40(] JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, 1890, 



games, which in most cases is but a kind of policy, is to simulate a 

 perfect ignorance of your language,, even if you talk Mahratti, but if 

 you persevere he will soon understand you, and he will respect you 

 the more, the less knowledge of his language you show him. His 

 ideas of art are generally limited to the acquaintance with the straight 

 line, and its use or abuse in foimiing squares, diamonds, &c. ; you may 

 find him able to draw a circle, but as a rule he is totally incapable of 

 using arcs or curves in laying out gardens or flower-beds. As regards 

 the arrangement of flowers and plants, you will in most cases find it 

 necessary to give him a course of instruction, and he may occasionally 

 attain to great proficiency in this art. The mali is, as a rule, honest, 

 sober, and very clean, his religion enforcing two or three ablutions 

 daily. 



Having shortly reviewed the different ciroiimshmces render which 

 gardening is practised in Bombay, I shall try in the following lines 

 to give a general outline of the most frequent aspect of Bombay 

 gardens. Large gardens are but few, though it is not altogether 

 rare that the compound is extensive, and by a comparatively small 

 expenditure could be made sufficiently attractive to form a picturesque 

 addition to the garden, without exactly requiring the constant and, 

 I regret to say, expensive maintenance necessary for a well-kept 

 garden. I allude here chiefly to such compounds where large rocks 

 or boulders present difficulties for building or levelling, or where 

 toddy palms are retained on account of the profit they yield to the 

 owner, or where the soil is not sufficiently deep to allow of cultivation. 

 Though it is not uncommon that such compounds are naturally 

 picturesque, there is still a large scope left here for the assistance of 

 nature, by the work of the landscape gardener. Host gardens 

 consist simply of a lawn surrounded by a drive leading to the 

 bungalow, and shrubberies concealing the fences of the garden. 

 This simple plan is often carried out with great taste, but in far too 

 •manv instances the distribution of tivrs and rhrnbs is too absurd to 



ii 



please the eye, in which respect I Shall only mention the very 

 common practice of hiding the porch of the bungalow with a very 

 dense screen of shrubs or even trees, a practice that may have certain 

 advantages as g< curing privacy, but, on the other hand, has so many 

 disadvantages tnat are quite suffteienl to condemn it. In the first 



