410 General Results of a Gardening Tour : — 



church, charity, and corporation lands. No great general 

 improvement can take place in the country, till these tenures 

 are greatly simplified. 



Cottage Gardens. — By these we understand the gardens at- 

 tached to cottages in villages, or to the humbler class of dwell- 

 ings scattered through the country. In the agricultural dis- 

 trict from London towards Warwick they are small and poorly 

 cultivated, in comparison with those around Birmingham and 

 the other manufacturing towns. The cause is too obvious 

 to require explanation. We are not sure, however, that the 

 culture of flowering shrubs against the walls of cottages is so 

 general in the manufacturing as in the agricultural districts. 

 We expected greater progress to have been made among the 

 gardens of the miners in Derbyshire, where we found, indeed, 

 in Middleton Dale, and at Castleton, some cottages without 

 gardens. We recommend this subject to the Duke of De- 

 vonshire's agents, and to Mr. Paxton, who might distribute 

 plants and seeds among them. W^e disapprove, in general, 

 of compulsory laws in matters of this kind ; but, if we were 

 to admit of more exceptions to the rule of non-interference 

 than that of compelling parents to have their children edu- 

 cated, as done in some parts of Germany and in America, it 

 should be that of preventing any one from building a cottage 

 or a house who could not add a certain portion of ground to 

 be unalienably attached to it. Before such a law is stigma- 

 tised as tyrannical, let us, at least, get rid of the game laws. 



Kurseries. — The best collection of house-plants we found 

 in Cullis's nursery, Leamington, where a handsome new con- 

 servatory is being planted with a very choice assortment, on 

 an excellent principle for preventing them from crowding on 

 each other, which we shall hereafter describe. The best collec- 

 tion of herbaceous plants which we have any where seen, out 

 of the Epsom nursery, is at Pope's, Handsworth ; and there 

 are here above a hundred species of rare articles, of which 

 we have got a list for publication, which are not included 

 in the last edition of the Epsom catalogue. Mr. L. Linnaeus 

 Pope is an excellent self-taught botanical draughtsman ; he 

 makes drawings of all the more rare plants of the nursery as 

 they come into flower ; and his collection has already extended 

 to nearly four quarto volumes. Messrs. Pope are collecting 

 rare ti'ees and shrubs, and will soon plant an arboretum. 

 Taking the nursery altogether, it is highly interesting; and 

 we only regret that it is not better known. The nursery of 

 Mr. Lowe at Wolverhampton, and that of Mr. Cunningham 

 at Manchester, are the freest of weeds which we have seen 

 since leaving London. Mr. Lowe's nursery has always been 



