iSyi.] ON THE ROAD. 457 



Plums in pots in the cool houses. Here, as elsewhere this season, 

 hardy fruits are a poor crop. The kitchen-garden is about 10 acres 

 in extent, and well cropped; a part of it encroaches on the Chat Moss ; 

 and here we saw marvellous crops of Celery : on the same piece. Pota- 

 toes, however, were much diseased, though the ground is well drained. 

 Our time was scant, however, and space forbids more than a cursory 

 glance at this fine place, everywhere bearing evidence of the quiet, 

 painstaking energy and skill of the courteous superintendent. 



On the following day we resumed our journey for the north. Emerg- 

 ing from the leaden pall that overshadows the country around Wigan, 

 with its gloomy traditions of colliery disasters, the traveller breathes a 

 purer air on the pleasant shores of Morecambe Bay; and farther on the 

 clear mountain streams of Westmorland contrast pleasantly with the 

 foul puddles with which the eye has almost grown familiar in the coal 

 and iron districts. We had left the corn-fields in the south almost 

 green, to find the same on the shores of the Solway and in the valleys 

 of Dumfriesshire yellow and ready for the sickle ; consequently, on 

 arriving at Drumlanrig Castle — our next stage — we were somewhat 

 prepared to find a display, in the bedding way, in advance of anything 

 we had left behind. 



In a paper of this kind it is impossible to particularise details of 

 such an extensive place as this. I would just observe that the same 

 taste and skill that made Archerfield famous in every department of 

 horticulture, bid fair, aided by a liberal employer and greater natural 

 advantages, to achieve even greater results at Drumlanrig; and the 

 horticultural tourist who leaves Scotland without visiting it, may well 

 consider his journey incomplete. Drumlanrig will in future be the 

 premier place in Scotland. 



If anything struck us more than another in the bedding way, it was 

 the parterre known as the '' Upper White Sand." The arrangements 

 here were chaste and efi"ective in the extreme ; even the accustomed 

 eye of a gardener never wearied of the picture. What lent character 

 and effect was a well-arranged central bed of succulents, consisting of 

 Echeveria metallica secunda glauca, Sempervivums, and others ; and 

 in the outlying circles, rings of Dell's dark Beet in conjunction with 

 Mangle's variegated Geranium and other light contrasts. Those who 

 have been declaiming against Beet as a bedding-plant lately, should 

 have seen this picture to appreciate its merits and allay their pre- 

 judices. 



Mr Thomson has used extensively this season a new purple seed- 

 ling Verbena of his own raising, that, in our opinion, is likely to 

 replace that old favourite of gardeners. Purple King. This seedling 

 is evidently the progeny of Purple King, for it inherits all the latter's 



•2 K 



