.548 



JOURNAL OF HORTICULTUEE AND COTTAGE GARDKNEE. 



[ December 23, 1875. 



Here is a return indeed to old days, and advancing by going 

 back is often Ibe trneet advance. Three centuries since a 

 Rose was cLiefly valued for its perfume. " A Rose by any 

 other name would fmell aa sweet," wrote Shakespeare. It 

 was the scent and not the form that weighed with our fore- 

 fathers, ccnabined with medical properties. The older flowers 

 are the tweeter flowers as a rule; and when the present 

 Premier's heroine. Lady Coiisande, in "Lothair," had a gar- 

 den of Ecented flowers, they were almost all old-fashioned. 

 Flowers are beautiful to look at, but the bouquet is doubly 

 valued when the finely-chiselled nostril is gratified as well as 

 the (ye. 



There is, too, another advance by going back which strikes 

 one — namely, the revival of a love of button-hole bouquets, 

 which our ancestors called posies. Says Christopher Marlow, 

 writing in the sixteenth century, in the character of a shepherd 

 singing to his love — 



" I will make thee bed3 of Koses, 

 And a tboasand fragrant posies.'' 

 Tho fashion for button-hole flowers had well nigh died away. 

 Auold buck or two among the gentry kept to it, and a flower- 

 loving peasant here and there appeared at church with a posy 

 half as big as a Cauliflower, and one wondered any button- 

 hole could carry it. But now the pretty custom has come 

 back again ; and in the heart of the City of London, specially 

 on a Saturday afternoon, stand rows of flower girls proffering, 

 and not in vain, a tnttou-holo posy to the city clerks on their 

 leaving their offices earlier, the posies beiug carefully taken and 

 kept in water for the Sunday adornment. 



Flowers of perfume are doubly valued as decorations if 

 blended with a spray of graceful Fern. The cultivation of 

 sweet-scented flowers is sure to advance, and we shall have 

 again "many a Camalion feeding with summer spice the 

 hnmmicg air." Bacon speaks of those who gather " flowers 

 being withal sircet and tightly." The " sightly " has been too 

 much regarded minus the " sweet." 



But not alone do we in " our Journal " dwell on flowers and 

 fruits. Many open the Journal of HortieuUure for the latter 

 colnmna chiefly, for to them the bird and tho bee are more 

 attractive than the fruit or the flower. Their pleasures arise 

 from harmless hobbies. Vfell says a recent writer in a first- 

 class periodical — " Of course, by becoming a huntc-r of rarities 

 a great deal of money may be spent ; but that is a pursuit 

 ■which, however respectable, is generally most enjoyable when 

 the jnenns arc limited. When Charles "Lamb screwed up his 

 courage to give a few shillings for an old dramatist, he had 

 inore pleasure of his bargain than the rich man who would 

 give as many hundreds. As some people have found rat-killing 

 as amufing as tiger-shooting, so the poor colltctor gets as 

 much fun out of his pursuits as his rival with a bottomless 

 purse. And the various forms of curiosity-hunting, whether 

 the objects be tho old masters, or rare books, or china, or 

 autographs, oi 2ngcons, are about equally interesting." These 

 words I hold perfectly truf. Tho poor man's hobby gives him 

 ao much pleasure as tho rich man's — I sm half inclined to 

 think more, beceuso tho objects loved are fewer, and love con- 

 centrated is the strongest. If a rich man has been able to 

 buy some grand picture, his joy is not much, if even as much, 

 as when the fancier hss obtained a long-desired bird which he 

 holds lovingly in his hand with his eyes fall of admiration 

 and delight. It will bo noticed that the writer above quoted 

 mentions "pigeons.'' This would not have been the case a 

 few years since, but our two great Shows in the two London 

 Palaces have drawn an amount of notice upon the fancy which 

 many provincial shows could not have done, for London leads 

 thought and always will. 



I hold, too, that, now wages are higher, the lower classes 

 more and more need innocent hobbies for their spare hours, 

 particularly as these are more numerous. It the unbending of 

 the mind does not take an innocent tarn there is more harm 

 to be dreaded from idle than fi'om working hours. The gospel 

 of ialcness is a baneful gofpel — nay, co gotpel, but bad news 

 to men nnless they can well employ these idle hours. Whether 

 it is the town artisan or tho country labourer — whether tho 

 temptation be the to-vu's attractions or the country's dullness, 

 there needs a safety-valve, an outlet for the lesser faculties. 

 Happy that man who can turn to his garden and find his 

 pleasure there ; and it is best to have a hobby within a hobby 

 — even in a garden some pet v.aricty of fruit, or vegetable, or 

 flower. If you have you will soon feel the advantage. But a 

 garden all do not care for, and all cannot have. Bat a back 

 yard may be peopled with birds — poultry or pigeons, or an 



inner room be alive with canaries. If people live in the 



country and have not country tastes their life is apt to bo 

 dreary at times ; but love and understand the book of nature 

 — I ought to have written "understand and love," for love 

 comes from knowledge — then you will never be unhappy. 



I am fond of hearing and recording any acts of kindliness ; 

 let me write down one which occurred within my own know- 

 ledge. Early in the bitter, bitter cold of the present year a 

 clergyman with a large and grown-up family was stricken 

 down in a few days. The news of death and the illness 

 coming to many at the same time. They had been a family 

 of garden lovers, thinking their home and their garden 

 sweeter than aught else. There was a group of daughters 

 moat active among their poor neighbours, hard and warm- 

 hearted workers. It so happened that the family removed 

 from a sweetly rural spot to the thick air of a manufacturing 

 town, where garden for them there was none. Each week 

 their village neighbours took turns in sending to their late 

 clergyman's widow and daughters a hamper of vegetables 

 and fruit from their gardens, believing, and rightly believing, 

 that no vegetables or fruit would taste half so sweet as those 

 from their loved village. Tliis went on from week to week 

 till the village feast came round, and then the poor begged 

 that the hamper might be double the size for them to enclose 

 their offerings of flowers from their gardens — flowers the 

 sweetest of all presents, and whic'n tho poorest cottage-dweller 

 may offer, and the daintiest lady in the land be pleased to 

 receive. Can you not easily understand, good reader, the joy 

 the opening of that hamper would give '! This posy from that 

 tiny garden, cut from plants known to the receivers; here a 

 bunch of Roses from a porch, there some Stocks from a way- 

 side garden, all known, all remembered. 



But I must hasten to a conclusion. What was the angelic 

 greeting on the first Christmas morning? " Peace on earth 

 and good will to men." When man was innocent and at 

 perfect peace with all he lived in a garden ; and though inno- 

 cence is lost, yet peace is often found in a garden. Its little 

 plot is the child's delight ; his garden is often the old man's 

 last love. Business is too much for him, that he has resigned. 

 Travelling too wearying, that he has given up. He again, 

 indeed, goes his journeys, but only in hia easy chair, and 

 prattles there of former scenes by land and sea. Company he 

 cannot enter into, its late hours do not suit him, and oon- 

 varsation passes him, and the days of quick reply and keen 

 intellectual talk are over. But there is something left him to 

 enjoy — his easy-of-access, pleasant garden, where he may rest 

 in sunshine or shade as ho wills, and husband hia strength 

 and enjoy himself, watching and being interested in each crop 

 as it ripens, each flower as it unfolds its blooming beauty. A 

 garden is man's first love and his last. It promotes " peace," 

 and an interchange or giving of its products creates " good 

 will." Grand words, blessed greeting, " Peace and Good 

 Will" sounding over Christendom, heard all over England! 

 And may their meaning be better understood as each Christmas 

 comes round. In the words of an American poet — 



" I hear the bells on Christmag day 

 Their old familiar carols play, 



And wild and sweet 



The wordj^ repeat. 

 Of peace on earth, good will to mci^. 



The wrong shall fail. 



The right prevail. 

 With peace on earth, good will to men." 



— Wiltshire Eectob. 



PLUMS. 



Plums are so popular that not one word of eulogy is neces- 

 sary to attract notice to them, or to promote their more ex- 

 tensive culture, otherwise than may unavoidably occur in 

 describing tho merits of some kinds that are not so well known 

 aa they deserve to be. Possessed of wonderful vitality, very 

 prolific, perfectly hardy — such choice kinds as Transparent 

 Gage ripening perfectly upon orchard trees ia the north — 

 not very liable to suffer from the attacks of noxious insects 

 or blight, of easy culture, trees possessing all the luxuriance 

 of a free, wild, unchecked growth, or amenable to pruning and 

 training after the most severe rule of art (advantage, if any, 

 being rather in favour of the untrained tree), that here also 

 an elaborate cultural essay is uncalled for. 



When I first began the culture of cone-shaped Plam trees it 

 was with a strong impression that it was no easy matter to 

 impart that form to them, and that really handsome sym- 



