14 MISCELLANEA. 



Nemesia Versicolor. ( Scrophulariaeeee). — A very pretty hardy annual of erect, branching habit, 

 well deserving cultivation from the long succession of its flowers. It grows about twelve to eighteen 

 inches high in good soil, but begins to flower when only half that height, and continues in blossom 

 until very late in the autumn. The flowers are about the size of those of Linaria Cymbalaria, but the 

 variety of colour found in the same patch of seedlings compensates for their comparative smallness. 

 In some the upper lip of the corolla is a bright blue, in others it is lilac streaked, and in many it is 

 clear yellow, the lower lip being in nearly every instance white. It is, strictly speaking, a perennial, 

 but is best treated as an annual. The seeds are very interesting microscopic objects, the outer coat 

 being formed of a beautiful reticulated membrane, furnished with a wing or edging of the same 

 character. It requires only to be sown in the open borders in March or April, with the other hardy 

 annuals. A native, wc believe, of the Cape of Good Hope. 



MISCELLANEA. 



THE ENGLISH AND THE TROPICAL FLORAS. 

 There has been (as " It. T." suggests) much exaggerated writing about tropical scenery. The 

 delight which a naturalist experiences in exploring the tropical regions, arises almost entirely from 

 the novelty and apparently boundless variety of forms with, which be meets — not from anything 

 striking in either the grouping or the colouring of the masses. A traveller on the Amazon and its 

 tributaries, with no taste for any branch of natural history, would at first be struck with admiration 

 by the immensity of the rivers and forests ; but after the first novelty had worn off, he would find 

 both exceedingly monotonous. The gorgeous tropical flowers, which the eye takes in at one view in 

 our European conservatories, are here so widely and rarely dispersed, that a traveller may spend years 

 in the search, and not come across a tithe of them. Then, all tropical plants of moderate size may 

 be much improved by cultivation. Shrubs of straggling, inelegant growth, putting forth flowers few 

 and far between, will be, in the gardener's hands, reduced to compactness and regularity, and made 

 to flower equally and copiously. The mere protection from winds and storms, which English glass- 

 houses afford, is alone sufficient to insure greater perfection of development. In the great 

 Conservatory at Chatsworth, I recollect being much struck with the noble bearing and symmetry of 

 the Bananas and other Musacese. Here, they are still noble and striking objects at a distance ; but 

 viewed more closely, their growing leaves are seen to be torn and ragged, and their slimy stems are 

 half hidden by the pendant semi-putrid, decaying leaves ; which latter, as everything else unsightly, 

 it is the gardener's care to remove. "What a magnificent sight it is, too, in the Orchid-houses at 

 Chatsworth and Kew, to see fifty or more species all in flower at once ; each individual plant tended 

 as carefully as a new-born infant, and repaying that care by exhibiting a degree of beauty and 

 symmetry scarcely ever attained in its native forests. Here, it is rare to see at once three species of 

 Orchideoe in flower; and the masses of bulbs are universally the refuge of hordes of ants, which tear 

 to pieces the flowers as they expand, or cat off the young peduncles, so that no flowers are ever 

 produced. How exquisite to sight and smell is a profusion of Passion-flowers, proceeding from a 

 single plant, trained so as to almost cover the glass roof of a hothouse ! I have seen nothing like 

 this here. There are, perhaps, no flowers more obnoxious to the effects of insects than Passion- 

 flowers. Legions of caterpillars attack the flower-buds ere they can expand ; and, though I have 

 gathered here several species of these lovely plants, I have not been able to obtain thirty perfect 

 specimens of any one of them. So fully am I convinced of the improvement effected by cultivation 



