160 OUR ROCK-GARDEN 



some little patch of greenery as a reminder that 

 outside these squalid surroundings lie green fields, 

 and country lanes, and the singing of birds, a pure 

 untempered sunlight, a sky of cloudless blue. The 

 idea naturally suggests itself that its name of 

 London-pride bears allusion to the willingness of 

 the plant to share the hardness of metroplitan 

 surroundings hence the pride felt in it by the 

 metropolitans themselves ; but the real truth is that 

 its proper name should be London's pride, after a 

 famous gardener, who first brought it into notice 

 something like a century ago. 1 In its native 

 country it is called St. Patrick's cabbage. 



For the saxifrages and many other such rock plants 

 the best soil may be compounded of about three parts 

 of good loam and two parts of fine lime rubbish, the 

 sort of thing one gets on pulling down an old wall, 

 and if when the gardener is tidying up the garden 



1 The Timothy grass, so called from having been intro- 

 duced from abroad to our agriculturists by one Timothy 

 Hudson, affords us another good example of this class of 

 name : a title deriving its significance as being commemora- 

 tive of the introducer of the plant that bears it. The cud- 

 bear, in like manner, derives its name from a Dr. Cuthbert 

 Gordon, who first found out its value as a dyeing plant. 

 These honorary names are more especially found, not in 

 popular but in botanical nomenclature. As examples we 

 may instance the Begonia, named after the French botanist 

 Begon ; the Lobelia, after Lobel ; the Fuchsia, after Fuchs ; 

 the Dahlia, after Dahl, a Swedish man of science ; and the 

 Magnolia, after Professor Magnol. 



