A TALK WITH FLORA AND POMONA. 



107 



*' I would not give one sound healthy seed- 

 ling pear, springing up under natural cul- 

 ture in your American soil, for all that Dr. 

 Van Mons ever raised !" [We beg our 

 readers to understand that these were Po- 

 mona's words and not ours.] She gave us, 

 after this, very special charge to impress it 

 upon her devotees in the United States, not 

 to be too much smitten with the love of new 

 names, and great collections. It gave her 

 more satisfaction to see the orchards and 

 fruit room of one of her liege subjects teem- 

 ing with the abundance of the few sorts of 

 real golden merit, than to see whole acres 

 of new varieties that have no other value 

 than that of novelty. She said too, that it 

 was truly amazing how this passion for col- 

 lecting fruits — a genuine monomania — 

 grew upon a poor mortal, when he was once 

 attacked by it ; so that indeed, if he could 

 not add every season, at least fifty new 

 sorts from the continent, with some such 

 outlandish names, (which she said she 

 would never recognise,) as Beurre bleu d^ete 

 nouveau de Scrowsywowsy, etc., he would 

 positively hang himself in a fit of the blues ! 

 Pomona further drew our attention in 

 some sly remarks, that were half earnest 

 and half satire, to the figure that many 

 of these "Belgian pericarps " cut at those 

 handsome levees, which her votaries among 

 us hold in the shape of the great Sep- 

 tember exhibitions. She said it was re- 

 ally droll to see, at such shows as those 

 of our two large cities, where there was 

 a profusion of ripe and luscious fruit, that 

 she would have been proud of in her own 

 celestial orchards — to see there intermin- 

 gled some hundred or so mean looking, hard 

 green pears, that never had ripened, or ne- 

 ver did, would, or could ripen, so as to be 

 palatable to any but a New-Zealander. 

 " Do solicit my friends there, for the sake 

 of my feelings," said she, " to give the gen- 



tlemen who take such pleasure in exhibit- 

 ing this degenerate foreign squad, a sepa- 

 rate ' green room ' for themselves." To 

 this remark we smiled and bowed low, 

 though we would not venture to carry out 

 her suggestion for the world. 



We had a delightful little chat with 

 Flora, about some new plants which she 

 told us grew in certain unknown passes in 

 the Eocky Mountains, and mountainous 

 parts of Mexico, that Avill prove quite hardy 

 with us, and which neither Mr. Fortune 

 nor the London Horticultural Society know 

 any thing about. But she finally informed 

 us, that her real object in making herself 

 visible on the earth at present, with Madam 

 Pomona, Avas to beg us to enter her formal 

 and decided protest against the style of de- 

 corations called after her name, and which 

 had, for several years past, made the other- 

 wise brilliant autumnal horticultural 

 SHOWS in our quarter of the globe, so disa- 

 greeable an offering to her. " To call the 

 monstrous formations, which, under the 

 name of temples, stars, tripods and obelisks 

 — great bizarre masses of flowers, plastered 

 on wooden frames — to call these after her 

 name, ' Floral designs,' was," she said, 

 '' even more than the temper of a goddess 

 could bear." If those who make them, are 

 sincerely her devoted admirers, as they pro- 

 fess to be, she begged us to say to them, that, 

 unless they had designs upon her flow of 

 youth and spirits, that had hitherto been eter- 

 nal, she trusted they would hereafter desist. 



We hereupon ventured to offer some apo- 

 logy for the offending parties, by saying, 

 they were mostly the work of the " bone 

 and sinew" of the gardening profession, 

 men with blunt fingers but earnest souls, 

 who worked for days upon what they fan- 

 cied was a worthy offering to be laid upon 

 her altars. She smiled, and said the in- 

 tention was accepted, but not its results, 



