180 OUR ROCK-GARDEN 



often larger than those of the blackberry, are built 

 up of fewer granules, and have not the glossy 

 appearance of those of the bramble. In a wild state 

 it prefers open fields and waste ground rather than 

 hedgerows, and it has, with ourselves at least, not 

 proved itself so amenable to cultivation as its 

 relative. 



The stone bramble, another member of the 

 blackberry family, is more especially a plant of the 

 mountain slopes of the north, and we have failed to 

 grow it very successfully in our Surrey garden. The 

 leaves are thin and slight in texture, and generally 

 made up of three nearly equal leaflets. The flowers, 

 as our illustration shows Plate XXVIII. are very 

 small, while the fruit is built up not of numerous 

 small parts, as in the blackberry, but of a few large 

 ones. A reference from this figure to that on 

 Plate XIX. will at once show how marked is the 

 difference in appearance. The whole plant is barely 

 a foot in height : botanically it is the Rubus saxa- 

 tilis, the specific name signifying that which dwells 

 amongst stones. 



The hop makes a noble show, and when well 

 laden with its masses of pale green clustering cones 

 is distinctly attractive. It has immense powers of 

 running, and grows with phenomenal rapidity. To 

 test this we, on May 25th, took one sprout under 

 careful observation, recording each morning at nine 

 o'clock its growth. On the 26th it had gained four 



