246 THE GARDENER. [June 



December, and hope some one else will make an effort to afford a 

 similar treat to the admirers of the Chrysanthemum at the dull 

 season of the year. 



COVENT GARDEN MARKET IN" THE MIDDLE OF APRIL. 



Dr Hogg deserves our gratitude for his admirable Directory ; it makes eveu the 

 stay-at-home gardener better acquainted with his brethren and the whereabouts 

 of gardens. We never take a long journey without a Directory in our pocket, if 

 sight-seeing is our object. We lately slipped our moorings and cleared for Lon- 

 don with a Directory and 'Bradshaw,' which were our only studies by the way ; 

 drier reading, perhaps, than 'Johnson's Dictionary,' but suggestive of plenty of 

 matter for thought nevertheless. For instance, coming to Newark, the Directory 

 says this is the post-town for Caunton Manor; we stretch our neck and look out of 

 the carriage window to see if we can guess where it can possibly lie — where the 

 Queen of Flowers holds her courts ; we think of her great field-marshal, and his 

 many battles won. There is one garden which Dr Hogg has forgotten to mention 

 in the Directory, which is always deserving of a visit, however often it may have 

 been seen before ; we mean Covent Garden, London's garden-market, though once 

 on a time a real garden. There will be seen whatever of garden produce it is pos- 

 sible for skill to send or money bring into the market ; and there the practical 

 man can take notes of what he ought to have or might have at home. 



The one thing most striking in Covent Garden market on the second week of 

 April was the Oranges. The eye rested on them everywhere, the whole place 

 smelt of them, and everybody must have been tasting them ; we did, at three for 

 twopence. It is the same all over London— West End and Mile End, north and 

 south, heaps of Oranges in carts, barrows, baskets, and windows. In the Garden 

 also were Blood Oranges, with their dark-red cheeks and blood-streaked flesh — 

 small Tangerine Oranges, Seville Oranges for marmalade, Lemons, Citrons, Shad- 

 docks as big as bladders of lard, and other fruit of the genus Citrus, dubbed For- 

 bidden Fruit ; but en might be spelt ing without being a misnomer. 



Do my readers know whence come those huge quantities of Oranges ? — from 

 Spain, of course, or from St Michaels, or Malta. Well, we shan't go there to see ; 

 but come down to the wharves, a little below London Bridge, and we shall see five 

 or six large steamers, clean and bright and freshly painted, each with three large 

 hatches open, through which one can see the holds closely packed with shallow 

 fragile boxes, each box tied round with a plaited, green, rushy-looking rope. The 

 boxes are swung on deck, the rope cut away by a man with a large knife, who 

 then proceeds to break open the box with a tool-axe and hammer combined. He 

 plunges his hand down among the Oranges at each end of the box to see if he can 

 find something which he should not find, nails up the box again, which is then 

 transferred to the back of a man who has a bevelled pad on his shoulders with a 

 hole in it for his head, and off he marches over planks, decks, and up a ladder 20 

 feet to the wharf, where he receives a piece of round tin with a hole in it from a 

 man who is standing for the purpose. The men, each with his load of one box, 

 follow each other in line like wild geese along the wharves, up dark alleys, and into 

 fusty -smelling warehouses, from whence dealers are supplied in town and country. 

 Pears were very scarce in Covent Garden, yet some very fine Easter Beurres are 



