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ABOUT IVY. 



BY SHIRLEY IIIBBERD. 



When "common things" come to be 

 regular objects of study, there may be 

 some hope that justice will be clone to 

 the subject of Ivy, which is a very 

 common thing indeed, but one about 

 which people trouble themselves very 

 little ; so little, that though it is used 

 everywhere, is everywhere admired for 

 its wealth of glossy green, and its pe- 

 culiar value in shutting out a " back 

 view of the premises," yet you will not 

 find one grower of plants, or even col- 

 lector of plants, in a thousand, who 

 troubles himself about its species and 

 varieties, or who ever puts in a row of 

 cuttings for the benefit of his own 

 Avails and fences at a future day. There 

 is an'old tottering fence, perhaps, which 

 ivy, of nobody knows how many years' 

 growth, has weighed out of the perpen- 

 dicular. This year it is shored up; next 

 year it is worse for the shoring, worse 

 from increased decrepitude, and in its 

 old age it has to bear an extra weight 

 of ivy ; for when the " ivy green" be- 

 gan to form huge bolls of blossoming 

 stems, nobody had the courage to cut it 

 in order to relieve the fence, so that at 

 last ivy, fence, and shoring, are carried 

 away by a gale, on a dark howling 

 night in March, and the proprietor, 

 with awoe-begone and elongated coun- 

 tenance, at last makes up his mind to 

 clear all away, and put up a new fence. 

 Then to cover it with ivy is found no 

 easy matter ; the carpenters have torn 

 up and destroyed all the old roots, and 

 where once there was a rich green wall, 

 venerable for its age, and at all seasons 

 delightful for its luxuriance, there is 

 now a stiff, straight line of barren tim- 

 ber, shining with new tar, and giving 

 the place much more the appearance of 

 a rope walk than a garden. 



The case here put is just the one 

 3 r our humble servant has to deal with 

 this spring, except that he had no 

 share in the slow ruin and ultimate fall 

 of two hundred and fifty feet of ivied 

 fence, but a most important part in the 

 determination to remove it, construct 

 another, and then feel the difficulty of 

 getting it covered as quickly as pos- 

 sible, for a sharp boundary line of 



tarred paling does stand very much in 

 the way of a development of the pic- 

 turesque. 



If this were my first transaction with 

 ivy I might stare with horror, as my 

 friends do, when they remember how 

 the ivy toppled over and rioted on the 

 wooden ruin when I came into posses- 

 sion, and compare with the past the 

 present glistening line, against which is 

 my border for plants that love the 

 shade. Well, used to it or not, Rome 

 was not built in a daj% and 250 feet of 

 ivy cannot be raised in a month or 

 two ; not, at least, to the extent of 

 forming a screen of from five to twenty- 

 five feet high, which are the vertical 

 measurements of the spaces to be 

 covered. But to get ivy, and that in 

 any quantity, and to get it to run 

 quick, is just as easy as growing scarlet 

 runners. There is the difference of 

 time only, and ivy will not run, like 

 kidney beans, twenty or more feet in a 

 season. Let us, however, deal with 

 the subject S3'stematically, and come to 

 the fence when its turn arrives. 



The " Ivy Green," as Charles Dick- 

 ens calls it in his famous song, if 

 neglected by students of botany and 

 horticulture, has not been neglected by 

 the poets. As for the classic writers, 

 they delighted in wreathing every ode, 

 and many an incident in drama and 

 romance, with its artistic greenery. It 

 was, you will remember, especially 

 dear to Bacchus, and the old Greeks 

 wore chaplets of it in honour of the 

 god whom the Romans degraded from 

 his original dignity, as a father of agri- 

 culture, to that of a raving drunkard. 

 The Greeks reduced him one step, for 

 in the Egyptian mythology they found 

 him identified with Apollo, or the Sun. 

 Doubtless he was but the sun personi- 

 fied originally; then, as the cause of 

 the " year's glory and fatness," the 

 vine, a fruit of the sun, was dedicated 

 to his honour ; and at last he became 

 so identified with the vine and its 

 potent juice that his sunship was for- 

 gotten, and he was made to join hands 

 witli Silenus, for the sanction of riot 

 and debauchery. Nonnus, in his forty- 



