56 



THE FLORAL WORLD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 



Antonio to the ivy exhausting the 

 tree to which it clings for support : — 



"Now he was 

 The ivy, which had hid my princely trunk, 

 And sucked the verdure out on't." 



This tendency of ivy to kill trees may 

 be kept in check by the exercise of a 

 little care. The parasite probably 

 does not " suck the verdure " out of 

 the tree — it simply kills by suffocating, 

 when by rampant growth it over- 

 whelms the head of the tree, and this 

 the knife will arrest ; and the gar- 

 dener's business is to see that when ivy 

 is allowed to grow on trees in gardens 

 it does not run too wildly in the head 

 of the tree, which a reasonable amount 

 of cutting back annually will effect. 



The second conclusion respecting 

 ivy is that it never injures a wall, but 

 is to be considered as a preservative of 

 buildings, for where ivy grows it is 

 impossible for a wall to be damp. 

 Many a wall has become damp when 

 ivy has been removed from it, but the 

 best remedy for a damp wall is to 

 plant ivy on it. Not long since the 

 questionwhether ivy injures buildings 

 was made a subject of discussion in 

 the Times, a certain archdeacon being 

 properly anxious about the safety of 

 the sacred fabrics in his charge, put 

 the questioc, Does ivy on a church 

 hasten its decay ? To that question 

 a churchwarden replied that "nothing 

 so effectually keeps a building dry as 

 ivy ; for after the heaviest rain the 

 wall to which it adheres will be found 

 quite dry, the leaves acting as a 

 weather-board, or vertical tiling, to 

 throw every drop of rain away from 

 it. Its exuberant and web-like roots," 

 he said, " bind everything together 

 with which they come in contact with 

 such a firm and intricate lace-work 

 that not a single stone can be removed 

 from its position without first tearing 

 away its protecting safe-guard." This 

 holding of the old fabric together may 

 be of further importance in the case 

 of venerable old churches on which 

 restorers have cast their Vandalic 

 and Iconoclastic eyes : perhaps tlie 

 warden had such in view when he 

 laid stress on the conservative princi- 

 ples of his favourite evergreen. In 

 proof of his statements he refers to 



ruins of castles and abbeys, " for 

 while in those parts of the structure 

 that have not had the advantage of 

 this protection all has gone to utter 

 decay, where the ivy has thrown its 

 preserving mantle everything is com- 

 paratively perfect and fresh, and 

 oftentimes the very angles of old 

 sculptured stones are found to be al- 

 most as sharp and entire a3 when they 

 first came from the mason's yard!" 

 This is fortunate, for what should we 

 do without ivy in the regions of the 

 picturesque? How it marries the 

 youth and freshness of the world to 

 things old and crumbling to dust ; 

 how it brings the past and the pre- 

 sent into complete unity, and shows 

 us how " on the faltering footsteps 

 of decay youth presses ;" and in its 

 riotous luxuriance vindicates the 

 triumphs of nature over the art of 

 man. And when it reaches the top- 

 most tower of the ancient castle or 

 the hallowed shrine, and throws out 

 its huge bosses of shining leaves and 

 flowers, like a canopy to the summit, 

 " the fowls of the air lodge in the 

 branches " of it, and a thousand 

 happy ministrels sing the merry song 

 of the " Ivy Green." 



Sphcies and Varieties. — There 

 are strong probabilities in favour of 

 considering the majority of the so- 

 called species merely as forms of one 

 specific type. That H. canariensis 

 and S. helix are so related is now 

 generally admitted; but there are 

 good reasons for regarding H. Regne- 

 riana and H. cordifolia as scarcely 

 entitled to be regarded as species, for 

 in their several varieties they ap- 

 proach remarkably near to varieties 

 of canariensis aud helix. But I shall 

 not attempt to classify the hardy 

 ivies on any method having mere 

 opinion for its basis ; and it will, per- 

 haps, be better for purposes of refer- 

 ence to characterize as species all 

 those that have hitherto been re. 

 garded as such, simply because of 

 their distinctness of form and habit, 

 and claim on that ground to be 8rpa- 

 rated from the mass of varieti s that 

 differ but little among themselves. 

 The following are the most useful 

 and interesting : — 



