JULY. 151 



he says, ' Thank you, Mr. Taylor.' It docs not cost much, and it's 

 worth taking care of," said he, as he replaced his stock carefully in 

 its various envelopes. " It's worth taking care of. I wish you'd try 

 it." "Never," said I; "why I couldn't shew myself in any decent 

 company with my cheek sticking out with a piece of tobacco, and 

 scenting the whole room with the smell of it." " You know best 

 about that," said he. " You can stop ashore for a spell, and please 

 yourself; all I've to do is to get away from the land as soon as I can. 

 All the use the shore is to me is to spend my money upon, and that's 

 soon done." 



Yes, honest noble-hearted Sam Taylor, it was indeed soon done ; 

 for thy hard life and labours on the wide sea kept an aged mother 

 from work and want, as she told me herself with a thankful acknov*^- 

 ledgment to God for giving her so good a son. " I wish he'd been 

 a scholard," said the good creature ; " he'd sure to have been a 

 Hadmiral." 



NOTES FROM THE ROYAL BOTANIQ GARDENS, KEW, 



AND OF NEW OR RARE PLANTS 

 FIGURED IN CONTEMPORARY PERIODICALS. 



Ranunculus spicatus. A hardy herbaceous perennial, growing about a foot 

 high in any common garden soil. It has round hairy stems, with five or six 

 flowers on each, and each flower is two inches broad. The petals are oblong, 

 spreading, and of a peculiarly glossy bright yellow, with flabelliform orange- 

 coloured spots at the base. It is a native of Gibraltar and Algiers, where it 

 appears to be very common on the hills. 



IxoRA JAVANiCA. This genus contains some of the most ornamental flowering 

 evergreen stove-shrubs in cultivation. To grow them successfully, they require 

 to be well cut back, and plunged in a brisk bottom-heat, Avhere they form very 

 handsome compact bushes three or four feet high. The present species is a 

 glabrous hard- wooded shrub, with compact rounded branches, whicli are of a coral 

 colour while young, and leaves from four to six inches long. The flowers are 

 produced in a large terminal corymb, on a long peduncle of a deep coral colour; 

 the tube of the corolla is red, with a limb an inch across, and of a deep orange. 

 This charming species, like the majority of the genus, is a native of Java, and 

 was imported by Messrs, Rollisson of Tooting, with whom it has flowered, and 

 it is at present in bloom at Kew. There is a plant figured under the above 

 name in Paxton's Magazine of Botany, vol. xiv. p. 265, but it is a very difterent- 

 looking thing from this. 



FoRSYTHiA viRiDissiMA. A rather showy free-flowering hardy deciduous 

 shrub, from four to six feet high. It is perhaps best adapted for planting against 

 a wall, as it flowers early, and its young leaves are apt to be aftected by late 

 spring frosts. It grows freely in common garden soil, and produces flowers of a 

 bright yellow colour copiously along the branches. The leaves are of a dark 

 brown,*^serrated, and appear after the flowers. It was found growing in a garden 

 along with Weigela rosea at Chusan in China, and was introduced through the 

 instrumentality of Mr. Fortune to the Horticultural Society a few years ago. 

 It is said to flower in a wild state on the mountains in the interior of the province 

 of Cliekiang equally as well as when cultivated. The above three are figured 

 in the Botanical Magazine for June. 



Melaleuca fulge.ns. One of the showiest of our hard-wooded evergreen 

 greenhouse shrubs, and one that deserves cultivating. Although an old species, 

 it is seldom seen well grown. It is a much-branching free-flowering erect bush, 

 having sessile flowers of a light red or rose-colour, produced on elongated clusters 

 on the small branches. It is a native of New Holland, and attains the height 



