1869.] NEW PLANTS OF THE PAST MONTH. 555 



majority of cases, and as matters are at present arranged, very unfair ; 

 for surely it is not just for poor Tom Jones, whose father is a labourer 

 in a rural district, to have to pay ten guineas to get the garden-doors 

 opened to him, whilst all the Browns, who live near a large town with 

 plenty of market-gardens, get everything opened, and yet give nothing. 

 Also instruction and encouragement are often promised, and fine bright 

 prospects are implied, if not held out ; but, alas ! how seldom they 

 come ! Another thing that makes the fees unjust, and throws the 

 whole business beyond the pale of political economy, and into that of 

 monopoly, is the foul play that prevails in the market. 0, Father 

 Adam ! what a terrible job there would be if the appointments of your 

 representatives in the latter part of the nineteenth century were always 

 chronicled and looked into as those of Mr Gladstone are ! 



J. D. 



K"EW PLANTS OF THE PAST MONTH. 



So finely developed was a grand specimen of the glorious Yanda 

 coerulea, sent from Lord Londesborough's, Grimston Park, Tad- 

 caster, by Mr Downing, to the meeting of the Ptoyal Horticultural 

 Society, on October 19th, that it may w^ell occupy the leading position 

 in the list of new plants of the month, though in itself not strictly 

 new. In fact, three j)lants were sent from Grimston Park, and the 

 largest was a superb specimen of high cultivation, the plant-stalk 

 being feathered with healthy foliage to its very base ; and it had three 

 spikes of flowers, on which were forty-eight expanded blooms and one 

 unexpanded bud. Another specimen had twenty-three full-bloomed 

 flowers, and the third specimen eight. Mr Thomson has also just 

 flowered a noble specimen at Dalkeith, and in that place, so full of 

 interest for visitors, it was one of the most interesting features. Mr 

 Thomson's plant, though not so tall as the largest specimen from 

 Grimston Park, and scarcely so well furnished, though quite as 

 healthy, had two spikes of flowers — one with twenty-three expanded 

 flowers and four unexpanded buds, the other with twenty -one ex- 

 panded flowers and four unexpanded buds. It will be seen that the 

 Dalkeith specimen had an aggregate of fifty-two flowers. It is said 

 to be a plant difficult of cultivation, and does best in the corner of a 

 house facing the north-east, in which position it can obtain plenty of 

 light. In the records of his ' Himalayan Journey,' Dr Hooker de- 

 scribes the beauty of these plants as seen on the dry grassy hills on the 

 Himalayan range, some 3000 or 4000 feet above the sea-level. The 



