90 THE GARDENER. [Feb. 



pots of two different sizes, a succession can be secured fiom the same 

 batch of plants. 



The final shift being given, it will still be necessary to encourage 

 growth (but in a somewhat lower temperature, as above suggested) 

 till the pots are well filled with roots. JJy this time they will have 

 made nice plants, and will require increased air and light, in order 

 to bring out the beautiful and varied tints of colour which are charac- 

 teristic of selected types of this well-known annual. They possess 

 the additional advantage of bearing being retarded for weeks if neces- 

 sary; and, taken altogether, they are about the most simple plants to 

 cultivate, and the most elegant to look at, that we possess. 



Cultivator. 



CARTON. 



This is the seat of the Duke of Leinster, the home of the Fitzgeralds, 

 who have figured so long and so prominently in the history of 

 Ireland. Situated in the county of Kildare, it is only some fifteen miles 

 from Dublin, in a flat and fertile country, where bullocks by the hun- 

 dred may be seen wading in grass to the shoulders, like buffaloes on a 

 prairie. The railway and royal canal run parallel from Dublin to May- 

 nooth; indeed the former seems to be built on the banks of the latter. 



Maynooth, an historical name of recent years, is a small quaint 

 country town or big village of one broad street or boulevard, with 

 a line of trees on either side parallel with the houses, stretching 

 from the college-gates at one end to the first gate for Carton on 

 the other : neither of which gates is at all worthy of mention as 

 gates to celebrated places, and both strike the stranger as being quite 

 mean ; but it must be admitted that finer gates would be quite out 

 of keeping with the immediate surroundings. Having entered the 

 street, about midway from the railway station, one turns instinctively 

 to the left towards the famous College, and approaching the gate, 

 the ruins of Maynooth Castle are passed, once the residence of the 

 Geraldines ; scarcely like ruins, however, but magnificent remains 

 of what must once have been a magnificent building. Outwardly 

 there appear two immense quadrangular blocks of ivy-covered 

 wall, rising from the greenest and closely-shaven turf. Never have 

 we before seen Ivy in such grandeur ; there looks like an acre of 

 it, standing perpendicular, of the greenest, most luxuriant colour. 

 Irish Ivy, we dare assert, and where Ivy is at home. 



If the poet Gray had seen these towers, he would have devoted 

 a whole stanza to them, for they are indeed ivy-mantled j and they 

 are inhabited also by numberless starlings and jackdaws and swal- 



