288 A HISTORY OF GARDENING IN ENGLAND. 



many as sixty-two new varieties, and during the next ten years 

 he added many more, including such favourites as Marechal 

 Niel, Louis Van Houtte, and Paul Neyron. This profusion of 

 new roses which is still being added to year by year, has banished 

 many of the old ones, such as the sweet Moss Rose and Damask, 

 which deserve a place, as well as the hybrid perpetuals and teas. 



The Dahlia,* a native of Mexico, was first introduced in 1789 

 from Spain by Lady Bute, but was lost and re-introduced in 1804 

 by Lady Holland, and twenty years later the craze for these 

 flowers reached its height. The Fuchsia appeared in this country 

 within the first five-and-twenty years of this century, although 

 named by Plumier after Fuchs about a hundred years earlier. The 

 story is told of how Lee saw a Fuchsia plant in a window of a 

 small house in Wapping. He was so struck with the flower that 

 he went in and asked the old woman to whom it belonged whether 

 she would sell it to him. She, however, at first refused to part 

 with it, as it had been sent to her by her husband who was 

 a sailor, but was persuaded to let him have it when he offered 

 her eight guineas and promised to give her two of the 

 first plants he reared. He succeeded in getting some three 

 hundred cuttings to strike, and presented the old woman 

 with her share, while the rest, with their graceful hanging flowers, 

 astonished the visitors to his Nursery, and brought him in a 

 profit of about £"300. t 



That which perhaps would most astonish a gardener of 

 the fifteenth century, could he but for one moment see it, 

 would be an orchid house. Numerous as orchids are to-day, 

 they nearly all have been imported during the last fifty years. 

 There are still tracts of country which have not been searched, 

 but most of the orchid-growing portions of the globe have been 

 ransacked, and these glorious plants packed off by thousands to 

 this country, leaving in some cases their native habitats bare. 

 One reads accounts of whole districts being denuded of these 

 treasures ; for instance, a certain locality, once the home of 

 Miltonia vexillaria, was so pillaged that the woods in the vicinity 



"* Named after Dahl the Swedish botanist, and quite distinct from the 

 Dalea called after Dr. Samuel Dale (1659- 1739). 

 t A^. and 0., Sept., 1894. 



