244 POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN 



gardens of Italy, which, even in their decay, are never 

 forgotten by those who once have had the joy of wander- 

 ing in them. 



1894. 'The Natural History of Plants,' from the 

 German of Anton Kerner von Marilaun, Professor of 

 Botany in the University of Vienna, by F. W. Oliver 

 Quain, Professor of Botany in University College, London. 

 For the modern botanist this book is deeply interesting. 

 I am, alas ! no botanist, and have no scientific knowledge ; 

 but to take up the book, and to read a page or two 

 anywhere, opens one's eyes wide with wonder. It 

 refers principally to microscopic botany. The coloured 

 plates are saddening to a degree; they seem to me all 

 that botanical plates ought not to be, and somehow 

 appear to have been affected by Miss North's system of 

 flower-painting. How valuable would have been her 

 untiring energy, if the drawings so generously given to 

 Kew had been either artistic, like Mr. Parsons', or, still 

 better, from the scientific point of view, botanical and 

 delicately true, like Jacquin's or Bedoute"'s, or the drawings 

 in Curtis's books ! In the chromo-lithographs of these 

 four volumes we have attempts at the impossible large 

 plants in the foreground, with skies, distances, and middle- 

 distance all out of tone. The wood-cuts are much 

 better ; some are very good and delicate, especially the 

 representations of strongly magnified subjects. I bought 

 the book as bringing illustrated plant-lore down to the 

 latest date. The account, in the third volume, of the dis- 

 tribution of pollen is thrillingly interesting, and is within 

 the comprehension of the aforenamed ' village idiot ' ; 

 many of our ordinary garden flowers are figured as ex- 

 amples. The saddest attempt at a picture is a Brobding- 

 nagian representation of an Alpine Rhododendron, with 

 pines and snow-clad mountains in the distance. I may 

 be wrong, but to me it seems waste of talent and time 



