A 1\dk with Flora and Pomona 269 



where there was a profusion of ripe and luscious fruit, that 

 she would have been proud of in her own celestial orchards 

 to see there intermingled some hundred or so mean 

 looking, hard green pears, that never had ripened, or never 

 did, would, or could ripen, so as to be palatable to any but 

 a New Zealander. "Do solicit my friends there, for the 

 sake of my feelings," said she, "to give the gentlemen who 

 take such pleasure in exhibiting this degenerate foreign 

 squad, a separate 'green room' for themselves." To this 

 remark we smiled and bowed low, though we would not 

 venture to carry out her suggestion for the world. 



We had a delightful little chat with Flora, about some 

 new plants which she told us grew in certain unknown 

 passes in the Rocky Mountains, and mountainous parts of 

 Mexico, that will prove quite hardy with us, and which 

 neither Mr. Fortune nor the London Horticultural Society 

 know anything about. But she finally informed us, that 

 her real object in making herself visible on the earth at 

 present, with Madam Pomona, was to beg us to enter her 

 formal and decided protest against the style of decorations 

 called after her name, and which had, for several years past, 

 made the otherwise brilliant Autumnal Horticultural Shows 

 in our quarter of the globe so disagreeable an offering to her. 

 "To call the monstrous formations, which, under the name of 

 temples, stars, tripods, and obelisks - - great bizarre masses 

 of flowers plastered on wooden frames - - to call these after 

 her name, 'Floral designs,' was," she said, "even more 

 than the patience of a goddess could bear." If those who 

 make them are sincerely her devoted admirers, as they 

 profess to be, she begged us to say to them, that, unless 

 they had designs upon her flow of youth and spirits, that 

 had hitherto been eternal, she trusted they would hereafter 

 desist. 



We hereupon ventured to offer some apology for the 

 offending parties, by saying they were mostly the work of 

 the "bone and sinew' of the gardening profession, men 

 with blunt fingers but earnest souls, who worked for days 

 upon what they fancied was a worthy offering to be laid 



