202 Notes and Recollectiotis of a Tour. 



way spruce, arbor vitoe, beech, birch, elm, ash, &c. The 

 seeds are sown in beds, broadcast or in drills, and the plants at 

 one or two years old are bedded out, as it is termed, until they 

 are ready for sale, which is usually in two or three years. None 

 of them are allowed to stand until they attain a large size, for 

 they would then be quite worthless, — all the planting in Eng- 

 land being done, as it all should be, when the trees are young. 

 It is a grievous fault which our countrymen labor imder, of 

 selecting large trees ; the loss is greatly increased, and little 

 or no time is saved in the end. A yovmg and vigorous tree 

 will at once take hold of the ground, and before one of large 

 size has made good the loss of its large roots, the smaller one 

 has made such headway as rarely to be overtaken. Expe- 

 rience will show that the practice of selecting large trees is 

 injudicious, and attended with very uncertain results. 



Messrs. Lawson & Son have a fine stock of all kinds of 

 ornamental trees and shrubs, evergreens, &c. The cultiva- 

 tion of the pine tribe forms an especial object of attention, 

 and at least a hundred species and varieties are a? nually 

 offered for sale : these include all the rare as well as the 

 more common kinds ; and we saw great quantities of the 

 scarce sorts, in pits or frames, raised either by cuttings, seeds, 

 or grafting. The sale of these trees, at the present time, is 

 very extensive, and much labor is required to keep a stock 

 equivalent to the demand. The Cedrus Deodara is here 

 grafted in large quantities on the Scotch larch ; but since our 

 visit we have seen a notice in the Gardener's Chronicle that 

 the larch was a poor stock, and that the only one to be de- 

 pended upon was the cedar of Lebanon. In our climate, 

 trees raised from seeds or cuttings, will be much safer than 

 grafted ones. 



The greenhouse department is extensive, and contained a 

 good assortment. We noticed a fine specimen of iStatice 

 macrophylla. Some most beautiful calceolarias were in fine 

 bloom ; a fuchsia, called Stormentf/, from France, was very 

 handsome. In the stove, a new Clerodendron, called Kaemp- 

 ferw, was blooming superbly ; all the clerodendrons are ex- 

 ceedingly showy, but they need the heat of the stove to flower 

 them well ; perhaps in our warm sun, they would flower 

 freely turned out of doors in summer ; the experiment is 

 worth trial. 



