AUGUST. 189 



upon any scale, cheering and adorning the cottage-garden or the town 

 windows, and requiring no peculiarity of soil but what ordinary dili- 

 gence may any where provide. They will therefore always be the 

 most general and popular objects of cultivation. But it is precisely 

 because exhibitions of American plants on an extended scale are in 

 a great measure confined to certain localities that our surprise and 

 pleasure at beholding them is so much enhanced. The gratification 

 which the florist derives from a bed of Tulips, or a stand of Gera- 

 niums, arises from the perfection of form or colour of individual 

 flowers, together with the almost dazzling effect produced by their 

 aggregation. An American garden is a scene ; and until the new 

 varieties shall have been more extensively diffused and planted, one 

 that is only to be found in the principal nursery-grounds. The horti- 

 cultural festivals display greater variety and rarity ; they have the 

 charm of good music, and of a gaily - dressed assemblage ; but 

 nothing ever gave me so much the idea of a Paradise, or the gardens 

 of the Peris, as the American nursery at Knap Hill, where the 

 variety and vast size of the Rhododendrons, the dense thickets and 

 hedges of Azaleas, their endless variety of colour, their delicious fra- 

 grance, the songs of the nightingales which sought shelter among 

 them, and the fine order and keeping of the whole, have left a more 

 poetical impression of enchantment on my fancy than the princely 

 Chatsworth or the gay Chiswick has produced on me. 



The exhibitions of American plants at the latter place, or the Re- 

 gent's Park, are very interesting as displays of fine and new varieties. 

 But the transplanting certainly checks them in some degree; and no 

 one who has not visited them in the localities from which they come, 

 can have any adequate idea of their luxuriance and effect when culti- 

 vated to a large extent. 



The gardens at Knap Hill and Bagshot, visited in 



" The lovely season atwixt June and May, 

 Half prankt with spring, with summer half imbrown'd," 



will, I feel assured, draw forth from every one another line of the 

 poet's : 



" It is indeed a lovely spot of ground.'" 



These beautiful shrubs require no care in their cultivation when 

 the soil and situation are favourable, and may be propagated with the 

 greatest ease by merely laying down the extremities of the branches. 



Before I conclude, let me say in reply to your correspondent 

 (p. 153), that I am sorry if I have added to the perplexity which a 

 similarity of name has necessarily occasioned respecting Messrs. Low's 

 Alba imbricata Camellia. 



The term imbricated, which means that the petals of the flower are 

 laid regularly one over the other, like the tiles of a house-roof, is ap- 

 plicable to so many varieties of the genus, one of the principal beau- 

 ties of which consists in the symmetrical form of the flower, that it 

 is not a good distinctive appellation. It was, I believe, first used for 

 a fine variety imported from China by the Horticultural Society, the 

 colour of which is red. 



