70 THE GARDENER. [Feb. 



the handle, one of our beliefs is that his aides-de-camp the winds have 

 more to do with the weather in these islands. We grant him the im- 

 mediate superintendence of the tropics, which he does very satisfac- 

 torily, while we, in these temperate climes, receive our share of 

 weather second-hand through the agency of the winds. We grumble 

 at our variable climate, our sudden and extreme changes, but meteoro- 

 logists tell us we have no right geographically to such good weather 

 as we get, except now and then : at Christmas we are reminded of our 

 deservings, and were it not for our insular position, stuck up in a great 

 bath of warm water, we should be no better off than the Esquimaux 

 of Labrador. We must acknowledge, again, that the sun sends us our 

 bath of warm water by the Gulf Stream as he sends us our south- 

 westers; yet we repeat, the winds are our chief weather-breeders. Our 

 coasts take their character so far from the winds to which they are 

 most exposed, the cold dry eastern haurs of the east coast biting 

 shrubs and blossoms, the damp winds of the west verdant but crypto- 

 gamic ; and any wind requiring the prefix north to express it savours 

 of barrenness, though not as a rule. It follows, then, that the winds of 

 a coast determine very largely its vegetation. 



We read of the Broccolis in Cornwall being killed by IS'' of frost, 

 comparatively a very small amount of cold ; on the dry east coast we 

 have seen them stand half as many more without injury. The explana- 

 tion may be that up to within a week of the frost the moist south-west 

 wind was blowing over a gradually cooling country, which condensed 

 deluges of warm rain, making Broccolis and all Greens soft and sappy — 

 the worst possible condition to stand severe frost. Evergreen shrubs 

 escape, because the summer growth, being early made, became hardened 

 by the heat and drought of the season, so that Sweet Bays and ever- 

 green Magnolias and Camelias withstand 20° without injury. The 

 southern counties of England are in character moist, from their more 

 immediate proximity to the waters of the Gulf Stream, This is observed 

 even during severe frost, from the amount of hoar precipitated on the 

 trees and the foliage of shrubs, which, no doubt, at the same time acts 

 as a protection. The success of tender shrubs would indicate a climate 

 approaching that of Japan, and might suggest at Penzance, or, at any 

 rate, Cork or Killarney, the establishment of a Royal Japonica nursery 

 for the out-door growth of all those broad shining-leaved moisture-lov- 

 ing plants with Japonica to their names, and many more from the 

 same green country. The more tender of the Hybrid Rhododendrons, 

 whose foliage also indicates the choice of a moist atmosphere, might be 

 added ; also the lovely Lapageria, the prince of conservatory climbers, 

 with its broad shining leaves tapering to a point to shoot off the falling 

 rain, might also succeed wholesale out of doors, coming as it does from 



