208 BKIEF REMARKS. 



Manettii stock, in the summer of 1850 and spring of 1851 :■ — Standard 

 of Marengo, twenty plants, budded from 15th June 1851, from a plant 

 that flowered in the greenhouse. Not a bud has failed, and the plants 

 are now (16th July) two feet six inches in height, and covered 

 with bloom. Princess Clementine, buds and grafts, three feet high ; 

 Moss Lanei, ditto, three feet ; ditto, Comtesse de Murinais, four feet ; 

 ditto, Unique de Provence, two feet ; ditto, White Bath, three feet ; 

 ditto, Crested, three feet to four feet ; Geant des Batailles, buds and 

 grafts, eighteen inches, and densely covered with bloom; Harrisonii 

 and Persian Yellow Briar, from three to four feet ; Bourbon Dupetit 

 Thouars, four feet ; Louis Bonaparte, buds and grafts, three feet ; 

 Julie Krudner, a dwarfish grower at all times; not a plant failed: it 

 was grafted April, 1851, and is now eighteen inches high, and covered 

 with bloom, together with many other kinds. — JDillistone and Co., 

 Stunner Nurseries, Halstead. 



Artificial Flowers. — " Lucy " may readily obtain instructions 

 in the art of wax-flower making, for now there are many teachers ; but 

 the making of the talc flowers, as shown at the Great Exhibition, is, 

 we are told, a secret. Artificial flower making is by no means so 

 modern an art as you seem to consider, for in the Talmud, or Gemara, 

 is this legend : — " As Solomon sat surrounded by his court, at the foot 

 of the throne stood the inquisitive Queen Sheba ; in each hand she had 

 a wreath of flowers, the one composed of natural, the other of artificial 

 flowers. Art, in the labour of the mimic wreath, had exquisitely emu- 

 lated the lively hues and the variegated beauties of nature, so that, at 

 the distance it was held by the queen for the inspection of the king, it 

 was deemed impossible for him to decide, as her question imported, 

 which leaf was the natural, and which the artificial. The sagacious 

 Solomon seemed quite posed. Yet to be vanquished, though in a 

 trifle, by a trifling woman, much irritated his pride : the son of David 

 — he who had written treatises on the vegetable productions, ' from the 

 cedar to the hyssop ' — to acknowledge himself outwitted by a woman, 

 with shreds of paper and glazed paintings ! The honour of the mo- 

 narch's reputation for divine sagacity seemed diminished ; and the 

 whole Jewish court looked solemn and melancholy. At length an 

 expedient presented itself to the king, and, it must be confessed, 

 worthy of the great natural philosopher. Observing a cluster of bees 

 hovering about a window, he commanded that it should be opened ; it 

 was immediately opened, the bees rushed into the court, and imme- 

 diately alighted on one of the wreaths, while not a single one fixed on 

 the other. The decision was not then difficult ; the learned rabbins 

 shook their beards in rapture, and the baffled Sheba had one more 

 reason to be astonished at the wisdom of Solomon." This would make 

 a pretty poetical tale. It would yield an elegant description and a 

 pleasing moral — that the bee only rests on the natural beauties, and 

 never fixes on the painted flowers, however inimitably the colours may 

 be laid on. — D'Israeli's Curiosities of Literature. 



Love of Flowers. — The love of flowers seems a naturally implanted 

 passion, without any alloy or debasing object as a motive. The cottage 

 has its Pink, its Pose, its Polyanthus ; the villa, its Geranium, its 



