professedly monopolized by horticultural, subjects. Even during the last year, two new societies have sprung up in the metropolis-the London Floricultural and the Royal Botanic, each taking a line of its own, distinct, though not antagonistically so, from that of any previously formed institution: and both, we believe, prospering, and likely to prosper. Many of our readers, who have heard of a fashionable, and a scientific, and a sporting, and (stranger name still!) a religious WORLD; may perhaps be in unhappy ignorance of the floricultural one. But such indeed there is, with its own leaders, language, laws, exclusiveness-aye, even its party bitterness, and personal animosities. And shameful indeed it is that such pure and simple objects should be the source of the unseemly quarrels and bickerings which are too often obtruded into floricultural publications; that men should extract envy and malice and all uncharitableness' out of the purest of all human pleasures'- Even as those bees of Trebizond, Which from the sunniest hours that glad With their pure smile the garden round Draw venom forth that drives men mad!' Lallah Roohk. The division of labour, both in the horticultural and floricultural world, is carried to an extent that the uninitiated little dream of. There are not only express exhibitions for each particular plant that has been adopted into the family of florist's flowers-as for the tulip, dahlia, pink, and heartsease-but there are actually several existing cucumber clubs' and 'celery societies;' and, within a very short period, four or five treatises have been published on the culture of the cucumber alone. Then we must speak of the flake' of the carnation—the edging' of the picotee-the 'crown' and the lacing' of the pink-the 'feather and flame' of the tulipthe eye and depth' of the dahlia-the 'tube, the truss, and the paste' of the auricula-and the 'pencil' and blotch' of the pansy. Besides these peculiar pets of the fancy, there are the old-fashioned polyanthus, the ranunculus, the geranium, the calceolaria, the crysanthemum, and the hyacinth, which are also under the especial patronage of the florists; and, lately, the iris, the gladiolus, the fuchsia, and the verbena, may be considered as added to the list. 6 The tulipomania of Holland is well known it was at its height in the year 1637, when one bulb-its name is worth preserving- the Viceroy'-was sold for 4203 florins; and for another, called 'Semper Augustus,' there were offered 4600 florins, a new carriage, a pair of grey horses, and a complete set of harness!* 6 The florimania, as it has been calledwe should rather say anthomania'--has never reached so ridiculous a height in England, nor, with all our love for flowers, is it likely to do so, though there are staid men of business among us who would doubtless be amazed at the sums of money even now occasionally lavished on a single plant. A noble Duke, munificent in his patronage of horticulture, as in everything else, and who-though till quite lately, we believe, ignorant of the subject-now understands it as thoroughly as he appreciates it, is said to have given one hundred guineas for a single specimen of an orchideous plant; and we know of another peer, not quite so wise in this or perhaps other matters, who, seeing a clump of the rich and gorgeous double-flowering gorse, instantly gave his gardener an order for fifty pounds' worth of it! Before we have done with the florists and botanists we must say one word about their nomenclatures. As long as the extreme vulgarity of the one and the extreme pedantry of the other continue, they must rest assured that they will scare the majority of this fastidious and busy world from taking any great interest in their pursuits. Though a rose by any other name will smell as sweet,' there is certainly enough to prejudice the most devoted lover of flowers against one that comes recommended by some such designation as Jim Crow,' or Metropolitan purple,' or King Boy,' or Yellow Perfection.' When indeed calceolarias and pansies increase to 2000 named varieties,' there must of course be some difficulty in finding out an appropriate title for every new upstart; but in this case the evil lies deeper than the mere name: it consists in puffing and palming off such seedlings at all, half of which are either such counterparts of older flowers, that nothing but the most microscopic examination would detect a difference, or else so utterly worthless as to be fit only to be thrown away. This is an increasing evil; and if anything gives a check to the present growing taste for choice flowers, it * At the sale of Mr. Clarke's tulips at Croydon, in the year 1836, 1007. was given for a single bulb, Fanny Kemble;' and from 5l. to 107. is no uncomWe see mon price for the new and choice sorts. lias, the first year of their coming out,' at the like also frequent advertisements of geraniums and dahprice. will arise from the dishonesty and trickery | the specific titles, as Passiflora Middletoof the trade itself. niana-Middleton's Passion-flower, and the tion of a little observation and taste would soon coin such names as our plainer sires' gave in 'larkspur,' and 'honeysuckle,' and bindweed,' or even in ladies'-smocks,' and ragged-robin,' and love-lies-bleeding.' As names run at present, the ordinary amateur is obliged to give up the whole matter in despair, and rest satisfied with the awful false quantities which his gardener is pleased to inflict upon him, who, for his own part, wastes hours and hours over names that convey to him no information, but only serve to puff him up with a false notion of his acquirement, when he finds himself the sole possessor of this useless stock of Aristophanic compounds and insufferable misnomers.' Crabbe, whom nothing was too minute to escape, has admirably ridiculed this botanical pedantry :— Meanwhile, let there be at least some like; but this is not enough: the combinapropriety in the names given. We cannot quite agree with Mr. Loudon, who seems to approve of such names as Claremontnuptials primrose' and Afflicted-queen carnation! though they do point to the years 1816 and 1821 as the dates of their respective appearances: neither will we aver that Linnæus was not something too fanciful in naming his Andromeda,* and in calling a genus Bauhinia, from two illustrious brothers of the name of Bauhin, because it has a double leaf; but surely there is marked character enough about every plant to give it some simple English name, without drawing either upon living characters or dead languages. It is hard work, as even Miss Mitford has found it, to make the maurandias, and alstræmerias, and eschscholtzias-the commonest flowers of our modern gardens-look passable even in prose. They are sad dead letters in the glowing description of a bright scene in June. But what are these to the pollopostemonopetalæ and eleutheromacrostemones of Wachendorf, with such daily additions. as the native name of iztactepotzacuxochtil icohueyo, or the more classical ponderosity of Erisymum Peroffskyanum -like the verbum Græcum, Spermagoraiolekitholakanopolides, As to poetry attempting to immortalize a The following is his reason for thus naming this delicate shrub, one of those bog-plants not half contemplated it, I could not help thinking of Andromeda, as described by the poets-a virgin of most exquisite beauty and unrivalled charms. The plant is always fixed in some turfy hillock in the midst of the swamps, as Andromeda herself was chained to a rock in the sea, which bathed her feet, as the fresh water does the root of the plant. As the distressed virgin cast down her blushing face through excessive affliction, so does the rosy-coloured flower hang its head, growing paler and paler till it withers away. At length comes Perseus, in the shape of summer, dries up the surrounding waters and destroys the monsters, rendering the damsel a fruitful mother, who then carries her head erect.Tour in Lapland, June 12th. so much cultivated as it deserves to be:- As I High-sounding words our worthy gardener gets, Scarce plants, fair herbs, and curious flowers proceed; Where cuckoo-pints and dandelions sprung, To make confusion worse confounded, our botanists are not satisfied with their far-fetched names; they must ever be changing them too. Thus it is a mark of ignorance in the world of flowers to call our old friend geranium otherwise than Pelargonium; the Glycine (G. sinensis)— the well known specimen of which at the 9000 of its beautiful, lilac, laburnum-like Chiswick Gardens produced more than called Wistaria: the new Californian anracemes from a single stem-is now to be nual Enothera is already Godetia; while the pretty little red Hemimeris, once a Celsia, is now, its third designation, an Alonsoa; and our list is by no means exhausted.* There is a curious perversion of name in the tuberose, which has nothing to do with 'tubes' or 'roses,' but is the corruption of its specific name, Polianthes tuberosa, simply signifying tuberous: so Jerusalem artichoke has nothing to do with the hill of Sion, but is vulgarized from the Italian Girosole, sun-flower, of which it is a species; so Mayduke cherry, from Medoc; and grass' from asparagus. Gilliflower is probably July-flower, but it would take an essay to discuss which is the true gilliflower of our greatgreat-grandmothers. Going on at this rate, a man might spend | this mimickry is still more strongly marked. the morn of his life in arriving at the pres- Besides the butterfly-plant already alluded ent state of botanical science, and the rest to, there is the dove-plant, and a host be of his days in running after its novelties sides, so like to other things than flowers, and changes. We are only too glad when that they seem to have undergone a metapublic sanction triumphs over individual morphosis under the magic wand of some whim, and, as in the cases of Georgina transforming power. proposed for Dahlia, and Chryseis for Eschscholtzia, resists the attempted change. One class of plants, which, though it has lately become most fashionable and cultivated by an almost separate clique of nursery-men and amateurs, cannot yet be said to rank with florists' flowers, is that of the Orchidacea, trivially known, when first introduced, by the name of air-plants. It is scarcely more than ten years ago that any particular attention was bestowed upon this interesting tribe, and there are now more genera cultivated than there were then species known. Among all the curiosities of botany there is nothing more singular-we had almost said mysteriousthan the character, or, to speak more technically, the habit' of this extraordinary tribe. The sensation which the first exhibition of the butterfly-plant (Oncidium papilio) produced at the Chiswick Gardens must still be remembered by many of our readers, and so wonderful is the resemblance of the vegetable to the insect specimen, floating upon its gossamer-stalk, that even now we can hardly fancy it otherwise than a living creature, were it not even still more like some exquisite production of fanciful art. Their manner of growth distinct from, though so apparently like, our native misletoe, and other parasitical plants generally reversing the common order of nature, and throwing summersets with their heels upward and head downwardone specimen actually sending its roots into the air, and burying its flowers in the soil, living almost entirely on atmospheric moisture, the blossoms in some species sustained by so slender a thread that they seem to float unsupported in the air,-all these things, combined with the most exquisite contrast of the rarest and most delicate colours in their flowers, are not more extraordinary characteristics of their tribe than is the circumstance that in nearly every variety there exists a remarkable resemblance to some work either of animate nature or of art. Common observation of the pretty specimens of this genus in our own woods and fields has marked this in the names given to the fly, the bee, and the spider-orehis; but in the exotic orchises *These British species are now transferred by botanists to the genus Ophrys.. Remembering the countries from which most of them come-the dank jungles of Hindoostan-the fathomless woods of Mexico-the unapproachable valleys of Chinaone might almost fancy them the remains of the magic influence which tradition affirms of old to have reigned in those wild retreats: and that, while the diamond palaces of Sarmacand, and the boundless cities of Guatemala, and the colossal temples of Elephanta, have left but a ruin or a name, these fairy creations of gnomes and sprites, and afreets, and jinns (if so we must call them), being traced on the more imperishable material of Nature herself, have been handed down to us as the last vestiges of a dynasty older and more powerful than European man. It is impossible to view a collection of these magic-looking plants in flower without being carried back to the visions of the Arabian Nights-not indeed wandering in disguise through the streets of Bagdad with Haroun and his vizier (we beg pardon-wezeer), but entering with some adventurous prince the spell-bound palace of some sleeping beauty, or descending with Aladdin into the delicious subterranean gardens of fruits, and jewels, and flowers. To pass from the romantic to the useful, we cannot do a kinder deed to our marufacturers than to turn their attention to the splendid works of Mr. Bateman and Dr. Lindley, dedicated to this class of plants. It is well known how contemporaneous was the cultivation of flowers and manufactures in some of our large cities-(at Norwich, for instance, where the taste yet survives, and where there is a record of a flower-show being held so early as 1687)-the flowers which the foreign artisans brought over with them suggesting at the same time thoughts of years gone by and designs for the work of the hour. Our new schools of design might literally take a leaf-and a flower-out of the books we have mentioned, and improve our patterns in every department of art by studying examples of such exquisite beauty, variety and novelty of form and colour as the tribe of orchideous plants affords. Another class of plants, very different would call the attention of designers, is that from that just mentioned, to which we 'That dwell beside our paths and homes,' which our brethren in the East affectionately value by association above all the brilliant garlands of their sunny sky. of the Ferns. Though too commonly neglect- | having deposited their precious contents on ed by the generality, botanists have long our shores, return again by the same ship turned their attention towards this exten- filled with the common flowers of England, sive and elegant class. These humble denizens of earth can boast their enthusiasts and monographists, as much as the pansy or the rose: nor has the exquisite tracery of their fronds escaped the notice of the artist and This interchange of sweets was a few the wayfarer. But few, perhaps, even of years ago almost unattainable, the sea-air those who have delighted to watch the cro- and spray, as is well known, being most inzier-like germ of the bracken bursting from jurious to every kind of plant; but their evil the ground in spring, and the rich um-effects are now completely avoided by these ber of its maturity among the green gorse air-tight cases, which admit no exterior inof autumn, are aware that Britain can pro- fluence but that of light. Without entering duce at least thirty-six distinct species of into any deep physiological explanation, it its own, with a still greater number of submay be enough to say that vegetable, unlike ordinate varieties; these, too, constituting animal life, does not exhaust the nutritive but a very small fraction of the 1508 spe- properties of air by repeated inhaling and cies which Sadler enumerates in his general exhaustion; so that these plants aided percatalogue. Mr. Newman, in his recent haps by the perfect stillness of the confined work, has figured more than eighty varie- atmosphere, so favourable to all vegetation, ties, the natural growth of our own isles continue to exist, breathing, if we may so alone, and mentioned fourteen distinct spe- say, the same air, so long as there is moiscies found in one chasm at Ponterwyd! ture enough to allow them to deposit every Though some of the tail-vignettes of his night a slight dew on the glass, which they volume fail in representing-as how could imbibe again during the day. The soil is it be otherwise ?-the natural abandon and moistened in the first instance, but on no elegance of this most graceful of all plants, account is any further water or air admitted. we would still recommend the great vari- The strangers which we have seen thus ety and beauty of his larger illustrations as transmitted, being chiefly very small pormuch to the artist and manufacturer, and tions of succulents and epiphytes, though embellisher, as to the fern-collector him- healthy, have shown no inclination to flourish or blossom in their confinement; but it must be remembered that the temperature on the deck of a ship must be very much lower than what this tribe requires, and the quantity of wood-work which the case requires to stand the roughnesses of the voyage, greatly impedes the transmission of light. As soon as the slips are placed in the genial temperature of the orchideous house, they speedily shoot out into health and beauty. self. Our notice of ferns might seem rather foreign to the subject of ornamental gardening (though we shall have something to say of a fernery bye and bye,) were it not for the opportunity it affords us of introducing, probably for the first time to many of our readers, a botanical experiment, which, though for some years past partially successful, has but lately been brought to very great perfection for the purposes both of use and ornament. We allude to the mode But while this mode of conveyance anof conveying and growing plants in glass-swers the purposes of science, a much cases hermetically sealed from all commu- more beautiful adaptation of the same prinnication with the outer air. There are few ciple is contrived for the bed-room garden ships that now arrive from the East Indies of the invalid. Who is there that has not some without carrying on deck several cases of friend or other confined by chronic disease this description, belonging to one or other or lingering decline to a single chamber?— of our chief nurserymen, filled with orchid- one, we will suppose, who a short while eous plants and other new and tender vari- ago was among the gayest and the most eties from the East, which formerly baffled admired of a large and happy circle, now the utmost care to land them here in a heal- through sickness dependent, after her One thy state. These cases frequently furnish- staff and stay, for her minor comforts and ed by the extreme liberality of Dr. Wal- amusements on the angel visits of a few lich, the enterprising and scientific director kind friends, a little worsted-work, or a new of the Hon. Company's gardens in the Quarterly, and in the absence or dulness neighbourhood of Calcutta, form on ship- of these, happy in the possession of some board a source of great interest to the pas- fresh-gathered flower, and in watering and sengers of a four-months' voyage, and, after tending a few pots of favourite plants, which are to her as friends, and whose flourishing progress under her tender care offers a melancholy but instructive contrast to her own decaying strength. Some mild autumn-evening her physician makes a later visit than usual-the room is faint from the exhalations of the flowers-the patient is not so well to-day-he wonders that he never noticed that mignionette and those geraniums before, or he never should have allowed them to remain so long-some weighty words on oxygen and hydrogen are spoken-her poor pets are banished for ever at the word of the man of science, and the most innocent and unfailing of her little interests is at an end. By the next morning the flowers are gone, but the patient is no better; there is less cheerfulness than usual; there is a listless wandering of the eyes after something that is not there; and the good man is too much of a philosopher not to know how the working of the mind will act upon the body, and too much of a Christian not to prevent the rising evil if he can; he hears with a smile her expression of regret for her long-cherished favourites, but he says not a word. In the evening a largish box arrives directed to the fair patient, and superscribed, 'Keep this side upwards---with care.' There is more than the common interest of box-opening in the sick chamber. After a little tender hammering and tiresome knot-loosening, Thompson has removed the lid ;----and there lies a large oval bell glass fixed down to a stand of ebony, some moist sand at the bottom, and here and there over the whole surface, some tiny ferns are just pushing their curious little fronds into life, and already promise, from their fresh and healthy appearance, to supply in their growth and increase all the beauty and interest of the discarded flowers, without their injurious effects. It is so. These delicate exotics, for such they are, closely sealed down in an air-tight world of their own, flourish with amazing rapidity, and in time produce seeds which provide a generation to succeed them. Every day witnessing some change, keeps the mind continually interested in their progress, and their very restriction from the open air, while it renders the chamber wholesome to the invalid, provides at the same time an undisturbed atmosphere more suited to the development of their own tender frames. We need scarcely add, that the doctor the next morning finds the wonted cheerful smile restored, and though recovery may be beyond the skill, as it is * ὀμμάτων δ' ἐν ἁχηνίαις ἔβρει πᾶσ ̓ ἀφροδίτα, Esch. Αgam. 408. beyond the ken, of man, he at least has the satisfaction of knowing that he has lightened a heart in affliction and gained the gratitude of a humble spirit, in restoring, without the poison, a pleasure that was lost. For more minute particulars of the management of these chamber-gardens, we must refer our readers to page xviii. of Mr. Newman's Introduction, where also they will find described the ingenious experiments of Mr. Ward, of Wellclose Square,* of the same kind, but on a much larger scale; and if delicate health restricts any friend of theirs to the confinement of a close apartment, we recommend to them the considerate kindness of our good physicians, and to go and do likewise.' Only think of a vegetable being carnivorous !'which is said to bait its prickles with something which attracts the flies, upon whom it then closes, and whose decay is supposed to afford food for the plant. Disease is turned into beauty in the common and crested moss-rose, and a lusus naturæ reproduced in the hen-and-chicken daisy. There are phosphorescent plants, the fireflies and glow-worms of the vegetable kingdom. There are the microscopic lichens and mosses; and there is the Rafflesia Arnoldi, each of whose petals is a foot long, its nectary a foot in diameter, and deep enough to contain three gallons, and weighing fifteen pounds! What mimickry is there in the orchisses, and the hare's-foot fern, and the Tartarian lamb (Polypodium Baronyetz!) What shall we say to Ge |