200 A SKETCH OF THE 



hood with a freedom almost unknown at home. To a botanist 

 these shores of the Mediterranean are pecuharly attractive, for not 

 only do many rare English plants make their headquarters here, but 

 of late years numerous other countries, not excepting even the 

 Antipodes, have contributed their most useful and conspicuous 

 plants to add their beauties to those of the indigenous kinds. Here 

 the blue gums of Australia have found a home, and, although 

 planted by the present generation, have become stately trees sixty 

 feet high, with a circumference of ten feet. Apparently they thrive 

 so well that in the distant future, not improbably they will oust the 

 native trees, and look on the country as their own. At present their 

 culture is encouraged so far as possible by man, in consequence of 

 the influence their aromatic juices are supposed to possess over the 

 various ills which human flesh is heir to. Here also flourish the 

 casuarinas, or Australian beefwood trees — those mock conifers, as 

 they may be called, which grow also in my Indian garden, and 

 which are worth cultivating were it only to hear the wind softly 

 sighing upon a summer's evening through their long pendant 

 horse-tail leaves. Several acacias and mimosas from Australia, seen 

 only under glass in England, are also here, and with them the 

 so-called pepper tree {Schinus molle), whose racemes of berries, like 

 coral beads, would add grace to the most beautiful garden in the 

 world. 



Among the exotic plants which are to be seen in the gardens here, 

 and which testify to the high mean temperature of the air, may be 

 mentioned the bamboo, the date palm, the sugar cane, and 

 American agave, which many of our transatlantic cousins, coming 

 from the north, see for the first time flourishing in hedges here. 

 Indeed, so completely do the thirty-six hours from London change 

 the scene, that on entering the garden of the Beau-Site Hotel at 

 Cannes late in November, it appeared as though we were walking 

 in some gigantic conservatory, whose glass had suddenly been 

 removed by fairy hands. 



Steam, the great civilizer here as in England, has long since 



