1 78 NATURE NEAR LONDON 



to introduce it. Furze is specked with yellow when the 

 skies are dark and the storms sweep around, besides its 

 prime display. Let wild clematis climb wherever it 

 will. Then laurels may come after these, put some- 

 where by themselves, with their thick changeless leaves, 

 unpleasant to the touch ; no one ever gathers a spray. 



Rhododendrons it is unkind to attack, for in them- 

 selves they afford a rich flower. It is not the rhododen- 

 dron, but the abuse of it, which must be protested 

 against. Whether the soil suits or not and, for the 

 most part, it does not suit rhododendrons are thrust in 

 everywhere. Just walk in amongst them behind the 

 show and look at the spindly, crooked stems, straggling 

 how they may, and then look at the earth under them, 

 where not a weed even will grow. The rhododendron 

 is admirable in its place, but it is often overdone and a 

 failure, and has no right to exclude those shrubs that are 

 fitter. Most of the foreign shrubs about these semi- 

 country seats look exactly like the stiff and painted little 

 wooden trees that are sold for children's toys, and, like 

 the toys, are the same colour all the year round. 



Now, if you enter a copse in spring the eye is delighted 

 with cowslips on the banks where the sunlight comes, 

 with blue-bells, or earlier with anemones and violets, 

 while later the ferns rise. But enter the semi-parks of the 

 semi-country seat, with its affected assumption of country- 

 ness, and there is not one of these. The fern is actually 

 purposely eradicated just think ! Purposely ! Though 

 indeed they would not grow, one would think, under 

 rhododendrons and laurels, cold-blooded laurels. They 

 will grow under hawthorn, ash, or beside the bramble 

 bushes. 



If there chance to be a little pond or " fountain," there 

 is no such thing as a reed, or a flag, or a rush. How 



