BRIEF REMARKS. 209 



Dahlia, and its Clematis. We cherish them in youth, we admire them 

 in declining days ; but perhaps it is the early flowers of spring that 

 always bring with them the greatest degree of pleasure; and our affec- 

 tions seem immediately to expand at the sight of the first opening 

 blossom under the sunny wall or sheltered bank, however humble its 

 race may be. In the long and sombre months of winter, our love of 

 nature, like the buds of vegetation, seems closed and torpid; but, like 

 them, it unfolds and reanimates with the opening year, and we welcome 

 our long-lost associates with a cordiality that no other season can excite, 

 as friends in a foreign clime. The Violet of autumn is greeted with 

 none of the love^with which we hail the Violet of spring ; it is un- 

 seasonable ; perhaps it brings with it rather a thought of melancholy 

 than of joy ; we view it with curiosity, not affection ; and thus the late 

 is not like the early Rose. It is not intrinsic beauty or splendour that 

 so charms us, for the fair maids of spring cannot compete with the 

 grander matrons of the advanced year ; they would be unheeded, 

 perhaps lost, in the rosy bowers of summer and of autumn ; no, it is 

 our first meeting with a long-lost friend, the reviving glow of a natural 

 affection, that so warms us at this season. To maturity they give plea- 

 sure, as a harbinger of the renewal of life, a signal of awakening nature, 

 or of a higher promise. To youth, they are expanding beings, opening 

 years, hilarity and joy. There is not a prettier emblem of spring than 

 an infant sporting in the sunny field, with its osier basket wreathed 

 with Butter-cups, Orchises, and Daisies. With summer flowers we 

 seem to live as with our neighbours, in harmony and good-will ; but 

 spring flowers we cherish as private friendships. — Journal of a 

 Naturalist. 



New Trees. — It may be interesting to the lovers of fine evergreen 

 trees to hear that his Royal Highness Prince Albert planted the largest 

 saleable plant in England, of the Chilian Arbor-vitae (Libocedrus 

 Chilensis), in the gardens here, to commemorate his first visit to 

 •Shrubland Park ; that this noble evergreen tree attains the height of 

 from 60 to 100 feet on the Andes of Chili; and that, although it has 

 been known to botanists for some time, from the accounts of travellers 

 and dried specimens, and also with Libocedrus tetragona, as the cele- 

 brated Alerce of Chili, so much valued for the excellence of its timber, 

 it was only last season that the first seeds of it were procured in quan- 

 tity by Mr. Low, nurseryman, at Clapton, near London — the only 

 importer of it — and that through the exertions of a once Suffolk 

 gardener, Mr. Thomas Bridges, to whose memory Sir W. Hooker dedi- 

 cated t he genus Bridgesia. It thus turns out, singularly enough, that 

 the first plant from these seeds should be planted in Mr. Bridges' native 

 county ; and that, too, by the most distinguished patron of science in 

 this or in any other country. Mr. Bridges advises that this splendid tree 

 should be planted over a dry bottom, and I can vouch for that condition 

 having been fulfilled here to the letter. He also advises that very 

 young plants of it should be slightly protected for the first winter or 

 two, and, of course, we shall attend to his instructions. But Dr. 

 Lindley and Sir W. Hooker agree in considering it as hardy as the 



Vol. xix. No. 50. — N.S. s 



