252 THE FLOEIST AND POMOLOGIST. [November, 



daily bread by the " harmless art." Very few persons can enter into the feelings 

 of the boy gardener when he first sees what can be done under his glass frame of 

 2 ft. square — that was the length and breadth of my one-light box ; but it 

 turned the pelting rain and pitiless storm aside, and by its aid a slip or cutting 

 from the Pelargonium of a neighbour would strike root rapidly, and become in a 

 few weeks a flowering plant, with all the charms of its being the produce of my 

 own skill and management. A person may buy game at the stall of the " licensed 

 dealer," but what is that to grouse-shooting on a moor at sunrise ? Trout, too,, 

 are to be had readily at the fishmonger's ; but angling for live trout is quite a 

 different affair, and the sportman's success is never to be measured by the market 

 value of his " creel." I recollect fitting up a boy's rod and line for the river for 

 the first time in his life, and when he had caught a fish he danced for joy on the 

 shingle ; his ecstacy was so well acted, that Garrick might have envied him ; ho 

 did it to the life. One never forgets to the end of one's life the pleasures that 

 gladdened youth ; they are literally " a joy for ever." 



The Wardian Case is a drawing-room article, and has brought the graceful 

 Fern to the bedside of the invalid in all its loveliness ; it has, besides, added a 

 chai-m to the homes of hundreds, and I see no reason why this cheaper article of 

 plant protectors should not be set to work, not for the garden of the well-to-do- 

 man, but for the window-sill of the weekly tenant, and for the flagstone on the 

 top of the brick wall that divides one yard from another, and all this without 

 losing sight of the services they can render to Children's Gardens, where anything 

 in the way of flat earth can be had for plants to root in. As an example of the 

 cost of a nice little glazed brick pit or frame, I may state that for about 8s. one 

 may be had complete, 48 in. long by 18 in. wide, and about 1 foot high at the 

 back, and 8 in. high at the front, and all this with nothing that can ever rot or 

 get out of repair, while the whole thing could be rebuilt when necessary in the 

 dinner-hour. "What treasures these might contain of the smaller kinds of hardy 

 and half-hardy ferns in gardens where the rays of the sun can hardly penetrate j 

 and in sunny places what might not one do with early Violets and Fairy Eoses, 

 with the idea before one's mind that Tree Violets are sold in pots little larger 

 than a duck's egg, with 6 or 8 full-blown flowers on each plant, and Fairy Eoses 

 have been grown and flowered in the soil contained in a walnut-shell. The youthful 

 tenant of such a tenement would learn the nature of plant life from his failures and 

 successes in his school-days, in a way never to be forgotten, and his powers of obser- 

 vation would be sharpened by the risk he is ever running of danger from within 

 as well as from without. For example, when a snail or slug has made an early 

 breakfast of a choice flower, how the boy will feel his wits set on edge to find out 

 where such robber rests at noon, for when Jonah grieved for the loss of his pet 

 gourd he left many imitators I Boys who are ever likely to become gardeners 

 should begin early to plant and sow, and try their hands at propagating, for the 

 longest life is all too short to learn half that they need to know ; but next to 



