kevie\vs and extracts. 87 



" In similar relative situation, but in prominent advance from trees and 

 unblossomed shrubs, flowering evergreens should invariably rank. Defying 

 ' the icy fang and churlish chiding of the winter's wind,' the gay, cheering, 

 precocious laurestinus anticipates the lingering arrival of an English spring. 

 Tenacious of florage and permanently retentive of foliated decoration, it is 

 untitled to numerical predominance over every blossoming shrub. By 

 seasonable intervention and flowering profusion, it compensates for temporary 

 diminution of ornament, in other component ingredients of a shrubbery, 

 thus transferring to nipping winter's gloom the exhilarating semblance of 

 summer's embellishment. Productive of such interesting impression in 

 pleasing the eye, it certainly merits conspicuousness by prominent position. 



" The arbutus is a shrub peculiarly elegant and eligible, from perennial 

 decoration, rapid growth, and superior beauty in shape and tint of leaf, from 

 delicate blossom, and glowing berry. If suffered to remain unpruned, by 

 gaining height, it becomes hollow and leafless beneath, retaining, like other 

 evergreens, only two years' leaves, except about midsummer, when the third 

 year's are annexed, some weeks previous to the decay of the first. If not 

 surrounded by evergreens more stunted in growth, for concealment of its 

 lower leafless branches, it should biennially be deprived of a few long shoots, 

 by application of the pruning-knife, the shears being calculated to render a 

 .shrub hideously cabbage-poled. Any shrub judiciously pruned will retain 

 resemblance of its natural form. Artificial treatmentshould be studiously 

 disguised, and interposition of control be invariably concealed. 



" The phillyrea presents striking contrast to the gay or gaudy display of 

 flowering shrubs, being characterised by singular chasteness and unobtru- 

 sive simplicity. It is of intermediate tint, diminutive leaf, and moderate 

 growth ; consequently is precisely adapted to an advanced position. It will 

 there present a striking contrast to the imposing glare of variegated shrubs, 

 whether holly, aucuba, or others of similar class. Here, too, that lowly, yet 

 cheering, harbinger of spring, the mezereon, should rank, interspersed with 

 contemporaneous masses of hepatica, snowdrop, crocus, red daisy, and other 

 vernal flowers, protected by a wicker fence. The cypress is adapted, by its 

 taper form and elevation, to relieve a structure. The pyracantha, pome- 

 granate, trumpet-pomegranate, white jessamine, but, paramount to all, the 

 elegant tamarisk, supply ornamental covering to a wall. In a sheltered 

 nook, even these may be surpassed by the beautiful single-blossomed myrtle. 

 From mildness of climate, it abounds in Devonshire, perhaps in no instance 

 so luxuriantly as in a garden of Mr. Neck's, curate of King's Kerswell, where 

 it acquires considerable size detached from a wall, as well as height when 

 attached. The front of a house at Bishop's-Teington has long been covered 

 to the top by myrtles of forty years' growth, protected from the easterly wind 

 by a wing, and from the westerly by an equal defence, with the advantage 

 of a southern aspect." 



The Florist Cultivator, or Plain Directions for the Management 

 of the Principal Florist Flowers, Shrubs, fyc. <Sfc. adapted to 

 the Floioer-Garden, Shrubbery, and Greenhouse ; with Select 

 Lists of the finest Roses, Geraniums, Carnations, Pinks, 

 Auriculas, Polyanthuses, Tulips, Dahlias, Heartsease, <5fc. fyc. 

 The whole arranged on a plan different from any work 

 hitherto published. By Thomas Willats, Esq., Amateur 

 Cultivator. London : James Ridgway and Sons, 1835. — 

 pp. 360. 



We give the following extract to our readers as a specimen of the work, 

 which, though not perfection itself, contains some useful directions and 

 descriptions, which doubtless will be improved upon in future editions :— 



