416 



JOURNAL OF HOETICULTUKE AND COTTAGE GABDENER. 



[ November 27, 187a 



equally interesting for its white flowers and ample foliage, the 

 hitter being copiously clothed with silky tomentum ; and lastly 

 aiigustifolia, a rather tall species, of which there are several 

 forms, with narrowly lanceolate foliage, and long spikes of 

 pretty blue flowers, the only defect being that they are deve- 

 l"ped at too late a period of the summer. All the foregoing 

 have the advantage of being easily procurable either in the 

 form of seeds or plants. 



From the diversity of colour presented by this genus it is 

 quite possible — we may, perhaps, even venture to say probable — 

 that many interesting varieties might be originated by hybridis- 

 ing. We have now a white S. patens ; what obstacle presents 

 itself to the production of a pink, scarlet, violet, or yellow 

 variety of the same plant, by crossing with the pollen of some 

 other species ? We need hardly remark, that in addition to the 

 gratification which would naturally be felt by the raiser of a 

 new variety of this or any other species, a more palpable re- 

 ward might reasonably be reckoned upon. 



Although Salvia bicolor has been found, as we have al- 

 ready intimated, in the north of India, it appears also to be 

 a native of Barbary, from which country it was first intro- 

 duced. This plant must not be confounded with theblue-and- 

 white variety of pratensis, commonlv sold under the name of 

 bicolor. — (7F. Thompson's English Flower Garden, Eeviscd by 

 the Author.) 



CHUKCHYAEDS. 



" Oft from the haunts of work, and mirth, and play, 

 By pensive thought and meditation led. 

 Hither with slow and silent steps I stray 

 To mark the recording mansions of the dead."' 



And I remember not one from which I returned without a note 

 worthy of preservation in my diary. I will turn no further 

 back than last summer for a few illustrations, beginning with 

 the Isle of Anglesea, and will chiefly confine my quotations to 

 enhjects fitted for your pages. I never entered one of the 

 churches or churchyards of that Welsh county in which I did 

 not find monuments, either from their antiquity or from the 

 relationships of those they commemorate, that deserve illus- 

 tration. One or two instances must suflice. 



In Llandegfan, the mother church of Beaumaris, against 

 one of its walls is an excellent medallion portrait of Thomas 

 Davie, gent., full face, half length, with his arms emblazoned 

 beneath. He died in 1C49, after serving Princes Henry and 

 Charles, and being messenger to the latter when king. His 

 charitable bequest of twelve loaves weekly to the poor is still 

 distributed. His were perilous duties in perilous times. I 

 bnve sought for more relative information, but have been un- 

 successful. Yet they exist. 



Again. Away in the N.E. corner of the island is Penrhos 

 Lygwy, the mere name of which deserves a note in your 

 pages, for it means the Head and Moor producing Orach; and 

 iinmerons plants of both Atriples portulaooides and littoralis, 

 Shrubby and Sea Orach, are to be found there and on the 

 shores of Dulas Bay in its close vicinity. In this Penrhos was 

 born Lewis Morris, known to a few as an antiquary by his 

 " Celtic Remains ;" yet he was a poet, gardener, and botanist. 

 But who has ever searched for what he gathered in the latter 

 science ? He has left this note of himself — " What little stock 

 of knowledge I have attained to was in a manner by dint of 

 nature. My masters were chiefly Sycamore and Ash trees, at 

 beat a kind of wooden masters." "I have retired to a little 

 villa of my own, where my garden, orchard, and farm, and 

 pome small mine works take a good part of my time, and a 

 knowledge in physic and surgery, which brings me the visits 

 of the poor ; botany, having been my favourite study, is now 

 of use to them." It is stated that "he died at his residence 

 of Penbryn in Cardiganshire, April 11, 17G5, leaving behind 

 him about eighty volumes of manuscript written in Welsh, now 

 deposited in the library belonging to the Welsh Charity School 

 in Grays Inn Lane, London." What has become of those 

 MSS., and who knows their contents? 



Permit me to occupy one more sentence relative to Penrhos 

 and its adjoining parish Llanallgo. Beneath the turf of their 

 churchyards lie the remains of aU the bodies recovered of the 

 480 to whom the wreck of the " Royal Charter " brought 

 death. I have a little volume open before me minutely detail- 

 ing the events of that terrible catastrophe, and no fiction that 

 the best-skilled tragic writer ever penned surpasses that narra- 

 t've of truth. I walked among the graves of the drowned and 

 of those who had died in rescuing their remains and comfort- 

 ing their relatives. Among these relatives was Charles Dickens, 



Some of the Hogarths, kindred of his wife, were among th& 

 lost. This induced his visit to the wreck ; and he thus records 

 his estimate of Mr. Hughes, who never recovered from the 

 consequences of his exertions, the Rector of Llanallgo. 



" I had heard of that clergyman as having buried many 

 scores of the shipwi'ecked people ; of his having opened his 

 house and his heart to their agonised friends ; of his having 

 used a most sweet and patient diligence for weeks and weeks 

 in the performance of the forlornest ofiiees that man can 

 render to his kind ; of his having most tenderly and thoroughly 

 devoted himself to the dead, and to those sorrowing for the 

 dead. I had said to myself, ' In the Christmas season of the 

 year I should like to see that man,' and he had swung the gate 

 of his little garden in coming out to meet me not half an hour 



ago He had the church keys in his hand, and opened 



the churchyard gate, and opened the church door, and we- 

 went in. 



" It is a little church of great antiquity ; there is reason to- 

 beUeve that some church has occupied the spot these thousand 

 years or more. The pulpit was gone, and other things usually 

 belonging to the church were gone, owing to .its living congre- 

 gation having deserted it for the neighbouring schoolroom^ 

 and yielded it up to the dead. 



" Forty-four shipwrecked men and women lay here at one 

 time awaiting burial. Here, with weeping and wailing in every 

 room of his house, my companion worked alone for hours,, 

 solemnly surrounded by eyes that could not see him, and by 

 lips that could not speak to him, patiently examining the 

 tattered clothing, cutting oH buttons, hair, marks from linen, 

 anything that might lead to subsequent identification, studying 

 faces, looking for a scar, a bent finger, a crooked toe, com- 

 paring letters sent to him with the ruin about him. 



" The ladies of the clergyman's family (his wife and two 

 sisters-in-law) came in among the bodies often — it grew to be 

 the business of their lives to do so. Any new arrival of a 

 bereaved woman woiild stimulate their pity to compare the 

 description brought with the dread realities. Sometimes they 

 would go back able to say, ' I have found him,' or, ' I think 

 she lies there.' Perhaps the mourner, unable to bear the sight 

 of all that lay in the church, would be led in blindfold. Con- 

 ducted to the spot with many compassionate words, and en- 

 couraged to look, she would say with a piercing cry, ' This is 

 my boy,' and drop insensible on the insensible figure. From 

 the church we jiassed out into the churchyard. Here there 

 lay, at that time, 145 bodies that had come ashore from the 

 wreck. He had buried them, when not identified, in graves 

 containing four each. He had numbered each body in a register,- 

 describing it, and had placed a corresponding nirmber on each 

 coffin and over each grave. Identified bodies he had buried 

 singly in private graves in another part of the churchyard." 



I must copy no more, but pass away, as I actually did, to 

 another churchyard in the extreme south of England ; yet I 

 will pause for a brief space in the churchyard of Fulham, by 

 which I passed in journeying thither. In that churchyard is- 

 a headstone thus inscribed — " Under this stone are deposited 

 the remains of Nathaniel Bench, late of this parish, gardener, 

 who departed this life January 18th, 1783, aged 101 years." 

 Mr. Thorns will deny he was so old ; but I shall not search the 

 parish registers for confirming testimony, because I mention 

 him for a very different purpose — namely, to tell what very 

 few of your gai'den-loving readers, amateur or professional, 

 know, that that centenarian and his father were men of mark 

 in the annals of horticulture. They Uved at South Field Farm, 

 near Parson's Green, which had been in the possession of the 

 family during more than two centuries, and cultivated as a 

 nursery and market garden. Faulkner, in his " History of 

 Fulham," states that the father of the centenarian "produced 

 in this garden the first Pine Strawberry and Chinese Straw- 

 berry, and alf the first Auricula ever blown in this countiy. He 

 also instituted the first annual exhibition of flowers, and died 

 at the age of ninety-nine years, having had thirty-three chil- 

 dren." The son surpassed the father in some of these achieve- 

 ments, for he Uved two years longer and had two more children 

 — twenty-three by his first wife, and twelve by his second. 

 Faulkner adds that he " reared here the largest Arbutus trees 

 in England, several being 50 feet high; was a successful culti- 

 vator of variegated Hollies, and gave premiums for the dis- 

 covery of new varieties. He was the first who introduced the 

 Moss Rose tree into this country, supposed to be from Holland. 

 Gerard makes no mention of the Moss Rose. Mr. Rench 

 planted out of his own nursery the Ehns growing in the Biid- 

 Cage Walk, St. James's Park." 



