THE CAMELLIA. 381 



passed through the winter of 1837-8 uninjured although 

 there were 30 of frost, and the Bays, Arbutus, and Laurels 

 standing in the open quarters only a few yards distant were 

 killed to the ground. Mr Joseph Harrison (Trans. Hort. 

 Soc., vol. vii., p. 1 68) found the double white, the double 

 red, and the double striped grow satisfactorily out-of-doors 

 at Wortley Hall, Yorkshire, " planted in a brown loam on 

 a rocky substratum." He covered the soil to the extent 

 of 3 feet from the stem of each plant with 10 inches of 

 decayed leaves on the approach of winter, removing the 

 leaves in spring. In 1829 a paper on the Camellia, by 

 William Beattie Booth, was printed in the Transactions of 

 the Horticultural Society (vol. vii., p. 519). In this paper 

 six species and twenty-three varieties are described, four of 

 the latter being figured, and it is there stated " Of these 

 very ornamental plants the society has formed an extensive 

 collection, such as I may safely say is not surpassed at the 

 present time by any other in the kingdom." It appears that 

 the double white and double striped were introduced in 1792, 

 Lady Hume's Blush in 1806, fimbriata in 1816, imbricata 

 and several other varieties in 1824. 



Many of the varieties originally introduced are now 

 but little cultivated. Hardy plants of them may be met 

 with occasionally in the gardens of the nobility and old 

 English families, but some of the modern varieties raised 

 from them are more beautiful, and have been more 

 generally cultivated within the last forty years. Many 

 fine varieties have been raised in England, especially by 

 Mr Chandler, of Vauxhall ; Mr Press, of Hornsey; and 

 Mr Fielder, of Enfield ; and France, Belgium, Italy, and 

 latterly America, have contributed largely to the improve- 

 ment of the flowers by selecting and preserving variations 

 by sports and by seed. In Loudon's Encyclopedia of 

 Plants (1829) eighteen garden varieties are enumerated, 

 and in Paxton's Botanical Dictionary (edition 1849), as we 

 have already mentioned, no fewer than 200 varieties are 

 eiven. At this date there were at least three establishments 



