34 THE GARDENER. [Jan. 



variety and usefulness since the time when they alone, of the hundreds 

 of other greenhouse shrubs then commonly cultivated, were found 

 comparatively facile helps to gardeners in compassing the wishes of 

 their employers. 



In all changes there is something to regret and something to rejoice in. 

 The force of this truism applies equally to changes in gardening taste 

 as to changes in far more important affairs. I for one regret very much 

 that the most interesting and beautiful class of plants in question are 

 now so rare that they are only to be found in a few of the grand places 

 sparingly, and in the botanic gardens. But I rejoice also that other 

 beautiful plants, though more trivial objects of the gardener's art, but 

 not therefore less useful to the attainment of the end for which he 

 works, have sprung up into importance. No one appreciates more the 

 improvement, both in cultivation and quality, that has been effected of 

 late years in the China Primrose, the Chrysanthemum, Cineraria, Cal- 

 ceolaria, Pelargonium, and the Fuchsia, which, with the increased taste 

 for the various bulbs adapted to forcing, and the demand for increased 

 accommodation for bedding-plants, have been mainly instrumental in 

 elbowing the less tractable classes of hard-wooded plants out of general 

 cultivation. I appreciate fully all this progress, but am conservative 

 enough to regret the loss, and long for the reinstating of many of the 

 beautiful and interesting old-fashioned shrubs of the greenhouse in 

 their former place and favour. About the old-fashioned greenhouse 

 shrubs there was a substantialness of character, with grace and variety 

 of habit, and beauty, interest, and variety in the form and colour, 

 which are, comparatively speaking, wanting in the few forms of plants 

 that now occupy their place in the greenhouse for a brief season, and 

 then are discarded for ever. When a Calceolaria or Cineraria has fin- 

 ished flowering, it is, so far as the purpose of decoration is concerned, 

 used up ; it may serve the purpose of reproduction afterwards, but no- 

 thing more. And so it is with most of the plants that have taken the 

 place of the more enduring old-fashioned shrubs of the past. About 

 these latter, interest accumulated from year to year insensibly, as it 

 gathers round a household god. If one or other of them died, it left 

 a blank not soon to be filled up — a circumstance not calculated to raise 

 them in the estimation of those who delight only in the comparatively 

 rough-and-ready courses of cultivation which perfectly succeed in 

 bringing in relay on relay several times a-year of the useful classes of 

 herbaceous plants alluded to, but which keenly sharpened the cultural 

 wits, and concentrated the attention of all concerned in their cultiva- 

 tion in the time when hard-wooded plants were the glory and pride of 

 a successful plant-grower. 



If the respective merits of hard-wooded and herbaceous plants for 



