where the men hefore him, masters
as they were, gave us brilliant sketches or clever studies. His ingenuity of thought, restraint
of expression, austerity of judgment, his prudent counsel and wise suggestion are worthy of all
praise. A model treatise on a most difficult and important theme.' — Pall Mall Gazette.

1 In our judgment Mr. Raleigh's volume on " Style " is an amazingly good and pre-eminently
interesting and suggestive book. His whole treatment of his subject is vigorous, manly, and
most sensible.' — Speaker.

'As brimful of discerning criticism and fruitful suggestion as it is throughout lively and
inspiriting." — St. James's Gazette.

' Mr. Raleigh's volume is the fruit of much reading and more thinking. It is informed by the
true literary spirit ; it is full of wisdom, inclining now and then to paradox ; and it is gay with
quaintnesses and unexpected epigrams." — Times.

'A fascinating little volume." — Spectator.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. Second Edition. Crown 8vo., cloth,

2s. 6d.
Bell. KLEINES HAUSTHEATER. Fifteen Little Plays in German for

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Butler. SELECT ESSAYS OF SAINTE BEUVE. Chiefly bearing on
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of Baron Marbot.' One vol., 8vo., cloth, 55. net.

Collingwood. THORSTEIN OF THE MERE: a Saga of the Northmen
in Lakeland. By W. G. COLLINGWOOD, Author of 'Life of John Ruskin, etc.
With Illustrations. Price IDS. 6d.

Cook. THE DEFENSE OF POESY, otherwise known as AN APOLOGY
FOR POETRY. By Sir PHILIP SIDNEY. Edited by A. S. COOK, Professor
of English Literature in Yale University. Crown 8vo., cloth, 43. 6d.

Cook. A DEFENCE OF POETRY. By PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

Edited, with Notes and Introduction, by Professor A. S. COOK. Crown 8vo.,

cloth, 2s. 6d.
Davidson. A HANDBOOK TO DANTE. By GIOVANNI A. SCARTAZZINI.

Translated from the Italian, with Notes and Additions, by THOMAS DAVIDSON,

M A. Crown 8vo., cloth, 6s.

Ellacombe. THE PLANT-LORE AND GARDEN-CRAFT OF
SHAKESPEARE. By HENRY N. ELLACOMBE, M.A., Vicar of Bitton.
Illustrated by Major E. B. RICKETTS. Large crown 8vo., los. 6d.

Fleming. THE ART OF READING AND SPEAKING. By the

Rev. Canon FLEMING, Vicar of St. Michael's, Chester Square. Third Edition.

Cloth, 35. 6d.
Garnett. SELECTIONS IN ENGLISH PROSE FROM ELIZABETH

TO VICTORIA. Chosen and arranged by JAMES M. GARNETT, M.A., LL.D.

700 pages, large crown 8vo., cloth, 73. 6d.
Goschen. THE CULTIVATION AND USE OF IMAGINATION.

By the Right Hon. GEORGE JOACHIM GOSCHEN. Crown 8vo., cloth, 2s. 6d.

Harrison. STUDIES IN EARLY VICTORIAN LITERATURE. By
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'9

Rome : the Middle of the World.

By ALICE GARDNER, Lecturer in History at Newnham College ; Author of
' Friends of the Olden Time,' etc.

With Illustrations and Map. Crown 8vo., 35. 6d.

Miss Gardner's book on the Emperor Julian reconciled many readers to a singularly interest-
ley had previously heard little beyond the opprobrium of "apost:

I n her present volume she addresses a younger audience, but in treating of a much wider subject
she displays the same grasp and scholarship. We fancy Miss Gardner knows what youthful
patience and attention are, and her method of appealing to the imagination by a series of strongly-
lined pictures will probably do more to make Roman history a living thing to children than
serried dates and a philosophical argument of causes and effects.'— Saturday Revieiu.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
FRIENDS OF THE OLDEN TIME. Second Edition. Illustrated.

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Lang. LAMB'S ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. With an Introduction
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trations. Large crown 8vo., cloth, los. 6d.

WORKS BY THE VERY REV. S. REYNOLDS HOLE,

Dean of Rochester.
MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE. \ A BOOK ABOUT ROSES. Ciown

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MORE MEMORIES. Demy 8vo.

1 6s.

A LITTLE TOUR IN AMERICA.
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8vo. 35. 6d. and 6s.

A BOOK ABOUTTHE GARDEN.

Crown 8vo. 35. 6d.

ADDRESSES TO WORKING
MEN. Crown 8vo. 55.

FAITH WHICH WORKETH BY
LOVE. Crown 8vo. is.

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ENGLAND IN EGYPT. Popular Edition. With Map, and full details

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WAGNER'S HEROES. Parsifal— Tannhauser— Lohengrin— Hans Sachs.
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WAGNER'S HEROINES. Brunhilda— Senta— Isolda. Illustrated by
X. W, MAUP. Grown Bvo^ 53.

20

POETRY.
Ballads of the Fleet.

By RENNEL RODD, C.B., C.M.G.

One vol., crown 8vo., cloth, 6s.

' Mr. Rodd's ballads as a whole reach a high level of achievement. They have much of
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'The verse is full of colour and animation and fine feeling; simple withal, and vigorous
without noise or brag.' — Daily Chronicle.

' Many-sided in its charm, no less than in its appeal.' — Standard.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

FEDA, AND OTHER POEMS, CHIEFLY LYRICAL. With etched
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THE UNKNOWN MADONNA, AND OTHER POEMS. With Frontis-
piece by RICHMOND. Crown 8vo., cloth, 55.

THE VIOLET CROWN, AND SONGS OF ENGLAND. With Photo-
gravure Frontispiece. Crown 8vo., cloth, 5s.

THE CUSTOMS AND LORE OF MODERN GREECE. With seven
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Bell. DIANA'S LOOKING-GLASS, AND OTHER POEMS. By the
Rev. Canon BELL, D.D., Rector of Cheltenham, and Hon. Canon of Carlisle.
Crown 8vo., cloth, 5*. net.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
POEMS OLD AND NEW. Cloth, ;s. 6d.

THE NAME ABOVE EVERY NAME, AND OTHER SERMONS.
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THE GOSPEL AND POWER OF GOD. Croun 8vo., cloth, 3*. 6d.

Collins. A TREASURY OF MINOR BRITISH POETRY. Select, d
and arranged, with Notes, ly J. CHURTON COLLINS, M.A. Handsomely bound,
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Gummere. OLD ENGLISH BALLADS. Selected and Edited by
FRANCIS B. GUMMERE, Professor of English in Haverford College, U.S.A.
Crown 8vo , cloth, 55. 6d.

BY HENRY N. HUDSON, LL.D.

THE LIFE, ART, AND CHARACTERS OF SHAKESPEARE. Two
vols., large crown 8vo., cloth, 2is.

THE HARVARD EDITION OF SHAKESPEARE'S COMPLETE
WORKS. In twenty vols., large crown 8vo., cloth, £6. Also in ten vols., £$.

Hunt. LEIGH HUNTS 'WHAT IS POETRY?' An Answer to the
Question, ' What is Poetry ?' including Remarks on Versification. By LEIGH
HUNT. Edited, with note*, by Professor A. S. COOK. Crown 8vo., cloth, 2s. 6d.

Schelling. A BOOK OF ELIZABETHAN LYRICS. Selected and
Edited by F. E. SCHELLING, Profe-sor of English Literature in the University
of Pennsylvania. Crown 8vo., cloth, 55. 6d.

Thayer. THE BEST ELIZABETHAN PLAYS. Edited, with an
Introduction, by WILLIAM R. THAYER. 612 pages, large cro.wn 8vo,, cloth%
7?. 6d.

21

COUNTRY HOUSE.

Poultry-Keeping as an Industry for Farmers and
Cottagers.

By EDWARD BROWN, F.L.S. Fully Illustrated by LUDLOW.

New and completely revised Edition. One vol., demy 4to., cloth, 6s.

1 . . . We are glad to welcome the appearance of an excellent volume by Mr. Edward Brown.
The author has acquired so solid a reputation in connection with this subject that any praise of
his work is superfluous.' — Morning Post.

1 Mr. Brown is one of our best-known and most capable experts, and he has here presented the
fruits of his wide knowledge and experience in, perhaps, the most useful form they could have
taken. . . . His book is, indeed, a thoroughly practical and trustworthy guide to poultry in
health and disease ; and whether a dozen hens be kept or a hundred, it will be their owner's
own fault if, with Mr, Brown's excellent manual at hand, they fail to derive profit from their
stock.' — St. James's Gazette.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
PLEASURABLE POULTRY-KEEPING. Fully Illustrated. One vol.,

crown 8vo., cloth, 2s. 6d.
INDUSTRIAL POULTRY-KEEPING. Illustrated. Paper boards, is.

A small handbook chiefly intended for cottagers and allotment-holders.
POULTRY FATTENING. Fully Illustrated. New Edition. Crown 8vo.,
is. 6d.

BY COLONEL KENNEY-HERBERT ('WYVERN'\

COMMON-SENSE COOKERY : based on Modern English and Conti-
nental Principles, Worked out in Detail. Large crown 8vo., over 500 pp.
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FIFTY BREAKFASTS : containing a great variety of New and Simple
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FIFTY DINNERS. Small 8vo., cloth, 2s. 6d.

FIFTY LUNCHES. Small 8vo., cloth, 2s. 6d.

Cunningham. THE DRAUGHTS POCKET MANUAL. By J. G. CUN-
NINGHAM. An introduction to the Game in all its branches. Small 8vo., with
numerous diagrams, 2s. 6d.

Ellacombe. IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN. By the Rev.

H. N. ELLACOMBE, Vicar of Bitton, and Honorary Canon of Bristol. Author
of ' Plant Lore and Garden Craft of Shakespeare.' With new Illustrations by
Major E. B. RICKETTS. Second Edition. Crown 8vo., cloth, 6s.

Gossip. THE CHESS POCKET MANUAL. By G. H. D. GOSSIP.

A Pocket Guide, with numerous Specimen Games and Illustrations. Small 8vo.,

2s. 6d.
Holt. FANCY DRESSES DESCRIBED. By ARDERN HOLT. An

Alphabetical Dictionary of Fancy Costumes. With full accounts of the Dresses.

About 60 Illustrations by LILLIAN YOUNG. Many of them coloured. One vol.,

demy 8vo., 7s. 6d. net.

Shorland. CYCLING FOR HEALTH AND PLEASURE. By
L. H. PORTER, Author of ' Wheels and Wheeling,' etc. Revised and edited by
F. W. SHORLAND, Amateur Champion 1892-93-94. With numerous Illustrations,
small 8vo., 2s. 6d.

White. PLEASURABLE BEE-KEEPING. By C. N. WHITE, Lecturer

to the County Councils of Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, etc. Fully illustrated.
One vol., crown 8vo. , cloth, 2s. 6d.

22

SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY,

The Chances of Death, and other Studies in
Evolution.

By KARL PEARSON, F.R.S. Author of « The Ethic of Free Thought,' etc.
In two vols., demy 8vo., with Illustrations, 255. net.

CONTENTS OF VOL. I. — The Chances of Death — The Scientific Aspect of Monte
Carlo Roulette— Reproductive Selection — Socialism and Natural Selection —
Politics and Science — Reaction— Woman and Labour — Variation in Man aud
Woman.

CONTENTS OF VOL. II. — Woman as Witch — Ashiepattle ; or, Hans seeks his
Luck — Kindred Group Marriage — The German Passion Play— Index.

'We have pleasure in welcoming a new work of extreme scientific value and of deep popular
interest.' — Saturday Review.

'All of these Essays are well worth reading.' — Times.

' These brilliant volumes contain the most satisfactory work that Professor Pearson has yet
done. ' — Speaker.

Burgess. POLITICAL SCIENCE AND COMPARATIVE CONSTI-j
TUTIONAL LAW. By JOHN W. BURGESS, Ph.D., LL.D., Dean of the Uni-
versity Faculty o Political Science in Columbia College, U.S.A. .In two vols.J
demy 8vo., cloth, 255.

Fawcett. THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE. Being an Attempt
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Conditions and Import of Consciousness. By EDWARD DOUGLAS FAWCETT. •
One vol., demy 8vo., 145.

Hopkins. THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA. By E. W. HOPKINS, Ph.D.
(Leipzig), Professor of Sanskrit and Comparative Philology in Bryn Mawr
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Ladd. LOTZE'S PHILOSOPHICAL OUTLINES. Dictated Portions
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and edited by GEORGE T. LADD, Professor of Philosophy in Yale College. About
180 pages in each volume. Crown 8vo., cloth, 45. each. Vol. I. Metaphysics.
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Psychology. Vol. V. ^Esthetics. Vol. VI. Logic.

THE JOURNAL OF MORPHOLOGY. Edited by C. O. WHITMAN,
Professor of Biology in Clark University, U.S.A. Three numbers in a volume of
loo to 150 large 410. pages, with numerous plates. Single numbers, 173. 6d. ;
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Paget. WASTED RECORDS OF DISEASE. By CHARLES E. PAGET,
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Perry. CALCULUS FOR ENGINEERS. By Professor JOHN PERRY,
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Shaw. A TEXT-BOOK OF NURSING FOR HOME AND HOSPITAL
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WORTH, M.D., F.R.C.P. Fully Illustrated, crown 8vo., 35. 6d.

Young. A GENERAL ASTRONOMY. By CHARLES A. YOUNG,
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morocco, 12s. 6d.

23

Suggestions for a Scheme of Old Age Pensions.

A reprint of a scheme submitted to the Old Age Pensions Committee with an
Introductory chapter on the Report of that Committee.
By the Honourable LIONEL HOLLAND, M.P.
Crown 8vo., is. 6d.

Mr. Lionel Holland's dissection of the Old Age Pensions Committee Report is an exceedingly
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' Will be read with interest by all sorts of politicians. — Saturday Review

'An admirable introduction to the subject.' — Guardian.

' A trenchant criticism.' — Manchester Guardian.

' Practical and well-considered suggestions.'— Scotsman.

Arnold-Forster. ARMY LETTERS, 1897-98. By H. O. ARNOLD-
FORSTER, M.P. Crown 8vo., 33. 6d.

PRACTICAL SCIENCE MANUALS.

GENERAL EDITOR : PROFESSOR RAPHAEL MELDOLA, F.R.S.

Steam Boilers.

By GEORGE HALLIDAY, late Demonstrator at the Finsbury Technical
College.

With numerous Dia2rams and Illustrations.
Crown 8vo., 400 pages, 55.

1 A very good treatise . . . peculiarly adapted for the use of those who have not time or oppor-
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Electrical Traction.

By ERNEST WILSON, WH. Sc., M.I.E.E., Professor of Electrical Engineer-
ing at King's College, London.

With numerous Diagrams and Illustrations.
Crown 8vo., 55.

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Boulger. WOOD. By Professor BOULGER, late Professor of Botany in
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24

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Literature.

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The King with Two Faces.

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1 One of the cleverest historical novels of late years.' — Literature.

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25

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26

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