APPENDIX.
THE FLOWER GARDEN IN INDIA.
The following practical directions and useful information respecting the Indian Flower-Garden, are extracted from the late Mr. Speede's New Indian Gardener, with the kind permission of the publishers, Messrs. Thacker Spink and Company of Calcutta.
THE SOIL.
So far as practicable, the soil should be renewed every year, by turning in vegetable mould, river sand, and well rotted manure to the depth of about a foot; and every second or third year the perennials should be taken up, and reduced, when a greater proportion of manure may be added, or what is yet better, the whole of the old earth removed, and new mould substituted.
It used to be supposed that the only time for sowing annuals or other plants, (in Bengal) is the beginning of the cold weather, but although this is the case with a great number of this class of plants, it is a popular error to think it applies to all, since there are many that grow more luxuriantly if sown at other periods. The Pink, for instance, may be sown at any time, Sweet William thrives best if sown in March or April, the variegated and light colored Larkspurs should not be put in until December, the Dahlia germinates most successfully in the rains, and the beautiful class of Zinnias are never seen to perfection unless sown in June.
This is the more deserving of attention, as it holds out the prospect of maintaining our Indian flower gardens, in life and beauty, throughout the whole year, instead of during the confined period hitherto attempted.
The several classes of flowering plants are divided into PERENNIAL, BIENNIAL, and ANNUAL.
PERENNIALS.
The HERON'S BILL, Erodium; the STORK'S BILL, Pelargonium; and the CRANE'S BILL, Geranium; all popularly known under the common designation of Geranium, which gives name to the family, are well known, and are favorite plants, of which but few of the numerous varieties are found in this country.
Of the first of these there are about five and twenty fixed species, besides a vast number of varieties; of which there are here found only the following:--
The Flesh-colored Heron's bill, E. incarnatum, is a pretty plant of about six inches high, flowering in the hot weather, with flesh-colored blossoms, but apt to become rather straggling.
Of the hundred and ninety species of the second class, independently of their varieties, there are few indeed that have found their way here, only thirteen, most of which are but rarely met with.
The Rose-colored Stork's bill, P. roseum, is tuberous rooted, and in April yields pretty pink flowers.
The Brick-colored Stork's bill, P. lateritium, affords red flowers in March and April.
The Botany Bay Stork's bill, P. Australe, is rare, but may be made to give a pretty red flower in March.
The Common horse-shoe Stork's bill, P. zonale, is often seen, and yields its scarlet blossoms freely in April.
The Scarlet-flowered Stork's bill, P. inquinans, affords a very fine flower towards the latter end of the cold weather, and approaching to the hot; it requires protection from the rains, as it is naturally of a succulent nature, and will rot at the joints if the roots become at all sodden: many people lay the pots down on their sides to prevent this, which is tolerably successful to their preservation.
The Sweet-Scented Stork's bill, P. odoratissimum, with pink flowers, but it does not blossom freely, and the branches are apt to grow long and straggling.
The Cut-leaved Stork's bill, P. incisum, has small flowers, the petals being long and thin, and the flowers which appear in April are white, marked with pink.
The Ivy-leaved Stork's bill, P. lateripes, has not been known to yield flowers in this country.
The Rose-scented Stork's bill, P. capitatum, the odour of the leaves is very pleasant, but it is very difficult to force into blossom.
The Ternate Stork's bill, P. ternatum, has variegated pink flowers in April.
The Oak-leaved Stork's bill, P. quercifolium, is much esteemed for the beauty of its leaves, but has not been known to blossom in this climate.
The Tooth-leaved Stork's bill, P. denticulatum, is not a free flowerer, but may with care be made to bloom in April.
The Lemon, or Citron-scented Stork's bill, P. gratum, grows freely, and has a pretty appearance, but does not blossom.
Of the second class of these plants the forty-eight species have only three representatives.
The Aconite-leaved Crane's bill, G. aconiti-folium, is a pretty plant, but rare, yielding its pale blue flowers with difficulty.
The Wallich's Crane's bill G. Wallichianum, indigenous to Nepal, having pale pink blossoms and rather pretty foliage, flowering in March and April; but requiring protection in the succeeding hot weather, and the beginning of the rains, as it is very susceptible of heat, or excess of moisture.
Propagation--may be effected by seed to multiply, or produce fresh varieties, but the ordinary mode of increasing the different sorts is by cuttings, no plant growing more readily by this mode. These should be taken off at a joint where the wood is ripening, at which point the root fibres are formed, and put into a pot with a compost of one part garden mould, one part vegetable mould, and one part sand, and then kept moderately moist, in the shade, until they have formed strong root fibres, when they may be planted out. The best method is to plant each cutting in a separate pot of the smallest size. The germinating of the seeds will be greatly promoted by sinking the pots three parts of their depth in a hot bed, keeping them moist and shaded and until they germinate.
Soil, &c. A rich garden mould, composed of light loam, rather sandy than otherwise, with very rotten dung, is desirable for this shrub.
Culture. Most kinds are rapid and luxurious growers, and it is necessary to pay them constant attention in pruning or nipping the extremities of the shoots, or they will soon become ill-formed and straggling. This is particularly requisite during the rains, when heat and moisture combine to increase their growth to excess; allowing them to enjoy the full influence of the sun during the whole of the cold weather, and part of the hot. At the close of the rains, the plants had better be put out into the open ground, and closely pruned, the shoots taken off affording an ample supply of cuttings for multiplying the plants; this putting out will cause them to throw up strong healthy shoots and rich blossoms; but as the hot weather approaches, or in the beginning of March, they must be re-placed in moderate sized pots, with a compost similar to that required for cuttings and placed in the plant shed, as before described. The earth in the pots should be covered with pebbles, or pounded brick of moderate size, which prevents the accumulation of moss or fungi. Geraniums should at no time be over watered, and must at all seasons be allowed a free ventilation.
There is no doubt that if visitors from this to the Cape, would pay a little attention to the subject, the varieties might be greatly increased, and that without much trouble, as many kinds may be produced freely by seed, if brought to the country fresh, and sown immediately on arrival; young plants also in well glazed cases would not take up much space in some of the large vessels coming from thence.
The ANEMONE has numerous varieties, and is, in England, a very favorite flower, but although A. cernua is a native of Japan, and many varieties are indigenous to the Cape, it is very rare here.
The Double anemone is the most prized, but there are several Single and Half double kinds which are very handsome. The stem of a good anemone should be eight or nine inches in height, with a strong upright stalk. The flower ought not to be less than seven inches in circumference, the outer row of petals being well rounded, flat, and expanding at the base, turning up with a full rounded edge, so as to form a well shaped cup, within which, in the double kinds, should arise a large group of long small petals reverted from the centre, and regularly overlapping each other; the colors clear, each shade being distinct in such as are variegated.
The Garden, or Star Wind flower, A. hortensis, Boostan afrooz, is another variety, found in Persia, and brought thence to Upper India, of a bright scarlet color; a blue variety has also blossomed in Calcutta, and was exhibited at the Show of February, 1847, by Mrs. Macleod, to whom Floriculture is indebted for the introduction of many beautiful exotics heretofore new to India. But it is to be hoped this handsome species of flowering plants will soon be more extensively found under cultivation.
Propagation. Seed can hardly be expected to succeed in this country, as even in Europe it fails of germinating; for if not sown immediately that it is ripe, the length of journey or voyage would inevitably destroy its power of producing. Offsets of the tubers therefore are the only means that are left, and these should not be replanted until they have been a sufficient time out of the ground, say a month or so, to become hardened, nor should they be put into the earth until they have dried, or the whole offset will rot by exposure of the newly fractured side to the moisture of the earth. The tubers should be selected which are plump and firm, as well as of moderate size, the larger ones being generally hollow; these may be obtained in good order from Hobart Town.
Soil, &c. A strong rich loamy soil is preferable, having a considerable portion of well rotted cow-dung, with a little leaf mould, dug to a depth of two feet, and the beds not raised too high, as it is desirable to preserve moisture in the subsoil; if in pots, this is effected by keeping a saucer of water under them continually, the pot must however be deep, or the fibres will have too much wet; an open airy situation is desirable.
Culture. When the plant appears above ground the earth must be pressed well down around the root, as the crowns and tubers are injured by exposure to dry weather, and the plants should be sheltered from the heat of the sun, but not so as to confine the air; they require the morning and evening sun to shine on them, particularly the former.
The IRIS is a handsome plant, attractive alike from the variety and the beauty of its blossoms; some of them are also used medicinally. All varieties produce abundance of seed, in which form the plant might with great care be introduced into this country.
The Florence Iris, I. florentina, Ueersa, is a large variety, growing some two feet in height, the flower being white, and produced in the hot weather.
The Persian Iris I. persica, Hoobur, is esteemed not only for its handsome blue and purple flowers, but also for its fragrance, blossoming in the latter part of the cold weather; one variety has blue and yellow blossoms.
The Chinese Iris, I. chinensis, Soosun peelgoosh, in a small sized variety, but has very pretty blue and purple flowers in the beginning of the hot weather.
Propagation. Besides seed, which should be sown in drills, at the close of the rains, in a sandy soil, it may be produced by offsets.
Soil, &c. Almost any kind of soil suits the Iris, but the best flowers are obtained from a mixture of sandy loam, with leaf mould, the Persian kind requiring a larger proportion of sand.
Culture. Little after culture is required, except keeping the beds clear from weeds, and occasionally loosening the earth. But the roots must be taken, up every two, or at most three years, and replanted, after having been kept to harden for a month or six weeks; the proper season for doing this being when the leaves decay after blossoming.
The TUBEROSE, Polianthes, is well deserving of culture, but it is not by any means a rare plant, and like many indigenous odoriferous flowers, has rather too strong an odour to be borne near at hand, and it is considered unwholesome in a room.
The Common Tuberose, P. tuberosa, Chubugulshubboo, being a native of India thrives in almost any soil, and requires no cultivation: it is multiplied by dividing the roots. It flowers at all times of the year in bunches of white flowers with long sepals.
The Double Tuberose, P. florepleno, is very rich in appearance, and of more delicate fragrance, although still too powerful for the room. Crows are great destroyers of the blossoms, which they appear fond of pecking. This variety is more rare, and the best specimens have been obtained from Hobart Town. It is rather more delicate and requires more attention in culture than the indigenous variety, and should be earthed up, so as to prevent water lodging around the stem.
The LOBELIA is a brilliant class of flowers which may be greatly improved by careful cultivation.
The Splendid Lobelia, L. splendens, is found in many gardens, and is a showy scarlet flower, well worthy of culture.
The Pyramidal Lobelia, L. pyramidalis, is a native of Nepal, and is a modest pretty flower, of a purple color.
Propagation--is best performed by offsets, suckers, or cuttings, but seeds produce good strong plants, which may with care, be made to improve.
Soil, &c.--A moist, sandy soil is requisite for them, the small varieties especially delighting in wet ground. Some few of this family are annuals, and the roots of no varieties should remain more than three years without renewal, as the blossoms are apt to deteriorate; they all flower during the rains.
The PITCAIRNIA is a very handsome species, having long narrow leaves, with, spined edges and throwing up blossoms in upright spines.
The Long Stamened Pitcairnia, P. staminea, is a splendid scarlet flower, lasting long in blossom, which, appears in July or August, and continues till December.
The Scarlet Pitcairnia, P. bromeliaefolia, is also a fine rich scarlet flower, but blossoming somewhat sooner, and may be made to continue about a month later.
Propagation--is by dividing the roots, or by suckers, which is best performed at the close of the rains.
Soil, &c. A sandy peat is the favorite soil of this plant, which should be kept very moist.
The DAHLIA, Dahlia; a few years since an attempt was made to rename this beautiful and extensive family and to call it Georgina, but it failed, and it is still better known throughout the world by its old name than the new. It was long supposed that the Dahlia was only found indigenous in Mexico, but Captain Kirke some few years back brought to the notice of the Horticultural Society, that it was to be met with in great abundance in Dheyra Dhoon, producing many varieties both single and double; and he has from time to time sent down quantities of seed, which have greatly assisted its increase in all parts of India. It has also been found in Nagpore.
A good Dahlia is judged of by its form, size, and color. In respect to the first of these its form should be perfectly round, without any inequalities of projecting points of the petals, or being notched, or irregular. These should also be so far revolute that the side view should exhibit a perfect semicircle in its outline, and the eye or prolific disc, in the centre should be entirely concealed. There has been recently introduced into this country a new variety, all the petals of which are quilled, which has a very handsome appearance.
In size although of small estimation if the other qualities are defective, it is yet of some consideration, but the larger flowers are apt to be wanting in that perfect hemispherical form that is so much admired.
The color is of great importance to the perfection of the flower; of those that are of one color this should be clear, unbroken, and distinct; but when mixed hues are sought, each color should be clearly and distinctly defined without any mingling of shades, or running into each other. Further, the flowers ought to be erect so as to exhibit the blossom in the fullest manner to the view. The most usual colors of the imported double Dahlias, met with in India, are crimson, scarlet, orange, purple, and white. Amongst those raised from seed from. Dheyra Dhoon[137] of the double kind, there are of single colors, crimson, deep crimson approaching to maroon, deep lilac, pale lilac, violet, pink, light purple, canary color, yellow, red, and white; and of mixed colors, white and pink, red and yellow, and orange and white: the single ones of good star shaped flowers and even petals being of crimson, puce, lilac, pale lilac, white, and orange. Those from Nagpore seed have yielded, double flowers of deep crimson, lilac, and pale purple, amongst single colors; lilac and blue, and red and yellow of mixed shades; and single flowered, crimson, and orange, with mixed colors of lilac and yellow, and lilac and white.
Propagation--is by dividing the roots, by cuttings, by suckers, or by seed; the latter is generally resorted to, where new varieties are desired. Mr. George A. Lake, in an article on this subject (Gardeners' Magazine, 1833) says: "I speak advisedly, and from, experience, when I assert that plants raised from cuttings do not produce equally perfect flowers, in regard to size, form, and fulness, with those produced by plants grown from division of tubers;" and he more fully shews in another part of the same paper, that this appears altogether conformable to reason, as the cutting must necessarily for a long period want that store of starch, which is heaped up in the full grown tuber for the nutriment of the plant. This objection however might be met by not allowing the cuttings to flower in the season when they are struck.
To those who are curious in the [cultivation] of this handsome species, it may be well to know how to secure varieties, especially of mixed colors; for this purpose it is necessary to cover the blossoms intended for fecundation with fine gauze tied firmly to the foot stalk, and when it expands take the pollen from the male flowers with a camel's hair pencil, and touch with it each floret of the intended bearing flower, tying the gauze again over it, and keeping it on until the petals are withered. The operation requires to be performed two or three successive days, as the florets do not expand together.
Soil &c. They thrive best in a rich loam, mixed with sand; but should not be repeated too often on the same spot, as they exhaust the soil considerably.
Culture. The Dahlia requires an open, airy position unsheltered by trees or walls, the plants should be put out where they are to blossom, immediately on the cessation of the rains, at a distance of three feet apart, either in rows or in clumps, as they make a handsome show in a mass; and as they grow should be trimmed from the lower shoots, to about a foot in height, and either tied carefully to a stake, or, what is better, surrounded by a square or circular trellis, about five feet in height. As the buds form they should be trimmed off, so as to leave but one on each stalk, this being the only method by which full, large, and perfectly shaped blossoms are obtained. Some people take up the tubers every year in February or March, but this is unnecessary. The plants blossom in November and December in the greatest perfection, but may with attention be continued from the beginning of October to the end of February.
Those plants which are left in the ground during the whole year should have their roots opened immediately on the close of the rains, the superabundant or decayed tubers, and all suckers being removed, and fresh earth filled in. The earth should always be heaped up high around the stems, and it is a good plan to surround each plant with a small trench to be filled daily with water so as to keep the stem and leaves dry.
The PINK, Dianthus, Kurunful, is a well known species of great variety, and acknowledged beauty.
The Carnation, D. caryophyilus, Gul kurunful, is by this time naturalized in India, adding both beauty and fragrance to the parterre; the only variety however that has yet appeared in the country is the clove, or deep crimson colored: but the success attending the culture of this beautiful flower is surely an encouragement to the introduction of other sorts, there being above four hundred kinds, especially as they may be obtained from seed or pipings sent packed in moss, which will remain in good condition for two or three months, provided no moisture beyond what is natural to the moss, have access to them.
The distinguishing marks of a good carnation may be thus described: the stem should be tall and straight, strong, elastic, and having rather short foot stalks, the flower should be fully three inches in diameter with large well formed petals, round and uncut, long and broad, so as to stand out well, rising about half an inch above the calyx, and then the outer ones turned off in a horizontal direction, supporting those of the centre, decreasing gradually in size, the whole forming a near approach to a hemisphere. It flowers in April and May.
Propagation--is performed either by seed, by layers, or by pipings; the best time for making the two latter is when the plant is in full blossom, as they then root more strongly. In this operation the lower leaves should be trimmed off, and an incision made with a sharp knife, by entering the knife about a quarter of an inch below the joint, passing it through its centre; it must then be pegged down with a hooked peg, and covered with about a quarter of an inch of light rich mould; if kept regularly moist, the layers will root in about a month's time: they may then be taken off and planted out into pots in a sheltered situation, neither exposed to excessive rain, nor sun, until they shoot out freely.
Pipings (or cuttings as they are called in other plants) must be taken off from a healthy, free growing plant, and should have two complete joints, being cut off horizontally close under the second one; the extremities of the leaves must also be shortened, leaving the whole length of each piping two inches; they should be thrown into a basin of soft water for a few minutes to plump them, and then planted out in moist rich mould, not more than an inch being inserted therein, and slightly watered to settle the earth close around them; after this the soil should be kept moderately moist, and never exposed to the sun. Seed is seldom resorted to except to introduce new varieties.
Soil, &c.--A mixture of old well rotted stable manure, with one-third the quantity of good fine loamy earth, and a small portion of sand, is the best soil for carnations.
Culture.--The plants should be sheltered from too heavy a fall of rain, although they require to be kept moderately moist, and desire an airy situation. When the flower stalks are about six or eight inches in height, they must be supported by sticks, and, if large full blossoms be sought for, all the buds, except the leading one, must be removed with a pair of scissors; the calyx must also be frequently examined, as it is apt to burst, and if any disposition to this should appear, it will be well to assist the uniform expansion by cutting the angles with a sharp penknife. If, despite all precautions the calyx burst and let out the petals, it should be carefully tied with thread, or a circular piece of card having a hole in the centre should be drawn over the bud so as to hold the petals together, and display them to advantage by the contrast of the white color.
Insects, &c.--The most destructive are the red, and the large black ant, which attack, and frequently entirely destroy the roots before you can be aware of its approach; powdered turmeric should therefore be constantly kept strewed around this flower.
The Common Pink, Dianthus Chinensis, Kurunful, and the Sweet William, D: barbatus, are pretty, ornamental plants, and may be propagated and cultivated in the same way as the carnation, save that they do not require so much care, or so good a soil, any garden mould sufficing; they are also more easily produced from seed.
The VIOLET, Viola, Puroos, is a class containing many beautiful flowers, some highly ornamental and others odoriferous.
The Sweet Violet, V. odorata, Bunufsh'eh, truly the poet's flower. It is a deserved favorite for its delightful fragrance as well as its delicate and retiring purple flowers; there is also a white variety, but it is rare in this country, as is also the double kind. This blossoms in the latter part of the cold weather.
The Shrubby Violet, V. arborescens, or suffruticosa, Rutunpuroos, grows wild in the hills, and is a pretty blue flower, but wants the fragrance of the foregoing.
The Dog's Violet, V. canina, is also indigenous in the hills.
Propagation.--All varieties may be propagated by seed, but the most usual method is by dividing the roots, or taking off the runners.
Soil, &c.--The natural habitat of the indigenous varieties is the sides and interstices of the rocks, where leaf mould, and micaceous sand, has accumulated and moisture been retained, indicating that the kind of soil favorable to the growth of this interesting little plant is a rich vegetable mould, with an admixture of sand, somewhat moist, but having a dry subsoil.
Culture.--It would not be safe to trust this plant in the open ground except during a very short period of the early part of the cold weather, when the so doing will give it strength to form blossoms. In January, however, it should be re-potted, filling the pots about half-full of pebbles or stone-mason's cuttings, over which should be placed good rich vegetable mould, mixed with a large proportion of sand, covering with a thin layer of the same material as has been put into the bottom of the pot; a top dressing of ground bones is said to improve the fineness of the blossoms. They should not be kept too dry, but at the same time watered cautiously, as too much of either heat or moisture destroys the plants.
The Pansy or Heart's-ease, V. tricolor, Kheeroo, kheearee, derives its first name from the French Pensée. It was known amongst the early Christians by the name of Flos Trinitatis, and worn as a symbol of their faith. The high estimation which it has of late years attained in Great Britain as a florist's flower has, in the last two or three years, extended itself to this country. There are nearly four hundred varieties, a few of which only have been found here.
The characters of a fine Heart's-ease are, the flower being well expanded, offering a flat, or if any thing, rather a revolute surface, and the petals so overlapping each other as to form a circle without any break in the outline. These should be as nearly as possible of a size, and the greater length of the two upper ones concealed by the covering of those at the side in such manner as to preserve the appearance of just proportion: the bottom petal being broad and two-lobed, and well expanded, not curving inwards. The eye should be of moderate, or rather small size, and much additional beauty is afforded, if the pencilling is so arranged as to give the appearance of a dark angular spot. The colors must also be clear, bright, and even, not clouded or indistinct. Undoubtedly the handsomest kinds are those in which the two upper petals are of deep purple and the triade of a shade less: in all, the flower stalk should be long and stiff. The plant blossoms in this country in February and March, although it is elsewhere a summer flower.
Propagation.--In England the moat usual methods are dividing the roots, layers, or cuttings from the stem, and these are certainly the only sure means of preserving a good variety; but it is almost impossible in India to preserve the plant through the hot weather, and therefore it is more generally treated as an annual, and raised every year from seed, which should be sown at the close of the rains; as however their growth, in India is as yet little known, most people put the imported seed into pots as soon as it arrives, lest the climate should deteriorate its germinating power, as it is well known, that even in Europe the seed should be sown as soon as possible after ripening. It will be well also to assist its sprouting with a little bottom heat, by plunging the pot up to its rim in a hot bed. American seed should be avoided as the blossoms are little to be depended on, and generally yield small, ill-formed flowers, clouded and run in color.
Soil, &c.--This should be moist, and the best compost is formed of one-sixth of well rotted dung from an old hot bed, and five-sixth of loam, or one-fourth of leaf mould and the remainder loam, but in either case well incorporated and exposed for some time previous to use to the action of the sun and air by frequent turning.
Culture.--A shady situation is to be preferred, especially for the dark varieties which assume a deeper hue if so placed. But it has been observed by Mackintosh, that "the light varieties bloomed lighter in the shade, and darker in the sunshine--a very remarkable effect, for which I cannot account." The plants must at all times be kept moist, never being allowed to become dry, and should be so placed as to receive only the morning sun before ten o'clock. Under good management the plants will extend a foot or more in height, and have a handsome appearance if trained over a circular trellis of rattan twisted. When they rise too high, or it is desirable to fill out with side shoots, the tops must be pinched off, and larger flowers will be obtained if the flower buds are thinned out where they appear crowded.
These plants look very handsome when grown in large masses of several varieties, but the seeds of those grown in this manner should not be made use of, as they are sure to sport; to prevent which it is also necessary that the plants which it is desired to perpetuate in this manner should be isolated at a distance from any other kind, and it would be advisable to cover them with thin gauze to prevent impregnation from others by means of the bees and other insects. For show flowers the branches should be kept down, and not suffered to straggle out or multiply; these will also be improved by pegging the longer branches down under the soil, and thereby increasing the number of the root fibres, hence adding to their power of accumulating nourishment, and not allowing them to expand beyond a limited number of blossoms, and those retained should be as nearly equal in age as possible.
The HYDRANGEA is a hardy plant requiring a good deal of moisture, being by nature an inhabitant of the marshes.
The Changeable Hydrangea, H. hortensis, is of Chinese origin and a pretty growing plant that deserves to be a favorite; it blossoms in bunches of flowers at the extremities of the branches which are naturally pink, but in old peat earth, or having a mixture of alum, or iron filings, the color changes to blue. It blooms in March and April.
Propagation may be effected by cuttings, which root freely, or by layers.
Soil, &c.--Loam and old leaf mould, or peat with a very small admixture of sand suits this plant. Their growth is much promoted by being turned out, for a month or two in the rains, into the open ground, and then re-potted with new soil, the old being entirely removed from the roots: and to make it flower well it must not be encumbered with too many branches.
The HOYA is properly a trailing plant, rooting at the joints, but have been generally cultivated here as a twiner.
The Fleshy-leaved Hoya, H. carnosa, is vulgarly called the wax flower from its singular star shaped-whitish pink blossoms, with a deep colored varnished centre, having more the appearance of a wax model than a production of nature. The flowers appear in globular groups and have a very handsome appearance from the beginning of April to the close of the rains.
The Green flowered Hoya, H. viridiflora, Nukchukoree, teel kunga, with its green flowers in numerous groups, is also an interesting plant, it is esteemed also for its medicinal properties.
Propagation.--Every morsel of these plants, even a piece of the leaf, will form roots if put in the ground, cuttings therefore strike very freely, as do layers, the joints naturally throwing out root-fibres although not in the earth.
Soil, &c.--A light loam moderately dry is the best for these plants, which look well if trained round a circular trellis in the open border.
The STAPELIA is an extensive genus of low succulent plants without leaves, but yielding singularly handsome star-shaped flowers; they are of African origin growing in the sandy deserts, but in a natural state very diminutive being increased to their present condition and numerous varieties by cultivation, they mostly have an offensive smell whence some people call them the carrion plant. They deserve more attention than has hitherto been shown to them in India.
The Variegated Stapelia, S. variegata, yields a flower in November, the thick petals of which are yellowish green with brown irregular spots, it is the simplest of the family.
The Revolute-flowered Stapelia, S. revoluta, has a green blossom very fully sprinkled with deep purple, it flowers at the close of the rains.
The Toad Stapelia, S. bufonia, as its name implies, is marked like the back of the reptile from whence it has its name; it flowers in December and January.
The Hairy Stapelia, S. hirsuta, is a very handsome variety, being, like the rest, of green and brown, but the entire flower covered with fine filaments or hairs of a light purple, at various periods of the year.
The Starry Stapelia, S. stellaris, is perhaps the most beautiful of the whole, being like the last covered with hairs, but they are of a bright pinkish blue color; there appears to be no fixed period for flowering.
The HAIRY CARRULLUMA, C. crinalata, belongs to the same family as the foregoing species, which it much resembles, except that it blossoms in good sized globular groups of small star-shaped flowers of green, studded and streaked with brown.
Propagation is exceedingly easy with each of the last named two species; as the smallest piece put in any soil that is moist, without being saturated, will throw out root fibres.
Soil, &c.--This should consist of one-half sand, one-fourth garden mould, and one-fourth well rotted stable manure. The pots in which they are planted should have on the top a layer of pebbles, or broken brick. All the after culture they require is to keep them within bounds, removing decayed portions as they appear and avoiding their having too much moisture.
The perennial border plants, besides those included above, are very numerous; the directions for cultivation admitting, from their similarity, of the following general rules:--
Propagation.--Although some few will admit of other modes of multiplication, the most usually successful are by seed, by suckers, or by offsets, and by division of the root, the last being applicable to nine-tenths of the hardy herbaceous plants, and performed either by taking up the whole plant and gently separating it by the hand, or by opening the ground near the one to be divided, and cutting off a part of the roots and crown to make new the sections being either at once planted where they are to stand, or placed for a short period in a nursery; the best time for this operation is the beginning of the rains. Offsets or suckers being rapidly produced during the rains, will be best removed towards their close, at which period, also, seed should be sown to benefit by the moisture remaining in the soil. The depth at which seeds are buried in the earth varies with their magnitude, all the pea or vetch kind will bear being put at a depth of from half an inch to one inch; but with the smallest seeds it will be sufficient to scatter them, on the sifted soil, beating them down with, the palm of the hand.
Culture.--Transplanting this description of plants will be performed to best advantage during the rains. The general management is comprehended in stirring the soil occasionally in the immediate vicinity of the roots; taking up overgrown plants, reducing and replanting them, for which the rains is the best time; renewing the soil around the roots; sticking the weak plants; pruning and trimming others, so as to remove all weakly or decayed parts.
Once a year, before the rains, the whole border should be dug one or two spits deep, adding soil from the bottom of a tank or river; and again, in the cold weather, giving a moderate supply of well rotted stable manure, and leaf mould in equal portions.
Crossing is considered as yet in its infancy even in England, and has, except with the Marvel of Peru, hardly even been attempted in this country. The [principles under which this is effected] are fully explained at page 27 of the former part of this work; but it may also be done in the more woody kinds by grafting one or more of the same genus on the stock of another, the seed of which would give a new variety.
Saving seed requires great attention in India, as it should be taken during the hot weather if possible; to effect which the earliest blossoms must be preserved for this purpose. With some kinds it will be advisable to assist nature by artificial impregnation with a camel hair pencil, carefully placing the pollen on the point of the stigma. The seeds should be carefully dried in some open, airy place, but not exposed to the sun, care being afterwards taken that they shall be deposited in a dry place, not close or damp, whence the usual plan of storing the seeds in bottles is not advisable.
BULBS.
Bulbs have not as yet received that degree of attention in this country (India) that they deserve, and they may be considered to form a separate class, requiring a mode of culture differing from that of others. Their slow progress has discouraged many and a supposition that they will only thrive in the Upper Provinces, has deterred others from attempting to grow them, an idea which has also been somewhat fostered by the Horticultural Society, when they received a supply from England, having sent the larger portion of them to their subscribers in the North West Provinces.
The NARCISSUS will thrive with care, in all parts of India, and it is a matter of surprise that it is not more frequently met with. A good Narcissus should have the six petals well formed, regularly and evenly disposed, with a cup of good form, the colors distinct and clear, raised on strong erect stems, and flowering together.
The Polyanthes Narcissus, N. tazetta, Narjus, hur'huft nusreen, is of two classes, white and sulphur colored, but these have sported into almost endless varieties, especially amongst the Dutch, with whom this and most other bulbs are great favorites. It flowers in February and March.
The Poet's Narcissus, N. poeticus, Moozhan, zureenkuda is the favorite, alike for its fragrance and its delicate and graceful appearance, the petals being white and the cup a deep yellow: it flowers from the beginning of January to the end of March and thrives well. The first within the recollection of the author, in Bengal, was at Patna, nearly twelve years since, in possession of a lady there under whose care it blossomed freely in the shade, in the month of February.
The Daffodil, N. pseudo-narcissus, Khumsee buroonk, is of pale yellow, and some of the double varieties are very handsome.
Propagation is by offsets, pulled off after the bulbs are taken out of the ground, and sufficiently hardened.
Soil, &c.--The best is a fresh, light loam with some well rotted cow dung for the root fibres to strike into, and the bottom of the pot to the height of one-third filled with pebbles or broken brick. They will not blossom until the fifth year, and to secure strong flowers the bulbs should only be taken up every third year. An eastern aspect where they get only the morning sun, is to be preferred. The PANCRATIUM is a handsome species that thrives well, some varieties being indigenous, and others fully acclimated, generally flowering about May or June.
The One-flowered Pancratium, P. zeylanicum, is rather later than the rest in flowering and bears a curiously formed white flower.
The Two-flowered Pancratium, P. triflorum, Sada kunool, was so named by Roxburg, and gives a white flower in groups of threes, as its name implies.
The Oval leaved pancratium, P. ovatum, although of West Indian origin, is so thoroughly acclimated as to be quite common in the Indian Garden.
Propagation.--The best method is by suckers or offsets which are thrown out very freely by all the varieties.
Soil, &c.--Any common garden soil will suit this plant, but they thrive best with a good admixture of rich vegetable mould.
The HYACINTH, Hyacinthus, is an elegant flower, especially the double kind. The first bloomed in Calcutta was exhibited at the flower show some three years since, but proved an imperfect blossom and not clear colored; a very handsome one, however, was shown by Mrs. Macleod in February 1847, and was raised from a stock originally obtained at Simlah. The Dutch florists have nearly two thousand varieties.
The distinguishing marks of a good hyacinth are clear bright colors, free from clouding or sporting, broad bold petals, full, large and perfectly doubled, sufficiently revolute to give the whole mass a degree of convexity: the stem strong and erect and the foot stalks horizontal at the base, gradually taking an angle upwards as they approach the crown, so as to place the flowers in a pyramidical form, occupying about one-half the length of the stem.
The Amethyst colored Hyacinth, H. amethystimus, is a fine handsome flower, varying in shade from pale blue to purple, and having bell shaped flowers, but the foot stalks are generally not strong and they are apt to become pendulous.
The Garden Hyacinth, H. orientalis, Sumbul, abrood, is the handsomer variety, the flowers being trumpet shaped, very double and of varying colors--pink, red, blue, white, or yellow, and originally of eastern growth. It flowers in February and has considerable fragrance.
Propagation.--In Europe this is sometimes performed by seed, but as this requires to be put into the ground as soon as possible after ripening, and moreover takes a long time to germinate, this method would hardly answer in this country, which must therefore, at least for the present, depend upon imported bulbs and offsets.
Soil, &c.--This, as well as its after culture, is the same as for the Narcissus. They will not show flowers until the second year, and not in good bloom before the fifth or sixth of their planting out.
The CROCUS, Crocus lutens, having no native name, has yet, it is believed, been hardly ever known to flower here, even with the utmost care. A good crocus has its colors clear, brilliant, and distinctly marked.
Propagation--must be effected, for new varieties, by seeds, but the species are multiplied by offsets of the bulb.
Soil, &c. Any fair garden soil is good for the crocus, but it prefers that which is somewhat sandy.
Culture. The small bulbs should be planted in clumps at the depth of two inches; the leaves should not be cut off after the plant has done blossoming, as the nourishment for the future season's flower is gathered by them.
The IXIA, is originally from the Cape, and belongs to the class of Iridae: the Ixia Chinensis, more properly Morea Chinensis, is a native of India and China, and common in most gardens.
Propagation--is by offsets.
Soil, &c. The best is of peat and sand, it thrives however in good garden soil, if not too stiff, and requires no particular cultivation.
The LILY, Lilium, Soosun, the latter derived from the Hebrew, is a handsome species that deserves more care than it has yet received in India, where some of the varieties are indigenous.
The Japan Lily, L. japonicum, is a very tall growing plant, reaching about 5 feet in height with broad handsome flowers of pure white, and a small streak of blue, in the rains.
The Daunan Lily, L. dauricum, Rufeef, soosun, gives an erect, light orange flower in the rains.
The Canadian lily, L. Canadense B'uhmutan, flowers in the rains in pairs of drooping reflexed blossoms of a rather darker orange, sometimes spotted with a deeper shade.
Propagation--is effected by offsets, which however will not flower until the third or fourth year.
Soil, &c. This is the same as for the Narcissus, but they do not require taking up more frequently than once in three years, and that only for about a month at the close of the rains, the Japan lily will thrive even under the shade of trees.
The AMARYLLIS is a very handsome flower, which has been found to thrive well in this country, and has a great variety, all of which possess much beauty, some kinds are very hardy, and will grow freely in the open ground.
The Mexican Lily, A. regina Mexicanae, is a common hardy variety found in most gardens, yielding an orange red flower in the months of March and April, and will thrive even under the shades of trees.
The Ceylonese Amaryllis, A: zeylanica, Suk'h dursun, gives a pretty flower about the same period.
The Jacoboean Lily, A, formosissima, has a handsome dark red flower of singular form, having three petals well expanded above, and three others downwards rolled over the fructile organs on the base, so as to give the idea of its being the model whence the Bourbon fleur de lis was taken, the stem is shorter than the two previous kinds, blossoming in April or May.
The Noble Amaryllis, A: insignia, is a tall variety, having pink flowers in March or April.
The Broad-leaved Amaryllis, A: latifolia, is a native of India with pinkish white flowers about the same period of the year.
The Belladonna Lily. A: belladonna is of moderately high stem, supporting a pink flower of the same singular form as the Jacoboean lily, in May and June.
Propagation--is by offsets of the bulb, which most kinds throw out very freely, sometimes to the extent of ten, or a dozen in the season.
Soil, &c.--For the choice kinds is the same as is required for the narcissus, and water should on no account be given over the leaves or upper part of the bulb.
The common kinds look well in masses, and a good form of planting them is in a series of raised circles, so as for the whole to form a round bed.
The DOG'S TOOTH VIOLET, Erythronium, is a pretty flowering bulb and a great favorite with florists in Europe.
The Common Dog's tooth Violet, E. dens canis, is ordinarily found of reddish purple, there is also a white variety, but it is rare, neither of them grow above three or four inches in height, and flower in March or April.
The Indian Dog's tooth Violet, E. indicum, junglee kanda, is found in the hills, and flowers at about the same time, with a pink blossom.
The SUPERB GLORIOSA, Gloriosa superba, Kareearee, eeskooee langula, is a very beautiful species of climbing bulb, a native of this country, and on that account neglected, although highly esteemed as a stove plant in England; the leaves bear tendrils at the points, and the flower, which is pendulous, when first expanded, throws its petals nearly erect of yellowish green, which gradually changes to yellow at the base and bright scarlet at the point; the pistil which shoots from the seed vessel horizontally possesses the singular property of making an entire circuit between sun-rise and sun-set each day that the flower continues, which is generally for some time, receiving impregnation from every author as it visits them in succession. It blooms in the latter part of the rains.
Propagation is in India sometimes from seed, but in Europe it is confined to division of the offsets.
Soil, &c.--Most garden soils will suit this plant, but it affords the handsomest, and richest colored flowers in fresh loam mixed with peat or leaf mould, without dung. It should not have too much water when first commencing its growth, and it requires the support of a trellis over which it will bear training to a considerable extent, growing to the height of from five to six feet.
MANY OTHER BULBS, there is no doubt, might be successfully grown in India where every thing is favorable to their growth, and so much facility presents itself for procuring them from the Cape of Good Hope; the natural habitat of so many varieties of the handsomest species, nearly all of them flowering between the end of the cold weather and the close of the rains.
Some of these being hardy, thrive in the open ground with but little care or trouble, others requiring very great attention, protection from exposure, and shelter from the heat of the sun, and the intensity of its rays; which should therefore have a particular portion of the plant-shed assigned to them, such being inhabitants of the green house in colder climates, and the reason of assigning them such separated part of the chief house, or what is better perhaps, a small house to themselves, is that in culture, treatment, and other respects they do not associate with plants of a different character.
One great obstacle which the more extensive culture of bulbs has had to contend against, may be found in that impatience that refuses to give attention to what requires from three to five years to perfect, generally speaking people in India prefer therefore to cultivate such plants only as afford an immediate result, especially with relation to the ornamental classes.
Propagation.--The bulb after the formation of the first floral core is instigated by nature to continue its species, as immediately the flower fades the portion of bulb that gave it birth dies, for which purpose it each year forms embryo bulbs on each side of the blossoming one, and which although continued in the same external coat, are each perfect and complete plants in themselves, rising from the crown of the root fibres: in some kinds this is more distinctly exhibited by being as it were, altogether outside and distinct from, the main, or original bulb. These being separated for what are called offsets, and should be taken off only when the parent bulb has been taken up and hardened, or the young plant will suffer.
Some species of bulbous rooted plants produce seeds, but this method of reproduction, can seldom be resorted to in this country, and certainly not to obtain new kinds, as the seeds require to be sown as soon as ripe.
Soil, Culture, &c.--For the delicate and rare bulbs, it is advisable to have pots purposely made of some fifteen inches in height with a diameter of about seven or eight inches at the top, tapering down to five, with a hole at the bottom as in ordinary flower pots, and for this to stand in, another pot should be made without any hole, of a height of about four inches, sufficient size to leave the space of about an inch all round between the outer side of the plant pot and the inner side of the smaller pot or saucer.
This will allow the plant pot to be filled with crocks, pebbles, or stone chippings to the height of five inches, or about an inch higher than the level of the water in the saucer, above which may be placed eight inches in depth of soil and one inch on the top of that, pebbles or small broken brick. By this arrangement, the saucer being kept filled, or partly filled, as the plant may require, with water, the fibres of the root obtain a sufficiency of moisture for the maintenance and advancement of the plant without chance of injury to the bulb or stem, by applying water to the upper earth which is also in this prevented from becoming too much saturated. Light rich sandy loam, with a portion of sufficiently decomposed leaf mould, is the best soil for the early stages of growing bulbs.
So soon as the leaves change color and wither, then all moisture must be withheld, but as the repose obtained by this means is not sufficient to secure health to the plant, and ensure its giving strong blossoms, something more is required to effect this purpose. This being rendered the more necessary because in those that form offsets by the sides of the old bulbs, they would otherwise become crowded and degenerate, the same occurring also with those forming under the old ones, which will get down so deep that they cease to appear.
The time to take up the bulb is when the flower-stem and leaves have commenced decay; taking dry weather for the purpose, if the bulbs are hardy, or if in pots having reduced the moisture as above shown, but it must be left to individual experience to discover how long the different varieties should remain out of the ground, some requiring one month's rest, and others enduring three or four, with advantage; more than that is likely to be injurious. When out of the ground, during the first part of the period they are so kept, it should be, say for a fortnight at least, in any room where no glare exists, with free circulation of air, after which the off-sets may be removed, and the whole exposed to dry on a table in the verandah, or any other place that is open to the air, but protected from the sunshine, which would destroy them.
Little peculiarity of after treatment is requisite, except perhaps that the bulbs which are to flower in the season should have a rather larger proportion of leaf mould in the compost, and that if handsome flowers are required, it will be well to examine the bulb every week at least by gently taking the mould from around them, and removing all off-sets that appear on the old bulb. For the securing strength to the plant also, it will be well to pinch off the flower so soon as it shews symptoms of decay.
The wire worm is a great enemy to bulbs, and whenever it appears they should be taken up, cleaned, and re-planted. It is hardly necessary to say that all other vermin and insects must be watched, and immediately removed.
THE BIENNIAL BORDER PLANTS.
It is only necessary to mention a few of these, as the curious in floriculture will always make their own selection, the following will therefore suffice.--
The SPEEDWELL-LEAVED HEDGE HYSSOP, Gratiola veronicifolia, Bhoomee, sooél chumnee, seldom cultivated, though deserving to be so, has a small blue flower.
The SIMPLE-STALKED LOBELIA, Lobelia simplex, introduced from the Cape, yields a pretty blue flower.
The EVENING PRIMROSE, Oenothera mutabilis, a pretty white flower that blossoms in the evening, its petals becoming pink by morning.
The FLAX-LEAVED PIMPERNEL, Anagallis linifolia, a rare plant, giving a blue flower in the rains; introduced from Portugal.
The BROWALLIA, of two lauds, both pretty and interesting plants; originally from South America.
The Spreading Browallia, B. demissa is the smallest of these, and blossoms in single flowers of bright blue, at the beginning of the cold weather.
The Upright Browallia, B. alata, gives bloom in groups, of a bright blue; there is also a white variety, both growing to the height of nearly two feet.
The SMALL-FLOWERED TURNSOLE, Heliotropium parviflorum, B'hoo roodee, differs from the rest of this family which are mostly perennials; it yields groups of white flowers, which are fragrant.
The FLAX-LEAVED CANDYTUFT, Iberis linifolia, with its purple blossoms, is very rare, but it has been sometimes grown with, success.
The STOCK, Mathiola, is a very popular plant, and deserves more extensive cultivation in this country.
The Great Sea Stock, M sinuata, is rare and somewhat difficult to bring into bloom, it possesses some fragrance and its violet colored groups of flowers have rather a handsome appearance about May.
The Ten weeks' Stock, M annua, is also a pleasing flower about the same time. In England this is an annual, but here it is not found to bloom freely until the second year, its color is scarlet, and it has some fragrance.
The Purple Gilly flower, M incana, is a pretty flower of purple color, and fragrant. There are some varieties of it such as the Double, multiplex, the Brompton, coccinea, and the White, alba, varying in color and blossoming in April.
The STARWORT, Aster, is a hardy flowering plant not very attractive, except as it yields blossoms at all seasons, if the foot stalks are cut off as soon as the flower has faded, there are very numerous varieties of this plant which is, in Europe a perennial, but it is preferable to treat it here as only biennial, otherwise it degenerates.
The Bushy Starwort, A dumosus, is a free blossoming plant in the rains, with white flowers.
The Silky leaved Starwort, A. sericeus, is Indigenous in the hills, putting forth its blue blossoms during the rains.
The Hairy Starwort, A pilosus, is of very pale blue, and may, with care, be made to blossom throughout the year.
The Chinese Starwort, A chinensis, is of dark purple and very prolific of blossoms at all times.
The BEAUTIFUL JUSTICIA, J speciosa, although, described by Roxburgh as a perennial, degenerates very much after the second year, it affords bright carmine colored flowers at the end of the cold weather.
The COMMON MARVEL OF PERU, Mirabilis Jalapa Gul abas, krushna kelee, is vulgarly called the Four o'clock from its blossoms expanding in the afternoon. There are several varieties distinguished only by difference of color, lilac, red, yellow, orange, and white, which hybridize naturally, and may easily be obliged to do so artificially, if any particular shades are desired.
The HAIRY INDIGO, Indigofera hirsuta, yields an ornamental flower with abundance of purple blossoms.
The HIBISCUS This class numbers many ornamental plants, the blossoms of which all maintain the same character of having a darkened spot at the base of each petal.
The Althaea frutex, H syriacus, Gurhul, yields a handsome purple flower in the latter part of the rains, there are also a white, and a red variety.
The Stinging Hibiscus H pruriens, has a yellow flower at the same season.
The Hemp leaved Hibiscus, H cannabinus, Anbaree, is much the same as the last.
The Bladder Ketmia, H trionum, is a dwarf species, yellow, with a brown spot at the base of the petal.
The African Hibiscus H africanus, is a very handsome flower growing to a considerable height, expanding to the diameter of six to seven inches, of a bright canary color, the dark blown spots at the base of the petals very distinctly marked, the seeds were considered a great acquisition when first obtained from Hobarton, but the plant has since been seen in great perfection growing wild in the Turaee at the foot of the Darjeeling range of hills, blooming in great perfection at the close of the rains.
The Chinese Hibiscus, H rosa sinensis, Jooua, jasoon, jupa, although, really a perennial flower, is in greatest perfection if kept as a biennial, it flowers during the greater part of the season a dark red flower with a darker hued spot, there are also some other varieties of different colors yellow, scarlet, and purple.
The TREE MALLOW, Lavatera arborea, has of late years been introduced from Europe, and may now be found in many gardens in India yielding handsome purple flowers in the latter part of the rains.
But it is unnecessary to continue such a mere catalogue, the character and general cultivation of which require no distinct rules, but may all be resolved into one general method, of which the following is a sketch.
Propagation--They are all raised from seed, but the finest double varieties require to be continued by cuttings. The seed should be sown as soon as it can after opening, but if this occur during the rains, the beds, or pots, perhaps better, must be sheltered, removing the plants when they are few inches high to the spot where they are to remain, care being at the same time taken in removing those that have tap roots, such as Hollyhock, Lavatera, &c not to injure them, as it will check their flowering strongly, the best mode is to sow those in pots and transplant them, with balls of earth entire, into the borders, at the close of the rains. Cuttings of such as are multiplied by that method, are taken either from the flower stalks, or root-shoots, early in the rains, and rooted either in pots, under shelter, or in beds, protected from the heavy showers.
Culture--Cultivation after the plants are put into the borders, is the same as for perennial plants. But the duration and beauty of the flowers is greatly improved by cutting off the buds that shew the earliest, so as to retard the bloom--and for the same reason the footstalk should be cut off when the flowers fade, for as soon as the plant begins to form seed, the blossoms deteriorate.
THE ANNUAL BORDER PLANTS.
These are generally known to every one, and many of them are so common as hardly to need notice, a few of the most usual are however mentioned, rather to recal the scattered thoughts of the many, than as a list of annuals.
The MIGNIONETTE, Resoda odorata, is too great a favorite both on account of its fragrance and delicate flowers not to be well known, and by repeated sowings it may be made under care to give flowers throughout the year but it is advisable to renew the seed occasionally by fresh importations from Europe, the Cape, or Hobarton.
The PROLIFIC PINK, Dianthus prolifer Kurumful, is a pretty variety; that blossoms freely throughout the year, sowing to keep up succession, the shades and net work marks on them are much varied, and they make a very pretty group together.
The LUPINE, Lupinus, is a very handsome class of annuals, many of which grow well in India, all of them flowering in the cold season.
The Small blue Lupine, L. varius, was introduced from the Cape and is the only one noticed by Roxburgh.
The Rose, and great blue Lupine, L. pilosus and hirsutus, are both good sized handsome flowers.
The Egyptian, or African Lupins, L. thermis, Turmus, is the only one named in the native language, and has a white flower.
The Tree Lupine, L. arboreus, is a shrubby plant with a profusion of yellow flowers which has been successfully cultivated from Hobarton seed.
The CATCHFLY, Silene, the only one known here is the small red, S. rubella, having a very pretty pink flower appearing in the cold weather.
The LARKSPUR, Delphinum, has not yet received any native name, and deserves to be much more extensively cultivated, especially the Neapolitan and variegated sorts. The common purple, D. Bhinensis, being the one usually met with; it should be sown in succession from September to December, but the rarer kinds must not be put in sooner than the middle of November, as these do not blossom well before February, March, or April.
The SWEET PEA, Lathyrus odoralus, is not usually cultivated with success, because it has been generally sown too late in the season, to give a sufficient advance to secure blossoming. The seeds should be put in about the middle of the rains in pots and afterwards planted out when these cease, and carefully cultivated to obtain blossoms in February or March.
The ZINNIA, has only of late years been introduced, but by a mistake it has generally been sown too late in the year to produce good flowers, whereas if the seed is put into the ground about June, fine handsome flowers will be the result, in the cold weather.
The CENTAURY, Centaurea, is a very pretty class of annuals which grows, and blossoms freely in this country.
The Woolly Centaury, C. lanata, is mentioned by Roxburgh as indigenous to the country, but the flowers are very small, of a purple color, blossoming in December.
The Blue bottle O. cyanus, Azeez, flowers in December and January, of pink and blue.
The Sweet Sultan, C. moschata, Shah pusund is known by its fragrant and delicate lilac blossoms in January and February.
The BALSAM, Impatiens, Gulmu'hudee, doopatee is not cultivated, or encouraged as it should be in India, where some of the varieties are indigenous. A very rich soil should be used.
Dr. R. Wight observes, that Balsams of the colder Hymalayas, like those of Europe, split from the base, rolling the segment towards the apex, whilst those of the hotter regions do the reverse.
All annuals require the same, or nearly the same treatment, of which the following may be considered a fair sketch.
Propagation.--These plants are all raised from seed put in the earth generally on the close of the rains, although some plants, such as nasturtium, sweet pea, scabious, wall-flower, and stock, are better to be sown in pots about June or July, and then put out into the border as soon as the rains cease. The seed must be sown in patches, rings, or small beds according to taste, the ground being previously stirred, and made quite fine, the earth sifted over them to a depth proportioned to the size of the seed, and then gently pressed down, so as closely to embrace every part of the seed. When the plants are an inch high they must be thinned out to a distance of two, three, five, seven, or more inches apart, according to their kind, whether spreading, or upright, having reference also to their size; the plants thinned out, if carefully taken up, may generally be transplanted to fill up any parts of the border where the seed may have failed.
Culture. Weeding and occasionally stirring the soil, and sticking such as require support, is all the cultivation necessary for annuals. If it be desired to save seed, some of the earliest and most perfect blossoms should be preserved for this purpose, so as to secure the best possible seed for the ensuing year, not leaving it to chance to gather seed from such plants as may remain after the flowers have been taken, as is generally the case with native gardeners, if left to themselves.
FLOWERS THAT GROW UNDER THE SHADE OF TREES.
It is of some value to know what these are, but at the same time it must be observed that no plant will grow under trees of the fir tribe, and it would be a great risk to place any under the Deodar--with all others also it must not be expected that any trees having their foliage so low as to affect the circulation of air under their branches, can do otherwise than destroy the plants placed beneath them.
Those which may be so planted are;--Wood Anemone.--Common Arum.--Deadly Nightshade--Indian ditto.--Chinese Clematis--Upright ditto--Woody Strawberry--Woody Geranium.--Green Hellebore.--Hairy St. John's Wort.-- Dog's Violet.--Imperial Fritillaria--The common Oxalis, and some other bulbs.--Common Hound's Tongue.--Common Antirrhinum.--Common Balsam.-To these may be added many of the orchidaceous plants.
ROSES.
THE ROSE, ROSA, Gul or gulab: as the most universally admired, stands first amongst shrubs. The London catalogues of this beautiful plant contain upwards of two thousand names: Mr. Loudon, in his "Encyclopaedia of Plants" enumerates five hundred and twenty-two, of which he describes three species, viz. Macrophylla, Brunonii, and Moschata Nepalensis, as natives of Nepal; two, viz. Involucrata, and Microphylla, as indigenous to India, and Berberifolia, and Moschata arborea, as of Persian origin, whilst twelve appear to have come from China. Dr. Roxburgh describes the following eleven species as inhabitants of these regions:--
| Rosa | involucrata, | |
| -- | Chinensis, | |
| -- | semperflorens, | |
| -- | recurva, | |
| -- | microphylla, | |
| -- | inermis, | |
| Rosa | centiflora, | |
| -- | glandulifera, | |
| -- | pubescens, | |
| -- | diffusa, | |
| -- | triphylla, |
most of which, however, he represents to have been of Chinese origin.
The varieties cultivated generally in gardens are, however, all that will be here described.
These are--
1. The Madras rose, or Rose Edward, a variety of R centifolia, Gul ssudburul, is the most common, and has multiplied so fast within a few years, that no garden is without it, it blossoms all the year round, producing large bunches of buds at the extremities of its shoots of the year, but, if handsome, well-shaped flowers are desired, these must be thinned out on their first appearance, to one or two, or at the most three on each stalk. It is a pretty flower, but has little fragrance. This and the other double sorts require a rich loam rather inclining to clay, and they must be kept moist.[138]
2. The Bussorah Rose, R gallica, Gulsooree, red, and white, the latter seldom met with, is one of a species containing an immense number of varieties. The fragrance of this rose is its greatest recommendation, for if not kept down, and constantly looked to, it soon gets straggling, and unsightly, like the preceding species too, the buds issue from the ends of the branches in great clusters, which must be thinned, if well formed fragrant blossoms are desired. The same soil is required as for the preceding, with alternating periods of rest by opening the roots, and of excitement by stimulating manure.
3. The Persian rose, apparently R collina, Gul eeran bears a very full-petaled blossom, assuming a darker shade as these approach nearer to the centre, but, it is difficult to obtain a perfect flower, the calyx being so apt to burst with excess of fulness, that if perfect flowers are required a thread should be tied gently round the bud, it has no fragrance. A more sandy soil will suit this kind, with less moisture.
4. The Sweet briar R rubiginosa, Gul nusreen usturoon, grows to a large size, and blossoms freely in India, but is apt to become straggling, although, if carefully clipped, it may be raised as a hedge the same as in England, it is so universally a favorite as to need no description.
5. The China blush rose, R Indica (R Chinensis of Roxburgh), Kut'h gulab, forms a pretty hedge, if carefully clipped, but is chiefly usefully as a stock for grafting on. It has no odour.
6 The China ever-blowing rose, R damascena of Roxburgh, Adnee gula, gulsurkh, bearing handsome dark crimson blossoms during the whole of the year, it is branching and bushy, but rather delicate, and wants odour.
7 The Moss Rose, R muscosa, having no native name is found to exist, but has only been known to have once blossomed in India; good plants may be obtained from Hobart Town without much trouble.
8 The Indian dog-rose, R arvensis, R involucrata of Roxburgh, Gul bé furman, is found to glow wild in some parts of Nepal and Bengal, as well as in the province of Buhar, flowering in February, the blossoms large, white, and very fragrant, its cultivation extending is improving the blossoms, particularly in causing the petals to be multiplied.
9. The Bramble-flowered rose R multiflora, Gul rana, naturally a trailer, may be trained to great advantage, when it will give beautiful bunches of small many petaled flowers in February and March, of delightful fragrance.
10. The Due de Berri rose, a variety of R damascena, but having the petals more rounded and more regular, it is a low rather drooping shrub with delicately small branches.
Propagation.--All the species may be multiplied by seed, by layers, by cuttings, by suckers, or from grafts, almost indiscriminately. Layering is the easiest, and most certain mode of propagating this most beautiful shrub.
The roots that branch, out and throw up distinct shoots may be divided, or cut off from the main root, and even an eye thus taken off may be made to produce a good plant.
Suckers, when they have pushed through the soil, may be taken up by digging down, and gently detaching them from the roots.
Grafting or budding is used for the more delicate kinds, especially the sweet briar, and, by the curious, to produce two or more varieties on one stem, the best stocks being obtained from the China, or the Dog Rose.
Soil &c.--Any good loamy garden soil without much sand, suits the rose, but to produce it in perfection the ground can hardly be too rich.
Culture.--Immediately at the close of the rains, the branches of most kinds of roses, especially the double ones, should be cut down to not more than six inches in length, removing at the same time, all old and decayed wood, as well as all stools that have branched out from the main one, and which will form new plants; the knife being at the same time freely exercised in the removal of sickly and crowded fibres from the roots; these should likewise be laid open, cleaned and pinned, and allowed to remain exposed until blossom buds begin to appear at the end of the first shoots; the hole must then be filled with good strong stable manure, and slightly earthed over. About a month after, a basket of stable dung, with the litter, should be heaped up round the stems, and broken brick or turf placed over it to relieve the unsightly appearance.
While flowering, too, it will be well to water with liquid manure at least once a week. If it be desired to continue the trees in blossom, each shoot should be removed as soon as it has ceased flowering. To secure full large blossoms, all the buds from a shoot should be cut off, when quite young, except one.
The Sweet briar rose strikes its root low, and prefers shade, the best soil being a deep rich loam with very little sand, rather strong than otherwise; it will be well to place a heap of manure round the stem, above ground, covering over with turf, but it is not requisite to open the roots, or give them so much manure as for other varieties. The sweet briar must not be much pruned, overgrowth being checked rather by pinching the young shoots, or it will not blossom, and it is rather slower in throwing out shoots than other roses. In this country the best mode of multiplying this shrub is by grafting on a China rose stock, as layers do not strike freely, and cuttings cannot be made to root at all.
The Bramble-flowered rose is a climber, and though not needing so strong a soil as other kinds, requires it to be rich, and frequently renewed, by taking away the soil from about the roots and supplying its place with a good compost of loam, leaf mould, and well rotted dung, pruning the root. The plants require shelter from the cold wind from the North, or West, this, however, if carefully trained, they will form for themselves, but until they do so, it is impossible to make them blossom freely, the higher branches should be allowed to droop, and if growing luxuriantly, with the shoots not shortened, they will the following season, produce bunches of flowers at the end of every one, and have a very beautiful effect, no pruning should be given, except what is just enough to keep the plants within bounds, as they invariably suffer from the use of the knife. This rose is easily propagated by cuttings or layers, both of which root readily.
The China rose thrives almost anywhere, but is best in a soil of loam and peat, a moderate supply of water being given daily during the hot weather. They will require frequent thinning out of the branches, and are propagated by cuttings, which strike freely.[139]
As before mentioned, Rose trees look well in a parterre by themselves, but a few may be dispersed along the borders of the garden.
Insects, &c. The green, and the black plant louse are great enemies to the rose tree, and, whenever they appear, it is advisable to cut out at once the shoot attacked, the green caterpillar too, often makes skeletons of the leaves in a short time, the ladybird, as it is commonly called, is an useful insect, and worthy of encouragement, as it is a destroyer of the plant louse.
CREEPERS AND CLIMBERS
The CLIMBING, and TWINING SHRUBS offer a numerous family, highly deserving of cultivation, the following being a few of the most desirable.
The HONEY-SUCKLE, Caprifolium, having no native name, is too well known, and too closely connected with the home associations of all to need particularizing. It is remarkable that they always twine from east to west, and rather die than submit to a change.
The TRUMPET FLOWER, Bignonia, are an eminently handsome family, chiefly considered stove plants in Europe, but here growing freely in the open ground, and flowering in loose spikes.
The MOUNTAIN EBONY, Bauhinia, the distinguishing mark of the class being its two lobed leaves, most of them are indigenous, and in their native woods attain an immense size, far beyond what botanists in Europe appear to give them credit for.
The VIRGIN'S BOWER, Clematis, finds some indigenous representatives in this country, although unnamed in the native language; the odour however is rather too powerful, and of some kinds even offensive, except immediately after a shower of rain. They are all climbers, requiring the same treatment as the honey suckle.
The PASSION FLOWER, Passiflora, is a very large family of twining shrubs, many of them really beautiful, and generally of easy cultivation, this country being of the same temperature with their indigenous localities.
The RACEMOSE ASPARAGUS, A. racemosus, Sadabooree, sutmoolee, is a native of India, and by nature a trailing plant, but better cultivated as a climber on a trellis, in which way its delicate setaceous foliage makes it at all times ornamental, and at the close of the rains it sends forth abundant bunches of long erect spires of greenish white color, and of delicious fragrance, shedding perfume all around to a great distance.
KALENDAR WORK TO BE PERFORMED.
JANUARY.
Thin out seeding annuals wherever they appear too thick. Water freely, especially such plants as are in bloom, and keep all clean from weeds. Cut off the footstalks of flowers, except such as are reserved for seed, as soon as the petals fade. Collect the seeds of early annuals as they ripen.
FEBRUARY.
Continue as directed in last month. Prepare stocks for roses to be grafted on, R. bengalensis, and R. canina are the best. Great care must be paid to thinning out the buds of roses to insure perfect blossoms, as well as to rubbing off the succulent upright shoots and suckers that are apt to spring up at this period. Collect seeds as they ripen, to be dried, or hardened in the shade.
Collect seeds as they ripen, drying them carefully, for a few days in the pods, and subsequently when freed from them in the shade, to put them in the sun being highly injurious. Give a plentiful supply of water in saucers to Narcissus, or other bulbs when flowering.
MARCH.
Cut down the flower stalks of Narcissus that have ceased flowering, and lessen the supply of water. Take up the tubers of Dahlias, and dry gradually in an open place in the shade, but do not remove the offsets for some days. Pot any of the species of Geranium that have been put out after the rains, provided they are not in bloom. Give water freely to the roots of all flowers that are in blossom. Mignionette that is in blossom should have the seed pods clipped off with a pair of scissors every day to continue it. Convolvulus in flower should be shaded early in the morning, or it will quickly fade. The Evening Primrose should be freely watered to increase the number of blossoms. Look to the Carnations that are coming into bloom, give support to the flower stem, cutting off all side shoots and buds, except the one intended to give a handsome flower.
APRIL.
Careful watering, avoiding any wetting of the leaves is necessary at this period, and the saucers of all bulbs not yet flowered should be kept constantly full, to promote blossoming--the saucers should however be kept clean, and washed out every third day at least. Frequent weeding must be attended to, with occasional watering all grass plots, or paths. Wherever any part of the garden becomes empty by the clearing off of annuals, it should be well dug to a depth of at least eighteen inches, and after laying exposed in clods for a week or two, manured with tank or road mud; leaf mould, or other good well rotted manure.
MAY.
This is the time to make layers of Honeysuckle, Bauhinia, and other climbing and twining shrubs.
Mignionette must be very carefully treated, kept moist, and every seed- pod clipped off as soon as the flower fades, or it will not be preserved. Continue to dig, and manure the borders, not leaving the manure exposed, or it will lose power. Make pipings and layers of Carnations.
JUNE.
Thin out the multitudinous buds of the Madras rose, also examine the buds of the Persian rose, to prevent the bursting of the calyx by tying with thread, or with a piece of parchment, or cardboard as directed for Carnations.
Watch Carnations to prevent the bursting of the calyx, and to remove superfluous buds. Re pot Geraniums that are in sheds, or verandahs, so soon as they have done flowering, also take up, and pot any that may yet remain in the borders. Prune off also all superfluous, or straggling branches. Continue digging over and manuring the flowering borders. Sow Zinnias, also make cuttings of perennials and biennials that are propagated by that means, and put in seeds of biennials under shelter, as well as a few of the early annuals, particularly Stock and Sweet-pea.
JULY.
Make cuttings and layers of hardy shrubs, and of the Fragrant Olive; put in cuttings of the Willow, and some other trees. Plant out Pines, and Casuarina, Cypress, Large-leaved fig, and the Laurel tribe. Transplant young shrubs of a hardy nature.
Divide the roots, and plant out suckers, or offsets of perennial border plants. Make cuttings and sow seeds of biennials, as required; also a few annuals to be hereafter transplanted. Sow also Geraniums. Continue making pipings of Carnation, plant out, or transplant hardy perennials into the borders.
AUGUST.
This may be considered the best time for sowing the seeds of hardy shrubs. Plant out Aralia, Canella, Magnolia, and other ornamental trees. Transplant delicate and exotic shrubs. Remove, and plant out suckers, and layers of hardy shrubs. Prune all shrubs freely.
Divide, and plant out suckers, and offsets of hardy perennials, that have formed during the rains. Plant out tender perennial plants, in the borders, also biennials. Prune, and thin out perennial plants in the borders. Put out in the borders such annuals as were sown in June, protecting them from the heat of the sun in the afternoon. Sow a few early annuals. Plant out Dahlia tubers where they are intended to blossom, keeping them as much as possible in classes of colors. Make pipings of Carnations.
SEPTEMBER.
Prick out the cuttings of hardy shrubs that have been made before, or during the rains, in beds for growing. Prune all flowering shrubs, having due regard to the character of each, as bearing flowers on the end of the shoots, or from the side exits, give the annual dressing of manure to the entire shrubbery, with new upper soil.
Remove the top soil from the borders, and renew with addition of a moderate quantity of manure. Put out Geraniums into the borders, and set rooted cuttings singly in pots. Plant out biennials in the borders, also such annuals as have been sown in pots. Re-pot and give fresh earth to plants in the shed.
OCTOBER.
Open out the roots of a few Bussorah roses for early flowering, pruning down all the branches to a height of six inches, removing all decayed, and superannuated wood, dividing the roots, and pruning them freely. The Madras roses should be treated in the same manner, not all at the same time, but at intervals of a week between each cutting down, so as to secure a succession for blossoming. Plant out rooted cuttings in beds, to increase in size.
Sow annuals freely, and thin out those put in last month, so as to leave sufficient space for growing, at the same time transplanting the most healthy to other parts of the border.
NOVEMBER.
Continue opening the roots of Bussorah roses, as well as the Rose Edward, and Madras roses, for succession to those on which this operation was performed last month. Prune, and trim the Sweetbriar, and Many-flowered rose.
Flower-Garden--Divide, and plant bulbs of all kinds, both, for border, and pot flowering. Continue to sow annuals.
DECEMBER
Continue opening the roots, and cutting down the branches of Bussorah, and other roses for late flowering. Prune, and thin out also the China and Persian roses, as well as the Many-flowered rose, if not done last month. Train carefully all climbing and twining shrubs.
Weed beds of annuals, and thin out, where necessary. Sow Nepolitan, and other fine descriptions of Larkspur, as well as all other annuals for a late show. Dahlias are now blooming in perfection, and should be closely watched that every side-bud, or more than one on each stalk may be cut off close, with a pair of scissors to secure full, distinctly colored, and handsome flowers.
[For further instructions respecting the culture of flowers in India I must refer my readers to the late Mr. Speede's works, where they will find a great deal of useful information not only respecting the flower- garden, but the kitchen-garden and the orchard.]
MISCELLANEOUS ITEMS.
THE TREE-MIGNONETTE.--This plant does not appear to be a distinct variety, for the common mignonette, properly trained becomes shrubby. It may be propagated by either seed or cuttings. When it has put forth four leaves or is about an inch high, take it from the bed and put it by itself into a moderate sized pot. As it advances in growth, carefully pick off all the side shoots, leaving the leaf at the base of each shoot to assist the growth of the plant. When it has reached a foot in height it will show flower. But every flower must be nipped off carefully. Support the stem with a stick to make it grow straight. Even when it has attained its proper height of two feet again cut off the bloom for a few days.
It is said that Miss Mitford, the admired authoress, was the first to discover that the common mignonette could be induced to adopt tree-like habits. The experiment has been tried in India, but it has sometimes failed from its being made at the wrong season. The seed should be sown at the end of the rains.
GRAFTING.--Take care to unite exactly the inner bark of the scion with the inner bark of the stock in order to facilitate the free course of the sap. Almost any scion will take to almost any sort of tree or plant provided there be a resemblance in their barks. The Chinese are fond of making fantastic experiments in grafting and sometimes succeed in the most heterogeneous combinations, such as grafting flowers upon fruit trees. Plants growing near each other can sometimes be grafted by the roots, or on the living root of a tree cut down another tree can be grafted. The scions are those shoots which united with the stock form the graft. It is desirable that the sap of the stock should be in brisk and healthy motion at the time of grafting. The graft should be surrounded with good stiff clay with a little horse or cow manure in it and a portion of cut hay. Mix the materials with a little water and then beat them up with a stick until the compound is quite ductile. When applied it may be bandaged with a cloth. The best season for grafting in India is the rains.
MANURE.--Almost any thing that rots quickly is a good manure. It is possible to manure too highly. A plant sometimes dies from too much richness of soil as well as from too barren a one.
WATERING.--Keep up a regular moisture, but do not deluge your plants until the roots rot. Avoid giving very cold water in the heat of the day or in the sunshine. Even in England some gardeners in a hot summer use luke-warm water for delicate plants. But do not in your fear of overwatering only wet the surface. The earth all round and below the root should be equally moist, and not one part wet and the other dry. If the plant requires but little water, water it seldom, but let the water reach all parts of the root equally when you water at all.
GATHERING AND PRESERVING FLOWERS.--Always use the knife, and prefer such as are coming into flower rather than such as are fully expanded. If possible gather from crowded plants, or parts of plants, so that every gathering may operate at the same time as a judicious pruning and thinning. Flowers may be preserved when gathered, by inserting their ends in winter, in moist earth, or moss; and may be freshened, when withered, by sprinkling them with water, and putting them in a close vessel, as under a bellglass, handglass, flowerpot or in a botanic box; if this will not do, sprinkle them with warm water heated to 80° or 90°, and cover them with a glass.--Loudon's Encyclopaedia of Gardening.
PIPING---is a mode of propagation by cuttings and is adopted in plants having joined tubular stems, as the dianthus tribe. When the shoot has nearly done growing (soon after its blossom has fallen) its extremity is to be separated at a part of the stem where it is hard and ripe. This is done by holding the root with one hand and with the other pulling the top part above the pair of leaves so as to separate it from the root part of the stem at the socket, formed by the axillae of the leaves, leaving the stem to remain with a tubular or pipe-looking termination. The piping is inserted in finely sifted earth to the depth of the first joint or pipe and its future management regulated on the same general principles as cuttings.--From the same.
BUDDING.--This is performed when the leaves of plants have grown to their full size and the bud is to be seen at the base of it. The relative nature of the bud and the stock is the same as in grafting. Make a slit in the bark of the stock, to reach from half an inch to an inch and a half down the stock, according to the size of the plant; then make another short slit across, that you may easily raise the bark from the wood, then take a very thin slice of the bark from the tree or plant to be budded, a little below a leaf, and bring the knife out a little above it, so that you remove the leaf and the bud at its base, with the little slice you have taken. You will perhaps have removed a small bit of the wood with the bark, which you must take carefully out with the sharp point of your knife and your thumb; then tuck the bark and bud under the bark of the stock which you carefully bind over, letting the bud come at the part where the slits cross each other. No part of the stock should be allowed to grow after it is budded, except a little shoot or so, above the bud, just to draw the sap past the bud.--Gleenny's Hand Book of Gardening.
ON PYRAMIDS OF ROSES.--The standard Roses give a fine effect to a bed of Roses by being planted in the middle, forming a pyramidal bed, or alone on grass lawns; but the ne plus ultra of a pyramid of Roses is that formed of from one, two, or three plants, forming a pyramid by being trained up three strong stakes, to any length from 10 to 25 feet high (as may suit situation or taste), placed about two feet apart at the bottom; three forming an angle on the ground, and meeting close together at the top; the plant, or plants to be planted inside the stakes. In two or three years, they will form a pyramid of Roses which baffles all description. When gardens are small, and the owners are desirous of having multum in parvo, three or four may be planted to form one pyramid; and this is not the only object of planting more sorts than one together, but the beauty is also much increased by the mingled hues of the varieties planted. For instance, plant together a white Boursault, a purple Noisette, a Stadtholder, Sinensis (fine pink), and a Moschata scandens and such a variety may be obtained, that twenty pyramids may have each, three or four kinds, and no two sorts alike on the whole twenty pyramids. A temple of Roses, planted in the same way, has a beautiful appearance in a flower garden--that is, eight, ten, or twelve stout peeled Larch poles, well painted, set in the ground, with a light iron rafter from each, meeting at the top and forming a dome. An old cable, or other old rope, twisted round the pillar and iron, gives an additional beauty to the whole. Then plant against the pillars with two or three varieties, each of which will soon run up the pillars, and form a pretty mass of Roses, which amply repays the trouble and expense, by the elegance it gives to the garden--Floricultural Cabinet.
How TO MAKE ROSE WATER, &c--Take an earthen pot or jar well glazed inside, wide in the month, narrow at the bottom, about 15 inches high, and place over the mouth a strainer of clean coarse muslin, to contain a considerable quantity of rose leaves, of some highly fragrant kind. Cover them with a second strainer of the same material, and close the mouth of the jar with an iron lid, or tin cover, hermetically sealed. On this lid place hot embers, either of coal or charcoal, that the heat may reach the rose-leaves without scorching or burning them.
The aromatic oil will fall drop by drop to the bottom with the water contained in the petals. When time has been allowed for extracting the whole, the embers must be removed, and the vase placed in a cool spot.
Rose-water obtained in this mode is not so durable as that obtained in the regular way by a still but it serves all ordinary purposes. Small alembics of copper with a glass capital, may be used in three different ways.
In the first process, the still or alembic must be mounted on a small brick furnace, and furnished with a worm long enough to pass through a pan of cold water. The petals of the rose being carefully picked so as to leave no extraneous parts, should be thrown into the boiler of the still with a little water.
The great point is to keep up a moderate fire in the furnace, such as will cause the vapour to rise without imparting a burnt smell to the rose water.
The operation is ended when the rose water, which falls drop by drop in the tube, ceases to be fragrant. That which is first condensed has very little scent, that which is next obtained is the best, and the third and last portion is generally a little burnt in smell, and bitter in taste. In a very small still, having no worm, the condensation must be produced by linen, wetted in cold water, applied round the capital. A third method consists in plunging the boiler of the still into a larger vessel of boiling water placed over a fire, when the rose-water never acquires the burnt flavour to which we have alluded. By another process, the still is placed in a boiler filled with sand instead of water, and heated to the necessary temperature.
But this requires alteration, or it is apt to communicate a baked flavour.
SYRUP OF ROSES--May be obtained from Belgian or monthly roses, picked over, one by one, and the base of the petal removed. In a China Jar prepared with a layer of powdered sugar, place a layer of rose-leaves about half an inch thick; then of sugar, then of leaves, till the vessel is full.
On the top, place a fresh wooden cover, pressed down with a weight. By degrees, the rose-leaves produce a highly-coloured, highly-scented syrup; and the leaves form a colouring-matter for liqueurs.
PASTILLES DU SERAIL.--Sold in France as Turkish, in rosaries and other ornaments, are made of the petals of the Belgian or Puteem Rose, ground to powder and formed into a paste by means of liquid gum.
Ivory-black is mixed with the gum to produce a black colour; and cinnabar or vermilion, to render the paste either brown or red.
It may be modelled by hand or in a mould, and when dried in the sun, or a moderate oven, attains sufficient hardness to be mounted in gold or silver.--Mrs. Gore's Rose Fancier's Manual.
OF FORMING AND PRESERVING HERBARIUMS.--The most exact descriptions, accompanied with the most perfect figures, leave still something to be desired by him who wishes to know completely a natural being. This nothing can supply but the autopsy or view of the object itself. Hence the advantage of being able to see plants at pleasure, by forming dried collections of them, in what are called herbariums.
A good practical botanist, Sir J.E. Smith observes, must be educated among the wild scenes of nature, while a finished theoretical one requires the additional assistance of gardens and books, to which must be superadded the frequent use of a good herbarium. When plants are well dried, the original forms and positions of even their minutest parts, though not their colours, may at any time be restored by immersion in hot water. By this means the productions of the most distant and various countries, such as no garden could possibly supply, are brought together at once under our eyes, at any season of the year. If these be assisted with drawings and descriptions, nothing less than an actual survey of the whole vegetable world in a state of nature, could excel such a store of information.
With regard to the mode or state in which plants are preserved, desiccation, accompanied by pressing, is the most generally used. Some persons, Sir J.E. Smith observes, recommend the preservation of specimens in weak spirits of wine, and this mode is by far the most eligible for such as are very juicy: but it totally destroys their colours, and often renders their parts less fit for examination than by the process of drying. It is, besides, incommodious for frequent study, and a very expensive and bulky way of making an herbarium.
The greater part of plants dry with facility between the leaves of books, or other paper, the smoother the better. If there be plenty of paper, they often dry best without shifting; but if the specimens are crowded, they must be taken out frequently, and the paper dried before they are replaced. The great point to be attended to is, that the process should meet with no check. Several vegetables are so tenacious of their vital principle, that they will grow between papers; the consequence of which is, a destruction of their proper habit and colors. It is necessary to destroy the life of such, either by immersion in boiling water or by the application of a hot iron, such as is used for linen, after which they are easily dried. The practice of applying such an iron, as some persons do, with great labor and perseverance, till the plants are quite dry, and all their parts incorporated into a smooth flat mass is not approved of. This renders them unfit for subsequent examination, and destroys their natural habit, the most important thing to be preserved. Even in spreading plants between papers, we should refrain from that practice and artificial disposition of their branches, leaves, and other parts, which takes away from their natural aspect, except for the purpose of displaying the internal parts of some one or two of their flowers, for ready observation. The most approved method of pressing is by a box or frame, with a bottom of cloth or leather, like a square sieve. In this, coarse sand or small shot may be placed; in any quantity very little pressing is required in drying specimens; what is found necessary should be applied equally to every part of the bundle under the operation.
Hot-pressing, by means of steel net-work heated, and placed in alternate layers with the papers, in the manner of hot pressing paper, and the whole covered with the equalizing press, above described, would probably be an improvement, but we have not heard of its being tried. At all events, pressing by screw presses, or weighty non-elastic bodies, must be avoided, as tending to bruise the stalks and other protuberant parts of plants.
"After all we can do," Sir J.E. Smith observes, "plants dry very variously. The blue colours of their flowers generally fade, nor are reds always permanent. Yellows are much more so, but very few white flowers retain their natural aspect. The snowdrop and parnassia, if well dried, continue white. Some greens are much more permanent than others; for there are some natural families whose leaves, as well as flowers, turn almost black by drying, as melampyrum, bartsia, and their allies, several willows, and most of the orchideae. The heaths and firs in general cast off their leaves between papers, which appears to be an effort of the living principle, for it is prevented by immersion of the fresh specimen in boiling water."
The specimens being dried, are sometimes kept loose between leaves of paper; at other times wholly gummed or glued to paper, but most generally attached by one or more transverse slips of paper, glued on one end and pinned at the other, so that such specimens can readily be taken out, examined, and replaced. On account of the aptitude of the leaves and other parts of dried plants to drop off, many glue them entirely, and such seems to be the method adopted by Linnaeus, and recommended by Sir J.E. Smith. "Dried specimens," the professor observes, "are best preserved by being fastened, with weak carpenter's glue, to paper, so that they may be turned over without damage. Thick and heavy stalks require the additional support of a few transverse strips of paper, to bind them more firmly down. A half sheet, of a convenient folio size, should be allotted to each species, and all the species of a genus may be placed in one or more whole sheets or folios. On the latter outside should be written the name of the genus, while the name of every species, with its place of growth, time of gathering, the finder's name, or any other concise piece of information, may be inscribed on its appropriate paper. This is the plan of the Linnaean herbarium."--Loudon.
THE END.
FOOTNOTES.
[[001]] Some of the finest Florists flowers have been reared by the mechanics of Norwich and Manchester and by the Spitalfield's weavers. The pitmen in the counties of Durham and Northumberland reside in long rows of small houses, to each of which is attached a little garden, which they cultivate with such care and success, that they frequently bear away the prize at Floral Exhibitions.
[[002]] Of Rail-Road travelling the reality is quite different from the idea that descriptions of it had left upon my mind. Unpoetical as this sort of transit may seem to some minds, I confess I find it excite and satisfy the imagination. The wondrous speed--the quick change of scene-- the perfect comfort--the life-like character of the power in motion, the invisible, and mysterious, and mighty steam horse, urged, and guided, and checked by the hand of Science--the cautionary, long, shrill whistle--the beautiful grey vapor, the breath of the unseen animal, floating over the fields by which we pass, sometimes hanging stationary for a moment in the air, and then melting away like a vision--furnish sufficiently congenial amusement for a period-minded observer.
[[003]] "That which peculiarly distinguishes the gardens of England," says Repton, "is the beauty of English verdure: the grass of the mown lawn, uniting with, the grass of the adjoining pastures, and presenting that permanent verdure which is the natural consequence of our soft and humid clime, but unknown to the cold region of the North or the parching temperature of the South. This it is impossible to enjoy in Portugal where it would be as practicable to cover the general surface with the snow of Lapland as with the verdure of England." It is much the same in France. "There is everywhere in France," says Loudon, "a want of close green turf, of ever-green bushes and of good adhesive gravel." Some French admirers of English gardens do their best to imitate our lawns, and it is said that they sometimes partially succeed with English grass seed, rich manure, and constant irrigation. In Bengal there is a very beautiful species of grass called Doob grass, (Panicum Dactylon,) but it only flourishes on wide and exposed plains with few trees on them, and on the sides of public roads, Shakespeare makes Falstaff say that "the camomile the more it is trodden on the faster it grows" and, this is the case with the Doob grass. The attempt to produce a permanent Doob grass lawn is quite idle unless the ground is extensive and open, and much trodden by men or sheep. A friend of mine tells me that he covered a large lawn of the coarse Ooloo grass (Saccharum cylindricum) with mats, which soon killed it, and on removing the mats, the finest Doob grass sprang up in its place. But the Ooloo grass soon again over-grew the Doob.
[[004]] I allude here chiefly to the ryots of wealthy Zemindars and to other poor Hindu people in the service of their own countrymen. All the subjects of the British Crown, even in India, are politically free, but individually the poorer Hindus, (especially those who reside at a distance from large towns,) are unconscious of their rights, and even the wealthier classes have rarely indeed that proud and noble feeling of personal independence which characterizes people of all classes and conditions in England. The feeling with which even a Hindu of wealth and rank approaches a man in power is very different indeed from that of the poorest Englishman under similar circumstances. But national education will soon communicate to the natives of India a larger measure of true self-respect. It will not be long, I hope, before the Hindus will understand our favorite maxim of English law, that "Every man's house is his castle,"--a maxim so finely amplified by Lord Chatham: "The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail--its roof may shake--the wind may blow through it--the storm may enter--but the king of England cannot enter!--all his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement."
[[005]] Literary Recreations.
[[006]] I have in some moods preferred the paintings of our own Gainsborough even to those of Claude--and for this single reason, that the former gives a peculiar and more touching interest to his landscapes by the introduction of sweet groups of children. These lovely little figures are moreover so thoroughly English, and have such an out-of- doors air, and seem so much a part of external nature, that an Englishman who is a lover of rural scenery and a patriot, can hardly fail to be enchanted with the style of his celebrated countryman.--Literary Recreations.
[[007]] Had Evelyn only composed the great work of his 'Sylva, or a Discourse of Forest Trees,' &c. his name would have excited the gratitude of posterity. The voice of the patriot exults in his dedication to Charles II, prefixed to one of the later editions:--'I need not acquaint your Majesty, how many millions of timber-trees, besides infinite others, have been propagated and planted throughout your vast dominions, at the instigation and by the sole direction of this work, because your Majesty has been pleased to own it publicly for my encouragement.' And surely while Britain retains her awful situation among the nations of Europe, the 'Sylva' of Evelyn will endure with her triumphant oaks. It was a retired philosopher who aroused the genius of the nation, and who casting a prophetic eye towards the age in which we live, has contributed to secure our sovereignty of the seas. The present navy of Great Britain has been constructed with the oaks which the genius of Evelyn planted.--D'Israeli's Curiosities of Literature.
[[008]] Crisped knots are figures curled or twisted, or having waving lines intersecting each other. They are sometimes planted in box. Children, even in these days, indulge their fancy in sowing mustard and cress, &c. in 'curious knots,' or in favorite names and sentences. I have done it myself, "I know not how oft,"--and alas, how long ago! But I still remember with what anxiety I watered and watched the ground, and with what rapture I at last saw the surface gradually rising and breaking on the light green heads of the delicate little new-born plants, all exactly in their proper lines or stations, like a well- drilled Lilliputian battalion.
Shakespeare makes mention of garden knots in his Richard the Second, where he compares an ill governed state to a neglected garden.
Why should we, in the compass of a pale,
Keep law, and form, and due proportion,
Showing, as in a model, our firm estate?
When our sea-walled garden, the whole land,
Is full of weeds; her finest flowers choked up,
Her fruit-trees all unpruned, her hedges ruined,
Her knots disordered, and her wholesome herbs
Swarming with caterpillars.
There is an allusion to garden knots in Holinshed's Chronicle. In 1512 the Earl of Northumberland "had but one gardener who attended hourly in the garden for setting of erbis and chipping of knottis and sweeping the said garden clean."
[[009]] Ovid, in his story of Pyramus and Thisbe, tells us that the black Mulberry was originally white. The two lovers killed themselves under a white Mulberry tree and the blood penetrating to the roots of the tree mixed with the sap and gave its color to the fruit.
[[010]] Revived Adonis,--for, according to tradition he died every year and revived again. Alcinous, host of old Laertes' son,--that is, of Ulysses, whom he entertained on his return from Troy. Or that, not mystic--not fabulous as the rest, but a real garden which Solomon made for his wife, the daughter of Pharoah, king of Egypt--WARBURTON
"Divested of harmonious Greek and bewitching poetry," observes Horace Walpole, "the garden of Alcinous was a small orchard and vineyard with some beds of herbs and two fountains that watered them, inclosed within a quickset hedge." Lord Kames, says, still more boldly, that it was nothing but a kitchen garden. Certainly, gardening amongst the ancient Greeks, was a very simple business. It is only within the present century that it has been any where elevated into a fine art.
[[011]] "We are unwilling to diminish or lose the credit of Paradise, or only pass it over with [the Hebrew word for] Eden, though the Greek be of a later name. In this excepted, we know not whether the ancient gardens do equal those of late times, or those at present in Europe. Of the gardens of Hesperides, we know nothing singular, but some golden apples. Of Alcinous his garden, we read nothing beyond figs, apples, olives; if we allow it to be any more than a fiction of Homer, unhappily placed in Corfu, where the sterility of the soil makes men believe there was no such thing at all. The gardens of Adonis were so empty that they afforded proverbial expression, and the principal part thereof was empty spaces, with herbs and flowers in pots. I think we little understand the pensile gardens of Semiramis, which made one of the wonders of it [Babylon], wherein probably the structure exceeded the plants contained in them. The excellency thereof was probably in the trees, and if the descension of the roots be equal to the height of trees, it was not [absurd] of Strebæus to think the pillars were hollow that the roots might shoot into them."--Sir Thomas Browne.--Bohn's Edition of Sir Thomas Browne's Works, vol. 2, page 498.
[[012]] The house and garden before Pope died were large enough for their owner. He was more than satisfied with them. "As Pope advanced in years," says Roscoe, "his love of gardening, and his attention to the various occupations to which it leads, seem to have increased also. This predilection was not confined to the ornamental part of this delightful pursuit, in which he has given undoubted proofs of his proficiency, but extended to the useful as well as the agreeable, as appears from several passages in his poems; but he has entered more particularly into this subject in a letter to Swift (March 25, 1736); "I wish you had any motive to see this kingdom. I could keep you: for I am rich, that is, have more than I want, I can afford room to yourself and two servants. I have indeed room enough; nothing but myself at home. The kind and hearty housewife is dead! The agreeable and instructive neighbour is gone! Yet my house is enlarged, and the gardens extend and flourish, as knowing nothing of the guests they have lost. I have more fruit trees and kitchen garden than you have any thought of; and, I have good melons and apples of my own growth. I am as much a better gardener, as I am a worse poet, than when you saw me; but gardening is near akin to philosophy, for Tully says, Agricultura proxima sapientiae. For God's sake, why should not you, (that are a step higher than a philosopher, a divine, yet have too much grace and wit than to be a bishop) even give all you have to the poor of Ireland (for whom you have already done every thing else,) so quit the place, and live and die with me? And let tales anima concordes be our motto and our epitaph."
[[013]] The leaves of the willow, though green above, are hoar below. Shakespeare's knowledge of the fact is alluded to by Hazlitt as one of the numberless evidences of the poet's minute observation of external nature.
[[014]] See Mr. Loudon's most interesting and valuable work entitled Arboretum et Fruticetum Britanicum.
[[015]] All the rules of gardening are reducible to three heads: the contrasts, the management of surprises and the concealment of the bounds. "Pray, what is it you mean by the contrasts?" "The disposition of the lights and shades."--"'Tis the colouring then?"--"Just that."--"Should not variety be one of the rules?"--"Certainly, one of the chief; but that is included mostly in the contrasts." I have expressed them all in two verses[140] (after my manner, in very little compass), which are in imitation of Horace's--Omne tulit punctum. Pope.--Spence's Anecdotes.
[[016]] In laying out a garden, the chief thing to be considered is the genius of the place. Thus at Tiskins, for example, Lord Bathurst should have raised two or three mounts, because his situation is all plain, and nothing can please without variety. Pope--Spence's Anecdotes.
[[017]] The seat and gardens of the Lord Viscount Cobham, in Buckinghamshire. Pope concludes the first Epistle of his Moral Essays with a compliment to the patriotism of this nobleman.
And you, brave Cobham! to the latest breath
Shall feel your ruling passion strong in death:
Such in those moments as in all the past
"Oh, save my country, Heaven!" shall be your last.
[[018]] Two hundred acres and two hundred millions of francs were made over to Le Notre by Louis XIV. to complete these geometrical gardens. One author tells us that in 1816 the ordinary cost of putting a certain portion of the waterworks in play was at the rate of 200 £. per hour, and another still later authority states that when the whole were set in motion once a year on some Royal fête, the cost of the half hour during which the main part of the exhibition lasted was not less than 3,000 £. This is surely a most senseless expenditure. It seems, indeed, almost incredible. I take the statements from Loudon's excellent Encyclopaedia of Gardening. The name of one of the original reporters is Neill; the name of the other is not given. The gardens formerly were and perhaps still are full of the vilest specimens of verdant sculpture in every variety of form. Lord Kames gives a ludicrous account of the vomiting stone statues there;--"A lifeless statue of an animal pouring out water may be endured" he observes, "without much disgust: but here the lions and wolves are put in violent action; each has seized its prey, a deer or a lamb, in act to devour; and yet, as by hocus-pocus, the whole is converted into a different scene: the lion, forgetting his prey, pours out water plentifully; and the deer, forgetting its danger, performs the same work: a representation no less absurd than that in the opera, where Alexander the Great, after mounting the wall of a town besieged, turns his back to the enemy, and entertains his army with a song."
[[019]] Broome though a writer of no great genius (if any), had yet the honor to be associated with Pope in the translation of the Odyssey. He translated the 2nd, 6th, 8th, 11th, 16th, 18th, and 23rd books. Henley (Orator Henley) sneered at Pope, in the following couplet, for receiving so much assistance:
Pope came clean off with Homer, but they say,
Broome went before, and kindly swept the way.
Fenton was another of Pope's auxiliaries. He translated the 1st, 4th, 19th and 20th books (of the Odyssey). Pope himself translated the rest.
[[020]] Stowe
[[021]] The late Humphrey Repton, one of the best landscape-gardeners that England has produced, and who was for many years employed on alterations and improvements in the house and grounds at Cobham, in Kent, the seat of the Earl of Darnley, seemed to think that Stowe ought not to monopolize applause and admiration, "Whether," he said, "we consider its extent, its magnificence or its comfort, there are few places that can vie with Cobham." Repton died in 1817, and his patron and friend the Earl of Darnley put up at Cobham an inscription to his memory.
The park at Cobham extends over an area of no less than 1,800 acres, diversified with thick groves and finely scattered single trees and gentle slopes and broad smooth lawns. Some of the trees are singularly beautiful and of great age and size. A chestnut tree, named the Four Sisters, is five and twenty feet in girth. The mansion, of which, the central part was built by Inigo Jones, is a very noble one. George the Fourth pronounced the music room the finest room in England. The walls are of polished white marble with pilasters of sienna marble. The picture gallery is enriched with valuable specimens of the genius of Titian and Guido and Salvator Rosa and Sir Joshua Reynolds. There is another famous estate in Kent, Knole, the seat of
Dorset, the grace of courts, the Muse's pride.
The Earl of Dorset, though but a poetaster himself, knew how to appreciate the higher genius of others. He loved to be surrounded by the finest spirits of his time. There is a pleasant anecdote of the company at his table agreeing to see which amongst them could produce the best impromptu. Dryden was appointed arbitrator. Dorset handed a slip of paper to Dryden, and when all the attempts were collected, Dryden decided without hesitation that Dorset's was the best. It ran thus: "I promise to pay Mr. John Dryden, on demand, the sum of £500. Dorset."
[[022]] This is generally put into the mouth of Pope, but if we are to believe Spence, who is the only authority for the anecdote, it was addressed to himself.
[[023]] It has been said that in laying out the grounds at Hagley, Lord Lyttelton received some valuable hints from the author of The Seasons, who was for some time his Lordship's guest. The poet has commemorated the beauties of Hagley Park in a description that is familiar to all lovers of English poetry. I must make room for a few of the concluding lines.
Meantime you gain the height, from whose fair brow,
The bursting prospect spreads immense around:
And snatched o'er hill, and dale, and wood, and lawn,
And verdant field, and darkening heath between,
And villages embosomed soft in trees,
And spiry towns by surging columns marked,
Of household smoke, your eye excursive roams;
Wide stretching from the hall, in whose kind haunt
The hospitable genius lingers still,
To where the broken landscape, by degrees,
Ascending, roughens into rigid hills;
O'er which the Cambrian mountains, like far clouds,
That skirt the blue horizon, dusky rise.
It certainly does not look as if there had been any want of kindly feeling towards Shenstone on the part of Lyttelton when we find the following inscription in Hagley Park.
To the memory of
William Shenstone, Esquire,
In whose verse
Were all the natural graces.
And in whose manners
Was all the amiable simplicity
Of pastoral poetry,
With the sweet tenderness
Of the elegiac.
There is also at Hagley a complimentary inscription on an urn to Alexander Pope; and, on an octagonal building called Thomson's Seat, there is an inscription to the author of The Seasons. Hagley is kept up with great care and is still in possession of the descendants of the founder. But a late visitor (Mr. George Dodd) expresses a doubt whether the Leasowes, even in its comparative decay, is not a finer bit of landscape, a more delightful place to lose one-self in, than even its larger and better preserved neighbour.
[[024]] Coleridge is reported to have said--"There is in Crabbe an absolute defect of high imagination; he gives me little pleasure. Yet no doubt he has much power of a certain kind, and it is good to cultivate, even at some pains, a catholic taste in literature." Walter Savage Landor, in his "Imaginary Conversations," makes Porson say--"Crabbe wrote with a two-penny nail and scratched rough truths and rogues' facts on mud walls." Horace Smith represents Crabbe, as "Pope in worsted stockings." That there is merit of some sort or other, and that of no ordinary kind, in Crabbe's poems, is what no one will deny. They relieved the languor of the last days of two great men, of very different characters--Sir Walter Scott and Charles James Fox.
[[025]] The poet had a cottage and garden in Kew-foot-Lane at or near Richmond. In the alcove in the garden is a small table made of the wood of the walnut tree. There is a drawer to the table which in all probability often received charge of the poet's effusions hot from the brain. On a brass tablet inserted in the top of the table is this inscription--"This table was the property of James Thomson, and always stood in this seat."
[[026]] Shene or Sheen: the old name of Richmond, signifying in Saxon shining or splendour.
[[027]] Highgate and Hamstead.
[[028]] In his last sickness
[[029]] On looking back at page 36 I find that I have said in the [foot note] that it is only within the present century that gardening has been elevated into a fine art. I did not mean within the 55 years of this 19th century, but within a hundred years. Even this, however, was an inadvertency. We may go a little further back. Kent and Pope lived to see Landscape-Gardening considered a fine art. Before their time there were many good practical gardeners, but the poetry of the art was not then much regarded except by a very few individuals of more than ordinary refinement.
[[030]] Catherine the Second grossly disgraced herself as a woman--partly driven into misconduct herself by the behaviour of her husband--but as a sovereign it cannot be denied that she exhibited a penetrating sagacity and great munificence; and perhaps the lovers of literature and science should treat her memory with a little consideration. When Diderot was in distress and advertized his library for sale, the Empress sent him an order on a banker at Paris for the amount demanded, namely fifteen thousand livres, on condition that the library was to be left as a deposit with the owner, and that he was to accept a gratuity of one thousand livres annually for taking charge of the books, until the Empress should require them. This was indeed a delicate and ingenious kindness. Lord Brougham makes D'Alembert and not Diderot the subject of this anecdote. It is a mistake. See the Correspondence of Baron de Gumm and Diderot with the Duke of Saxe-Gotha.
Many of the Russian nobles keep up to this day the taste in gardening introduced by Catherine the Second, and have still many gardens laid out in the English style. They have often had in their employ both English and Scottish gardeners. There is an anecdote of a Scotch gardener in the Crimea in one of the public journals:--
"Our readers"--says the Banffshire Journal--"will recollect that when the Allies made a brief expedition to Yalto, in the south of the Crimea, they were somewhat surprised and gratified by the sight of some splendid gardens around a seat of Prince Woronzow. Little did our countrymen think that these gardens were the work of a Scotchman, and a Moray loon; yet such was the case." The history of the personage in question is a somewhat singular one: "Jamie Sinclair, the garden boy, had a natural genius, and played the violin. Lady Cumming had this boy educated by the family tutor, and sent him to London, where he was well known in 1836-7-8, for his skill in drawing and colouring. Mr. Knight, of the Exotic Nursery, for whom he used to draw orchids and new plants, sent him to the Crimea, to Prince Woronzow, where he practised for thirteen years. He had laid out these beautiful gardens which the allies the other day so much admired; had the care of 10,000 acres of vineyards belonging to the prince; was well known to the Czar, who often consulted him about improvements, and gave him a "medal of merit" and a diploma or passport, by which he was free to pass from one end of the empire to the other, and also through Austria and Prussia, I have seen these instruments. He returned to London in 1851, and was just engaged with a London publisher for a three years' job, when Menschikoff found the Turks too hot for him last April twelve-month; the Russians then made up for blows, and Mr. Sinclair was more dangerous for them in London than Lord Aberdeen. He was the only foreigner who was ever allowed to see all that was done in and out of Sebastopol, and over all the Crimea. The Czar, however, took care that Sinclair could not join the allies; but where he is and what he is about I must not tell, until the war is over--except that he is not in Russia, and that he will never play first fiddle again in Morayshire."
[[031]] Brown succeeded to the popularity of Kent. He was nicknamed, Capability Brown, because when he had to examine grounds previous to proposed alterations and improvements he talked much of their capabilities. One of the works which are said to do his memory most honor, is the Park of Nuneham, the seat of Lord Harcourt. The grounds extend to 1,200 acres. Horace Walpole said that they contained scenes worthy of the bold pencil of Rubens, and subjects for the tranquil sunshine of Claude de Lorraine. The following inscription is placed over the entrance to the gardens.
Here universal Pan,
Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance,
Leads on the eternal Spring.
It is said that the gardens at Nuneham were laid out by Mason, the poet.
[[032]] Mrs. Stowe visited the Jardin Mabille in the Champs Elysées, a sort of French Vauxhall, where small jets of gas were so arranged as to imitate "flowers of the softest tints and the most perfect shape."
[[033]] Napoleon, it is said, once conceived the plan of roofing with glass the gardens of the Tuileries, so that they might be used as a winter promenade.
[[034]] Addison in the 477th number of the Spectator in alluding to Kensington Gardens, observes; "I think there are as many kinds of gardening as poetry; our makers of parterres and flower gardens are epigrammatists and sonnetteers in the art; contrivers of bowers and grottos, treillages and cascades, are romance writers. Wise and London are our heroic poets; and if I may single out any passage of their works to commend I shall take notice of that part in the upper garden at Kensington, which was at first nothing but a gravel pit. It must have been a fine genius for gardening that could have thought of forming such an unsightly hollow unto so beautiful an area and to have hit the eye with so uncommon and agreeable a scene as that which it is now wrought into."
[[035]] Lord Bathurst, says London, informed Daines Barrington, that he (Lord Bathurst) was the first who deviated from the straight line in sheets of water by following the lines in a valley in widening a brook at Ryskins, near Colnbrook; and Lord Strafford, thinking that it was done from poverty or economy asked him to own fairly how little more it would have cost him to have made it straight. In these days no possessor of a park or garden has the water on his grounds either straight or square if he can make it resemble the Thames as described by Wordsworth:
The river wanders at its own sweet will.
Horace Walpole in his lively and pleasant little work on Modern Gardening almost anticipates this thought. In commending Kent's style of landscape-gardening he observes: "The gentle stream was taught to serpentize at its pleasure."
[[036]] This Palm-house, "the glory of the gardens," occupies an area of 362 ft. in length; the centre is an hundred ft. in width and 66 ft. in height.
It must charm a Native of the East on a visit to our country, to behold such carefully cultured specimens, in a great glass-case in England, of the trees called by Linnaeus "the Princes of the vegetable kingdom," and which grow so wildly and in such abundance in every corner of Hindustan. In this conservatory also are the banana and plantain. The people of England are in these days acquainted, by touch and sight, with almost all the trees that grow in the several quarters of the world. Our artists can now take sketches of foreign plants without crossing the seas. An allusion to the Palm tree recals some criticisms on Shakespeare's botanical knowledge.
"Look here," says Rosalind, "what I found on a [palm tree]." "A palm tree in the forest of Arden," remarks Steevens, "is as much out of place as a lioness in the subsequent scene." Collier tries to get rid of the difficulty by suggesting that Shakespeare may have written plane tree. "Both the remark and the suggestion," observes Miss Baker, "might have been spared if those gentlemen had been aware that in the counties bordering on the Forest of Arden, the name of an exotic tree is transferred to an indigenous one." The salix caprea, or goat-willow, is popularly known as the "palm" in Northamptonshire, no doubt from having been used for the decoration of churches on Palm Sunday--its graceful yellow blossoms, appearing at a time when few other trees have put forth a leaf, having won for it that distinction. Clare so calls it:--
"Ye leaning palms, that seem to look
Pleased o'er your image in the brook."
That Shakespeare included the willow in his forest scenery is certain, from another passage in the same play:--
"West of this place, down in the neighbour bottom.
The rank of osiers by the murmuring stream,
Left on your right hand brings you to the place."
The customs and amusements of Northamptonshire, which are frequently noticed in these volumes, were identical with those of the neighbouring county of Warwick, and, in like manner illustrate very clearly many passages in the great dramatist.--Miss Baker's "Glossary of Northamptonshire Words." (Quoted by the London Athenaeum.)
[[037]] Mrs. Hemans once took up her abode for some weeks with Wordsworth at Rydal Mount, and was so charmed with the country around, that she was induced to take a cottage called Dove's Nest, which over-looked the lake of Windermere. But tourists and idlers so haunted her retreat and so worried her for autographs and Album contributions, that she was obliged to make her escape. Her little cottage and garden in the village of Wavertree, near Liverpool, seem to have met the fate which has befallen so many of the residences of the poets. "Mrs. Hemans's little flower-garden" (says a late visitor) "was no more--but rank grass and weeds sprang up luxuriously; many of the windows were broken; the entrance gate was off its hinges: the vine in front of the house trailed along the ground, and a board, with 'This house to let' upon it, was nailed on the door. I entered the deserted garden and looked into the little parlour--once so full of taste and elegance; it was gloomy and cheerless. The paper was spotted with damp, and spiders had built their webs in the corner. As I mused on the uncertainty of human life, I exclaimed with the eloquent Burke,--'What shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue!'"
The beautiful grounds of the late Professor Wilson at Elleray, we are told by Mr. Howitt in his interesting "Homes and Haunts of the British Poets" have also been sadly changed. "Steam," he says, "as little as time, has respected the sanctity of the poet's home, but has drawn its roaring iron steeds opposite to its gate and has menaced to rush through it and lay waste its charmed solitude. In plain words, I saw the stages of a projected railway running in an ominous line across the very lawn and before the windows of Elleray." I believe the whole place has been purchased by a Railway Company.
[[038]] In Churton's Rail Book of England, published about three years ago, Pope's Villa is thus noticed--"Not only was this temple of the Muses--this abode of genius--the resort of the learned and the wittiest of the land--levelled to the earth, but all that the earth produced to remind posterity of its illustrious owner, and identify the dead with the living strains he has bequeathed to us, was plucked up by the roots and scattered to the wind." On the authority of William Hewitt I have stated on an [earlier page] that some splendid Spanish chesnut trees and some elms and cedars planted by Pope at Twickenham were still in existence. But Churton is a later authority. Howitt's book was published in 1847.
[[039]] One would have thought &c. See the garden of Armida, as described by Tasso, C. xvi. 9, &c.
"In lieto aspetto il bel giardin s'aperse &c."
Here was all that variety, which constitutes the nature of beauty: hill and dale, lawns and crystal rivers, &c.
"And, that which all faire works doth most aggrace,
"The art, which all that wrought, appearéd in no place."
Which is literally from Tasso, C, xvi 9.
"E quel, che'l bello, e'l caro accresce à l'opre,
"L'arte, che tutto fa, nulla si scopre."
The next stanza is likewise translated from Tasso, C. xvi 10. And, if the reader likes the comparing of the copy with the original, he may see many other beauties borrowed from the Italian poet. The fountain, and the two bathing damsels, are taken from Tasso, C. xv, st. 55, &c. which he calls, Il fonte del riso. UPTON.
[[040]] Cowper was evidently here thinking rather of Milton than of Homer.
Flowers of all hue, and without thorns the rose.
Paradise Lost.
Pope translates the passage thus;
Beds of all various herbs, for ever green,
In beauteous order terminate the scene.
Homer referred to pot-herbs, not to flowers of all hues. Cowper is generally more faithful than Pope, but he is less so in this instance. In the above description we have Homer's highest conception of a princely garden:--in five acres were included an orchard, a vineyard, and some beds of pot-herbs. Not a single flower is mentioned, by the original author, though his translator has been pleased to steal some from the garden of Eden and place them on "the verge extreme" of the four acres. Homer of course meant to attach to a Royal residence as Royal a garden; but as Bacon says, "men begin to build stately sooner than to garden finely, as if gardening were the greater perfection." The mansion of Alcinous was of brazen walls with golden columns; and the Greeks and Romans had houses that were models of architecture when their gardens exhibited no traces whatever of the hand of taste.
And over him, art stryving to compayre
With nature, did an arber greene dispied
This whole episode is taken from Tasso, C. 16, where Rinaldo is described in dalliance with Armida. The bower of bliss is her garden
"Stimi (si misto il culto e col negletto)
"Sol naturali e gli ornamenti e i siti,
"Di natura arte par, che per diletto
"L'imitatrice sua scherzando imiti."
See also Ovid, Met iii. 157
"Cujus in extremo est antrum nemorale necessu,
"Arte laboratum nulla, simulaverat artem
"Ingenio natura fuo nam pumice vivo,
"Et lenibus tophis nativum duxerat arcum
"Fons sonat a dextra, tenui perlucidas unda
"Margine gramineo patulos incinctus hiatus"
UPTON
If this passage may be compared with Tasso's elegant description of Armida's garden, Milton's pleasant grove may vie with both.[141] He is, however, under obligations to the sylvan scene of Spenser before us. Mr. J.C. Walker, to whom the literature of Ireland and of Italy is highly indebted, has mentioned to me his surprise that the writers on modern gardening should have overlooked the beautiful pastoral description in this and the two following stanzas.[142] It is worthy a place, he adds, in the Eden of Milton. Spenser, on this occasion, lost sight of the "trim gardens" of Italy and England, and drew from the treasures of his own rich imagination. TODD.
And fast beside these trickled softly downe.
A gentle stream, &c.
Compare the following stanza in the continuation of the Orlando Innamorato, by Nilcolo degli Agostinti, Lib. iv, C. 9.
"Ivi è un mormorio assai soave, e basso,
Che ogniun che l'ode lo fa addornientare,
L'acqua, ch'io dissi gia per entro un sasso
E parea che dicesse nel sonare.
Vatti riposa, ormai sei stanco, e lasso,
E gli augeletti, che s'udian cantare,
Ne la dolce armonia par che ogn'un dica,
Deh vien, e dormi ne la piaggia, aprica,"
Spenser's obligations to this poem seem to have escaped the notice of his commentators. J.C. WALKER.
[[042]] The oak was dedicated to Jupiter, and the poplar to Hercules.
[[043]] Sicker, surely; Chaucer spells it siker.
[[044]] Yode, went.
[[045]] Tabreret, a tabourer.
[[046]] Tho, then
[[047]] Attone, at once--with him.
[[048]] Cato being present on one occasion at the floral games, the people out of respect to him, forbore to call for the usual exposures; when informed of this he withdrew, that the spectators might not be deprived of their usual entertainment.
[[049]] What is the reason that an easterly wind is every where unwholesome and disagreeable? I am not sufficiently scientific to answer this question. Pope takes care to notice the fitness of the easterly wind for the Cave of Spleen.
No cheerful breeze this sullen region knows,
The dreaded east is all the wind that blows.
Rape of the Lock.
[[050]] One sweet scene of early pleasures in my native land I have commemorated in the following sonnet:--
NETLEY ABBEY.
Romantic ruin! who could gaze on thee
Untouched by tender thoughts, and glimmering dreams
Of long-departed years? Lo! nature seems
Accordant with thy silent majesty!
The far blue hills--the smooth reposing sea--
The lonely forest--the meandering streams--
The farewell summer sun, whose mellowed beams
Illume thine ivied halls, and tinge each tree,
Whose green arms round thee cling--the balmy air--
The stainless vault above, that cloud or storm
'Tis hard to deem will ever more deform--
The season's countless graces,--all appear
To thy calm glory ministrant, and form
A scene to peace and meditation dear!
D.L.R.
[[051]] "I was ever more disposed," says Hume, "to see the favourable than the unfavourable side of things; a turn of mind which it is more happy to possess, than to be born to an estate of ten thousand a year."
[[052]] So called, because the grounds were laid out in a tasteful style, under the direction of Lord Auckland's sister, the Honorable Miss Eden.
[[053]] Songs of the East by Mrs. W.S. Carshore. D'Rozario & Co, Calcutta 1854.
[[054]] The lines form a portion of a poem published in Literary Leaves in the year 1840.
[[055]] Perhaps some formal or fashionable wiseacres may pronounce such simple ceremonies vulgar. And such is the advance of civilization that even the very chimney-sweepers themselves begin to look upon their old May-day merry-makings as beneath the dignity of their profession. "Suppose now" said Mr. Jonas Hanway to a sooty little urchin, "I were to give you a shilling." "Lord Almighty bless your honor, and thank you." "And what if I were to give you a fine tie-wig to wear on May-day?" "Ah! bless your honor, my master wont let me go out on May-day," "Why not?" "Because, he says, it's low life." And yet the merrie makings on May- day which are now deemed ungenteel by chimney-sweepers were once the delight of Princes:--
Forth goth all the court, both most and least,
To fetch the flowres fresh, and branch and blome,
And namely hawthorn brought both page and grome,
And then rejoicing in their great delite
Eke ech at others threw the flowres bright,
The primrose, violet, and the gold
With fresh garlants party blue and white.
Chaucer.
[[056]] The May-pole was usually decorated with the flowers of the hawthorn, a plant as emblematical of the spring as the holly is of Christmas. Goldsmith has made its name familiar even to the people of Bengal, for almost every student in the upper classes of the Government Colleges has the following couplet by heart.
The hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the shade,
For talking age and whispering lovers made.
The hawthorn was amongst Burns's floral pets. "I have," says he, "some favorite flowers in spring, among which are, the mountain daisy, the harebell, the fox-glove, the wild-briar rose, the budding birch and the hoary hawthorn, that I view and hang over with particular delight."
L.E.L. speaks of the hawthorn hedge on which "the sweet May has showered its white luxuriance," and the Rev. George Croly has a patriotic allusion to this English plant, suggested by a landscape in France.
'Tis a rich scene, and yet the richest charm
That e'er clothed earth in beauty, lives not here.
Winds no green fence around the cultured farm
No blossomed hawthorn shields the cottage dear:
The land is bright; and yet to thine how drear,
Unrivalled England! Well the thought may pine
For those sweet fields where, each a little sphere,
In shaded, sacred fruitfulness doth shine,
And the heart higher beats that says; 'This spot is mine.'
[[057]] On May-day, the Ancient Romans used to go in procession to the grotto of Egeria.
[[058]] See what is said of [palms] in a note on page 81.
[[059]] Phillips's Flora Historica.
[[060]] The word primrose is supposed to be a compound of prime and rose, and Spenser spells it prime rose
The pride and prime rose of the rest
Made by the maker's self to be admired
The Rev. George Croly characterizes Bengal as a mountainous country--
There's glory on thy mountains, proud Bengal--
and Dr. Johnson in his Journey of a day, (Rambler No. 65) charms the traveller in Hindustan with a sight of the primrose and the oak.
"As he passed along, his ears were delighted with the morning song of the bird of paradise; he was fanned by the last flutters of the sinking breeze, and sprinkled with dew by groves of spices, he sometimes contemplated the towering height of the oak, monarch of the hills; and sometimes caught the gentle fragrance of the primrose, eldest daughter of the spring."
In some book of travels, I forget which, the writer states, that he had seen the primrose in Mysore and in the recesses of the Pyrenees. There is a flower sold by the Bengallee gardeners for the primrose, though it bears but small resemblance to the English flower of that name. On turning to Mr. Piddington's Index to the Plants of India I find under the head of Primula--Primula denticula--Stuartii--rotundifolia--with the names in the Mawar or Nepaulese dialect.
[[061]] In strewing their graves the Romans affected the rose; the Greeks amaranthus and myrtle: the funeral pyre consisted of sweet fuel, cypress, fir, larix, yew, and trees perpetually verdant lay silent expressions of their surviving hopes. Sir Thomas Browne.
[[062]] The allusion to the cowslip in Shakespeare's description of Imogene must not be passed over here.--
On her left breast
A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drop
I' the bottom of the cowslip.
[[063]] The Guelder rose--This elegant plant is a native of Britain, and when in flower, has at first sight, the appearance of a little maple tree that has been pelted with snow balls, and we almost fear to see them melt away in the warm sunshine--Glenny.
[[064]] In a greenhouse
[[065]] Some flowers have always been made to a certain degree emblematical of sentiment in England as elsewhere, but it was the Turks who substituted flowers for words to such an extent as to entitle themselves to be regarded as the inventors of the floral language.
[[066]] The floral or vegetable language is not always the language of love or compliment. It is sometimes severe and scornful. A gentleman sent a lady a rose as a declaration of his passion and a slip of paper attached, with the inscription--"If not accepted, I am off to the war." The lady forwarded in return a mango (man, go!)
[[067]] No part of the creation supposed to be insentient, exhibits to an imaginative observer such an aspect of spiritual life and such an apparent sympathy with other living things as flowers, shrubs and trees. A tree of the genus Mimosa, according to Niebuhr, bends its branches downward as if in hospitable salutation when any one approaches near to it. The Arabs, are on this account so fond of the "courteous tree" that the injuring or cutting of it down is strictly prohibited.
[[068]] It has been observed that the defense is supplied in the following line--want of sense--a stupidity that "errs in ignorance and not in cunning."
[[069]] There is apparently so much doubt and confusion is to the identity of the true Hyacinth, and the proper application of its several names that I shall here give a few extracts from other writers on this subject.
Some authors suppose the Red Martagon Lily to be the poetical Hyacinth of the ancients, but this is evidently a mistaken opinion, as the azure blue color alone would decide and Pliny describes the Hyacinth as having a sword grass and the smell of the grape flower, which agrees with the Hyacinth, but not with the Martagon. Again, Homer mentions it with fragrant flowers of the same season of the Hyacinth. The poets also notice the hyacinth under different colours, and every body knows that the hyacinth flowers with sapphire colored purple, crimson, flesh and white bells, but a blue martagon will be sought for in vain. Phillips' Flora Historica.
A doubt hangs over the poetical history of the modern, as well as of the ancient flower, owing to the appellation Harebell being, indiscriminately applied both to Scilla wild Hyacinth, and also to Campanula rotundifolia, Blue Bell. Though the Southern bards have occasionally misapplied the word Harebell it will facilitate our understanding which flower is meant if we bear in mind as a general rule that that name is applied differently in various parts of the island, thus the Harebell of Scottish writers is the Campanula, and the Bluebell, so celebrated in Scottish song, is the wild Hyacinth or Scilla while in England the same names are used conversely, the Campanula being the Bluebell and the wild Hyacinth the Harebell. Eden Warwick.
The Hyacinth of the ancient fabulists appears to have been the corn- flag, (Gladiolus communis of botanists) but the name was applied vaguely and had been early applied to the great larkspur (Delphinium Ajacis) on account of the similar spots on the petals, supposed to represent the Greek exclamation of grief Ai Ai, and to the hyacinth of modern times.
Our wild hyacinth, which contributes so much to the beauty of our woodland scenery during the spring, may be regarded as a transition species between scilla and hyacinthus, the form and drooping habit of its flower connecting it with the latter, while the six pieces that form the two outer circles, being separate to the base, give it the technical character of the former. It is still called Hyacinthus non-scriptus-- but as the true hyacinth equally wants the inscription, the name is singularly inappropriate. The botanical name of the hyacinth is Hyacinthus orientalis which applies equally to all the varieties of colour, size and fulness.--W. Hinks.
[[070]] Old Gerard calls it Blew Harebel or English Jacint, from the French Jacinthe.
[[071]] Inhabitants of the Island of Chios
[[072]] Supposed by some to be Delphinium Ajacis or Larkspur. But no one can discover any letters on the Larkspur.
[[073]] Some savants say that it was not the sunflower into which the lovelorn lass was transformed, but the Heliotrope with its sweet odour of vanilla. Heliotrope signifies I turn towards the sun. It could not have been the sun flower, according to some authors because that came from Peru and Peru was not known to Ovid. But it is difficult to settle this grave question. As all flowers turn towards the sun, we cannot fix on any one that is particularly entitled to notice on that account.
[[074]] Zephyrus.
[[075]] "A remarkably intelligent young botanist of our acquaintance asserts it as his firm conviction that many a young lady who would shrink from being kissed under the mistletoe would not have the same objection to that ceremony if performed under the rose."--Punch.
[[076]] Mary Howitt mentions that amongst the private cultivators of roses in the neighbourhood of London, the well-known publisher Mr. Henry S. Bohn is particularly distinguished. In his garden at Twickenham one thousand varieties of the rose are brought to great perfection. He gives a sort of floral fete to his friends in the height of the rose season.
[[077]] The learned dry the flower of the Forget me not and flatten it down in their herbals, and call it, Myosotis Scorpioides--Scorpion shaped mouse's ear! They have been reproached for this by a brother savant, Charles Nodier, who was not a learned man only but a man of wit and sense.--Alphonse Karr.
[[078]] The Abbé Molina in his History of Chili mentions a species of basil which he calls ocymum salinum: he says it resembles the common basil, except that the stalk is round and jointed; and that though it grows sixty miles from the sea, yet every morning it is covered with saline globules, which are hard and splendid, appearing at a distance like dew; and that each plant furnishes about an ounce of fine salt every day, which the peasants collect and use as common salt, but esteem it superior in flavour.--Notes to Darwin's Loves of the Plants.
[[079]] The Dutch are a strange people and of the most heterogeneous composition. They have an odd mixture in their nature of the coldest utilitarianism and the most extravagant romance. A curious illustration of this is furnished in their tulipomania, in which there was a struggle between the love of the substantial and the love of the beautiful. One of their authors enumerates the following articles as equivalent in money value to the price of one tulip root--"two lasts of wheat--four lasts of rye--four fat oxen--eight fat swine--twelve fat sheep--two hogsheads of wine--four tons of butter--one thousand pounds of cheese--a complete bed--a suit of clothes--and a silver drinking cup."
[[080]] Maun, must
[[081]] Stoure, dust
[[082]] Weet, wetness, rain
[[083]] Glinted, peeped
[[084]] Wa's, walls.
[[085]] Bield, shelter
[[086]] Histie, dry
[[087]] Stibble field, a field covered with stubble--the stalks of corn left by the reaper.
[[088]] The origin of the Daisy--When Christ was three years old his mother wished to twine him a birthday wreath. But as no flower was growing out of doors on Christmas eve, not in all the promised land, and as no made up flowers were to be bought, Mary resolved to prepare a flower herself. To this end she took a piece of bright yellow silk which had come down to her from David, and ran into the same, thick threads of white silk, thread by thread, and while thus engaged, she pricked her finger with the needle, and the pure blood stained some of the threads with crimson, whereat the little child was much affected. But when the winter was past and the rains were come and gone, and when spring came to strew the earth with flowers, and the fig tree began to put forth her green figs and the vine her buds, and when the voice or the turtle was heard in the land, then came Christ and took the tender plant with its single stem and egg shaped leaves and the flower with its golden centre and rays of white and red, and planted it in the vale of Nazareth. Then, taking up the cup of gold which had been presented to him by the wise men of the East, he filled it at a neighbouring fountain, and watered the flower and breathed upon it. And the plant grew and became the most perfect of plants, and it flowers in every meadow, when the snow disappears, and is itself the snow of spring, delighting the young heart and enticing the old men from the village to the fields. From then until now this flower has continued to bloom and although it may be plucked a hundred times, again it blossoms--Colshorn's Deutsche Mythologie furs Deutsche Volk.
[[089]] The Gorse is a low bush with prickly leaves growing like a juniper. The contrast of its very brilliant yellow pea shaped blossoms with the dark green of its leaves is very beautiful. It grows in hedges and on commons and is thought rather a plebeian affair. I think it would make quite an addition to our garden shrubbery. Possibly it might make as much sensation with us (Americans) as our mullein does in foreign green-houses,--Mrs. Stowe.
[[090]] George Town.
[[091]] The hill trumpeter.
[[092]] Nutmeg and Clove plantations.
[[093]] Leigh Hunt, in the dedication of his Stories in Verse to the Duke of Devonshire speaks of his Grace as "the adorner of the country with beautiful gardens, and with the far-fetched botany of other climates; one of whom it may be said without exaggeration and even without a metaphor, that his footsteps may be traced in flowers."
[[094]] The following account of a newly discovered flower may be interesting to my readers. "It is about the size of a walnut, perfectly white, with fine leaves, resembling very much the wax plant. Upon the blooming of the flower, in the cup formed by the leaves, is the exact image of a dove lying on its back with its wings extended. The peak of the bill and the eyes are plainly to be seen and a small leaf before the flower arrives at maturity forms the outspread tail. The leaf can be raised or shut down with the finger without breaking or apparently injuring it until the flower reaches its bloom, when it drops,"--Panama Star.
[[095]] Signifying the dew of the sea. The rosemary grows best near the sea-shore, and when the wind is off the land it delights the home- returning voyager with its familiar fragrance.
[[096]] Perhaps it is not known to all my readers that some flowers not only brighten the earth by day with their lovely faces, but emit light at dusk. In a note to Darwin's Loves of the Plants it is stated that the daughter of Linnaeus first observed the Nasturtium to throw out flashes of light in the morning before sunrise, and also during the evening twilight, but not after total darkness came on. The philosophers considered these flashes to be electric. Mr. Haggren, Professor of Natural History, perceived one evening a faint flash of light repeatedly darted from a marigold. The flash was afterwards often seen by him on the same flower two or three times, in quick succession, but more commonly at intervals of some minutes. The light has been observed also on the orange, the lily, the monks hood, the yellow goats beard and the sun flower. This effect has sometimes been so striking that the flowers have looked as if they were illuminated for a holiday.
Lady Blessington has a fanciful allusion to this flower light. "Some flowers," she says, "absorb the rays of the sun so strongly that in the evening they yield slight phosphoric flashes, may we not compare the minds of poets to those flowers which imbibing light emit it again in a different form and aspect?"
[[097]] The Shan and other Poems
[[098]] My Hindu friend is not answerable for the following notes.
And infants winged, who mirthful throw
Shafts rose-tipped from nectareous bow.
Kam Déva, the Cupid of the Hindu Mythology, is thus represented. His bow is of the sugar cane, his string is formed of wild bees, and his arrows are tipped with the rose.--Tales of the Forest.
[[100]] In 1811 this plant was subjected to a regular set of experiments by Dr. G. Playfair, who, with many of his brethren, bears ample testimony of its efficacy in leprosy, lues, tenia, herpes, dropsy, rheumatism, hectic and intermittent fever. The powdered bark is given in doses of 5-6 grains twice a day.--Dr. Voight's Hortus Suburbanus Calcuttensis.
[[101]] It is perhaps of the Flax tribe. Mr. Piddington gives it the Sanscrit name of Atasi and the Botanical name Linum usitatissimum.
[[102]] Roxburgh calls it "intensely fragrant."
[[103]] Sometimes employed by robbers to deprive their victims of the power of resistance. In a strong dose it is poison.
[[104]] It is said to be used by the Chinese to blacken their eyebrows and their shoes.
[[105]] Mirábilis jálapa, or Marvel of Peru, is called by the country people in England the four o'clock flower, from its opening regularly at that time. There is a species of broom in America which is called the American clock, because it exhibits its golden flowers every morning at eleven, is fully open by one and closes again at two.
[[106]] Marvell died in 1678; Linnaeus died just a hundred years later.
[[107]] This poem (The Sugar Cane) when read in manuscript at Sir Joshua Reynolds's, had made all the assembled wits burst into a laugh, when after much blank-verse pomp the poet began a paragraph thus.--
"Now, Muse, let's sing of rats."
And what increased the ridicule was, that one of the company who slyly overlooked the reader, perceived that the word had been originally mice and had been altered to rats as more dignified.--Boswell's Life of Johnson.
[[108]] Hazlitt has a pleasant essay on a garden Sun-dial, from which I take the following passage:--
Horas non numero nisi serenas--is the motto of a sun dial near Venice. There is a softness and a harmony in the words and in the thought unparalleled. Of all conceits it is surely the most classical. "I count only the hours that are serene." What a bland and care-dispelling feeling! How the shadows seem to fade on the dial plate as the sky looms, and time presents only a blank unless as its progress is marked by what is joyous, and all that is not happy sinks into oblivion! What a fine lesson is conveyed to the mind--to take no note of time but by its benefits, to watch only for the smiles and neglect the frowns of fate, to compose our lives of bright and gentle moments, turning always to the sunny side of things, and letting the rest slip from our imaginations, unheeded or forgotten! How different from the common art of self tormenting! For myself, as I rode along the Brenta, while the sun shone hot upon its sluggish, slimy waves, my sensations were far from comfortable, but the reading this inscription on the side of a glaring wall in an instant restored me to myself, and still, whenever I think of or repeat it, it has the power of wafting me into the region of pure and blissful abstraction.
[[109]] These are the initial letters of the Latin names of the plants, they will be found at length on the lower column.
[[110]] Hampton Court was laid out by Cardinal Wolsey. The labyrinth, one of the best which remains in England, occupies only a quarter of an acre, and contains nearly a mile of winding walks. There is an adjacent stand, on which the gardener places himself, to extricate the adventuring stranger by his directions. Switzer condemns this plan for having only four stops and gives a plan for one with twenty.--Loudon.
[[111]] The lower part of Bengal, not far from Calcutta, is here described
[[112]] Sir William Jones states that the Brahmins believe that the blue champac flowers only in Paradise, it being yellow every where else.
[[113]] The wild dog of Bengal
[[114]] The elephant.
[[115]] Even Jeremy Bentham, the great Utilitarian Philosopher, who pronounced the composition and perusal of poetry a mere amusement of no higher rank than the game of Pushpin, had still something of the common feeling of the poetry of nature in his soul. He says of himself--"I was passionately fond of flowers from my youth, and the passion has never left me." In praise of botany he would sometimes observe, "We cannot propagate stones:" meaning that the mineralogist cannot circulate his treasures without injuring himself, but the botanist can multiply his specimens at will and add to the pleasures of others without lessening his own.
[[116]] A man of a polite imagination is let into a great many pleasures that the vulgar are not capable of receiving. He can converse with a picture and find an agreeable companion in a statue. He meets with a secret refreshment in a description, and often feels a greater satisfaction in the prospect of fields and meadows, than another does in the possession.--Spectator.
[[117]] Kent died in 1748 in the 64th year of his age. As a painter he had no great merit, but many men of genius amongst his contemporaries had the highest opinion of his skill as a Landscape-gardener. He sometimes, however, carried his love of the purely natural to a fantastic excess, as when in Kensington-garden he planted dead trees to give an air of wild truth to the landscape.
In Esher's peaceful grove,
Where Kent and nature strove for Pelham's love,
this landscape-gardener is said to have exhibited a very remarkable degree of taste and judgment. I cannot resist the temptation to quote here Horace Walpole's eloquent account of Kent: "At that moment appeared Kent, painter and poet enough to taste the charms of landscape, bold and opinionative enough to dare and to dictate, and born with a genius to strike out a great system from the twilight of imperfect essays. He leaped the fence and saw that all nature was a garden[143]. He felt the delicious contrast of hill and valley changing imperceptibly into each other, tasted the beauty of the gentle swell, or concave swoop, and remarked how loose groves crowned an easy eminence with happy ornament, and while they called in the distant view between their graceful stems, removed and extended the perspective by delusive comparison."--On Modern Gardening.
[[118]] When the rage for a wild irregularity in the laying out of gardens was carried to its extreme, the garden paths were so ridiculously tortuous or zig-zag, that, as Brown remarked, a man might put one foot upon zig and the other upon zag.
[[119]] The natives are much too fond of having tanks within a few feet of their windows, so that the vapours from the water go directly into the house. These vapours are often seen hanging or rolling over the surface of the tank like thick wreaths of smoke.
[[120]] Broken brick is called kunkur, but I believe the real kunkur is real gravel, and if I am not mistaken a pretty good sort of gravel, formed of particles of red granite, is obtainable from the Rajmahal hills.
[[121]] Pope in his well known paper in the Guardian complains that a citizen is no sooner proprietor of a couple of yews but he entertains thoughts of erecting them into giants, like those of Guildhall. "I know an eminent cook," continues the writer, "who beautified his country seat with a coronation dinner in greens, where you see the Champion flourishing on horseback at one end of the table and the Queen in perpetual youth at the other."
When the desire to subject nature to art had been carried to the ludicrous extravagances so well satirized by Pope, men rushed into an opposite extreme. Uvedale Price in his first rage for nature and horror of art, destroyed a venerable old garden that should have been respected for its antiquity, if for nothing else. He lived to repent his rashness and honestly to record that repentance. Coleridge, observed to John Sterling, that "we have gone too far in destroying the old style of gardens and parks." "The great thing in landscape gardening" he continued "is to discover whether the scenery is such that the country seems to belong to man or man to the country."
[[122]] In England it costs upon the average about 12 shillings or six rupees to have a tree of 30 feet high transplanted.
[[123]] I believe the largest leaf in the world is that of the Fan Palm or Talipot tree in Ceylon. "The branch of the tree," observes the author of Sylvan Sketches, "is not remarkably large, but it bears a leaf large enough to cover twenty men. It will fold into a fan and is then no bigger than a man's arm."
[[124]] Southey's Common-Place Book.
[[125]] The height of a full grown banyan may be from sixty to eighty feet; and many of them, I am fully confident, cover at least two acres.--Oriental Field Sports.
There is a banyan tree about five and twenty miles from Berhampore, remarkable for the height of the lower branches from the ground. A man standing up on the houdah of an elephant may pass under it without touching the foliage.
A tree has been described as growing in China of a size so prodigious that one branch of it only will so completely cover two hundred sheep that they cannot be perceived by those who approach the tree, and another so enormous that eighty persons can scarcely embrace the trunk.--Sylvan Sketches.
[[126]] This praise is a little extravagant, but the garden is really very tastefully laid out, and ought to furnish a useful model to such of the people of this city as have spacious grounds. The area of the garden is about two hundred and fifty nine acres. This garden was commenced in 1768 by Colonel Kyd. It then passed to the care of Dr. Roxburgh, who remained in charge of it from 1793 to the date of his death 1813.
[[127]] Alphonse Karr, bitterly ridicules the Botanical Savants with their barbarous nomenclature. He speaks of their mesocarps and quinqueloculars infundibuliform, squammiflora, guttiferas monocotyledous &c. &c. with supreme disgust. Our English poet, Wordsworth, also used to complain that some of our familiar English names of flowers, names so full of delightful associations, were beginning to be exchanged even in common conversation for the coldest and harshest scientific terms.
[[128]] The Hand of Eve--the handiwork of Eve.
[[129]] Without thorn the rose: Dr. Bentley calls this a puerile fancy. But it should be remembered, that it was part of the curse denounced upon the Earth for Adam's transgression, that it should bring forth thorns and thistles. Gen. iii. 18. Hence the general opinion has prevailed, that there were no thorns before; which is enough to justify a poet, in saying "the rose was without thorn."--NEWTON.
[[130]] See [page 188]. My Hindu friend is not responsible for the selection of the following notes.
[[131]] Birdlime is prepared from the tenacious milky juice of the Peepul and the Banyan. The leaves of the Banyan are used by the Bramins to eat off, for which purpose they are joined together by inkles. Birds are very fond of the fruit of the Peepul, and often drop the seeds in the cracks of buildings, where they vegetate, occasioning great damage if not removed in time.--Voight.
[[132]] The ancient Greeks and Romans also married trees together in a similar manner.--R.
[[133]] The root of this plant, (Euphorbia ligularia,) mixed up with black pepper, is used by the Natives against snake bites.--Roxburgh.
[[134]] Coccos nucifera, the root is sometimes masticated instead of the Betle-nut. In Brazil, baskets are made of the small fibres. The hard case of the stem is converted into drums, and used in the construction of huts. The lower part is so hard as to take a beautiful polish, when it resembles agate. The reticulated substance at base of the leaf is formed into cradles, and, as some say, into a coarse kind of cloth. The unexpanded terminal bud is a delicate article of food. The leaves furnish thatch for dwellings, and materials for fences, buckets, and baskets; they are used for writing on, and make excellent torches; potash in abundance is yielded by their ashes. The midrib of the leaf serves for oars. The juice of the flower and stems is replete with sugar, and is fermented into excellent wine, or distilled into arrack, or the sugary part is separated as Jagary. The tree is cultivated in many parts of the Indian islands, for the sake not only of the sap and milk it yields, but for the kernel of its fruit, used both as food and for culinary purposes, and as affording a large proportion of oil which is burned in lamps throughout India, and forms also a large article of export to Europe. The fibrous and uneatable rind of the fruit is not only used to polish furniture and to scour the floors of rooms, but is manufactured into a kind of cordage, (Koir) which is nearly equal in strength to hemp, and which Roxburgh designates as the very best of all materials for cables, on account of its great elasticity and strength. The sap of this as well as of other palms is found to be the simplest and easiest remedy that can be employed for removing constipation in persons of delicate habit, especially European females.--Voigt's Suburbanus Calcuttensis.
[[135]] The root is bitter, nauseous, and used in North America as anthelmintic. A. Richard.
[[136]] Of one species of tulsi (Babooi-tulsi) the seeds, if steeped in water, swell into a pleasant jelly, which is used by the Natives in cases of catarrh, dysentry, chronic diarrhoea &c. and is very nourishing and demulcent--Voigt.
[[137]] This list is framed from such as were actually grown by the author between 1837 and the present year, from seed received chiefly through the kindness of Captain Kirke.
[[138]] The native market gardens sell Madras roses at the rate of thirteen young plants for the rupee. Mrs. Gore tells us that in London the most esteemed kinds of old roses are usually sold by nurserymen at fifty shillings a hundred the first French and other varieties seldom exceed half a guinea a piece.
[[139]] I may add to Mr. Speede's list of Roses the Banksian Rose. The flowers are yellow, in clusters, and scentless. Mrs. Gore says it was imported into England from the Calcutta Botanical Garden, it is called Wong moue heong. There is another rose also called the Banksian Rose extremely small, very double, white, expanding from March till May, highly scented with violets. The Rosa Brownii was brought from Nepaul by Dr. Wallich. A very sweet rose has been brought into Bengal from England. It is called Rosa Peeliana after the original importer Sir Lawrence Peel. It is a hybrid. I believe it is a tea scented rose and is probably a cross between one of that sort and a common China rose, but this is mere conjecture. The varieties of the tea rose are now cultivated by Indian malees with great success. They sell at the price of from eight annas to a rupee each. A variety of the Bengal yellow rose, is now comparatively common. It fetches from one to three rupees, each root. It is known to the native gardeners by the English name of "Yellow Rose". Amongst the flowers introduced here since Mr. Speede's book appeared, is the beautiful blue heliotrope which the natives call kala heliotrope.
He gains all points who pleasingly confounds,
Surprizes, varies, and conceals the bounds.
[[141]] The following is the passage alluded to by Todd
A pleasant grove
With chant of tuneful birds resounding loud,
Thither he bent his way, determined there
To rest at noon, and entered soon the shade,
High roofed, and walks beneath and alleys brown,
That opened in the midst a woody scene,
Nature's own work it seemed (nature taught art)
And to a superstitious eye the haunt
Of wood gods and wood nymphs.
Paradise Regained, Book II
[[142]] The following stanzas are almost as direct translations from Tasso as the [two last stanzas] in the words of Fairfax on page 111:--
The whiles some one did chaunt this lovely lay;--
Ah! see, whoso fayre thing doest faine to see,
In springing flowre the image of thy day!
Ah! see the virgin rose, how sweetly shee
Doth first peepe forth with bashful modesty;
That fairer seems the less you see her may!
Lo! see soone after how more bold and free
Her baréd bosome she doth broad display;
Lo! see soone after how she fades and falls away!
So passeth, in the passing of a day,
Of mortal life, the leaf, the bud, the flowre,
Ne more doth florish after first decay,
That erst was sought, to deck both bed and bowre
Of many a lady and many a paramoure!
Gather therefore the rose whilest yet is prime
For soone comes age that will her pride deflowre;
Gather the rose of love, whilest yet is time
Whilest loving thou mayst loved be with equal crime[144]
Fairie Queene, Book II. Canto XII.
[[143]] I suppose in the remark that Kent leapt the fence, Horace Walpole alludes to that artist's practice of throwing down walls and other boundaries and sinking fosses called by the common people Ha! Ha's!/ to express their astonishment when the edge of the fosse brought them to an unexpected stop.
Horace Walpole's History of Modern Gardening is now so little read that authors think they may steal from it with safety. In the Encyclopaedia Britannica the article on Gardening is taken almost verbatim from it, with one or two deceptive allusions such as--"As Mr. Walpole observes"--"Says Mr. Walpole," &c. but there is nothing to mark where Walpole's observations and sayings end, and the Encyclopaedia thus gets the credit of many pages of his eloquence and sagacity. The whole of Walpole's History of Modern Gardening is given piece-meal as an original contribution to Harrrison's Floricultural Cabinet, each portion being signed CLERICUS.
[[144]] Perhaps Robert Herrick had these stanzas in his mind's ear when he wrote his song of
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may
Old time is still a flying;
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.
Then be not coy, but use your time;
And while ye may, so marry:
For having lost but once your prime
You may for ever tarry.