FEBRUARY. 55 



we are pointing out in more ways than it is requisite to mention. 

 What man of forty years old does not remember the grotesque seed- 

 shops of his boyhood, dark with the foHage of dried herbs, and redo- 

 lent of mint, wormwood, and pennyroyal ! If, as was often the case, 

 such repositories of Nature's medicines exhibited leeches among their 

 wares, their cabalistic and wizard-like aspect was increased. Here 

 the gardener recruited his stores, and the housewife sought her do- 

 mestic remedies. Seedshops of our youth, how have ye vanished ! 

 Now and then we meet with such a one, antique, and smelling of 

 rare vegetable medicines ; but other more gay depots of floral art have 

 generally superseded them. The seedsman and florist now attracts 

 the passer-by with the choicest luxuries of the season, with Azaleas, 

 Pelargoniums, and Heaths, in all their gorgeous beauty, in the spring 

 and summer, and with Hyacinths and Crocuses in bloom in the 

 winter. The increase of such repositories is wonderful, and may 

 be considered a characteristic of the age. 



But a walk through the streets of any large town, either in its 

 more crowded recesses or its suburbs, will do more than any thing 

 else to establish the position that floral tastes have increased. Where 

 position denies a garden out of doors, art contrives to make up the 

 loss by the judicious use of a window or a balcony ; and in the least 

 likely places we are continually delighted by seeing dulness relieved 

 by a display of flower-pots. How delicious is the scent of Migni- 

 onette in a London square ! How deep and well-defined the colours 

 of a Pelargonium at a tradesman's sitting-room window ! But if we 

 go to the suburbs, we find floricultural tastes in greater activity ; for 

 not only are the little patches of inhabited houses enlivened with 

 evergreens, but even the proprietors of empty ones seek patronage 

 by this species of adornment. What a striking proof is this of the 

 spirit of the age in this particular ! It is so well known that an 

 Englishman loves flowers, that the builders of houses, as a source of 

 gain, attract him by their influence ! 



Floral tastes, then, have increased. What are their results on the 

 character and happiness of their possessors .'* The question is a very 

 interesting one ; and we shall endeavour to furnish a reply in suc- 

 ceeding papers. Henry Burgess. 



A FEW GOOD FLOWERS IN THE NORTHERN COUNTIES. 



The Northern Florists are frequently complaining that they are 

 badly represented, or rather not represented at all, by the metro- 

 politan periodicals ; that no Northern productions are fairly noticed 

 in their columns, and that each work is the exclusive machine of a 

 few of the principal Southern growers ; consequently that many a 

 gem in the Northern counties is " born to blush unseen" for lack of an 

 introduction to the floral world through the floricultural press. The 

 above complaints may perhaps in part be true as- respects some jour- 

 nals ; at the same time, the Northern Florists must remember that this 



