13 



Pine (Pandanus odoratissimus), planted in the ground, 

 which, by digging round the roots, and limiting them within 

 a smaller compass, will allow of being set into a great tub, 

 and thus removed into the future Palm Stove. Besides the 

 plants just mentioned, this house at present contains a large 

 collection of Ferns ; amongst them the Tree Fern of Van 

 Diemen's Land (Dicksonia antarctica), a fine specimen of 

 the Indian Dammara Pine ( Dammara orientalis) ; and two 

 still rarer ones, the Dammara of New Zealand, or Cowdie 

 Pine (D. australis), so valuable for masts for our navy ; some 

 miscellaneons bulbs, &c. 



Following the same path for a very short distance, we 

 come on the left to 



" No. 2. A Stove, fifty feet long, filled with a miscellaneous 

 collection of plants." At the time alluded to (1839), this, 

 like all the other hothouses and greenhouses described in 

 the list, was nothing more than a lean-to, presenting only a 

 South front, with a high back-wall on the North, and heated 

 by smoke-flues. The present erection, retaining its original 

 position and length, has been doubled, and is converted into a 

 span-house, giving, of course, twice the area of its former 

 dimensions ; the new glass is all sheet-glass ; the heating is 

 on the best construction, with hot-water pipes, and hot- water 

 tanks ; slate tables are placed in the -centre, and broad stone 

 shelves in the circumference ; and there are pillars for 

 climbers. It is still, assuredly, " filled with a miscellaneous 

 collection of plants;" but these are in a highly flourishing 

 condition, and as unlike plants cultivated with smoke-flues 

 as it is possible to conceive. One of the shelves is, at present, 

 occupied with a fine range of ever-flowering Begonias, whose 

 highly-ornamental foliage, amid a hundred modifications, 

 always preserves its peculiar character of obliquity, and is 

 thence, not inaptly called, Elephant's Ear. The Genus, too, 

 possesses a great advantage, in its species producing their 

 delicate pink or white blossoms at different seasons ; so that 

 one or other kind may be seen in bloom all the year round. 

 Here, too, are the famous Tea Plants of Paraguay (Ilex 

 Paraguayensis), a kind of Holly, affording the beverage, 

 called Mate in South America, and used almost as extensively 

 in that great continent, as the Bohea, Souchong, and Hyson, 

 of China, are in Europe. The Upas or Poison Tree of Java 

 (Antiaris toxicodendron), to whose authentic virulence it 

 has been the pleasure of poets and travellers to add many a 



