Funchal and its Gardens 



touched 50° as a minimum, and 79° as a 

 maximum. The maximum is unusually low ; 

 the minimum is normal. In a record of several 

 years I have only found the thermometer to 

 fall below 49° on one night. The effect of 

 this on plant life will be at once evident. It 

 means that, putting aside questions of soil, and 

 in a minor degree of wind, you can grow out of 

 doors everything cultivated in a cool greenhouse 

 in England, and some of the things commonly 

 designated as stove-plants. Where we break 

 down is with plants whose health requires a 

 cold snap. To find the spring flowers — the 

 anemones, the daffodils, the violets — in per- 

 fection, we must go to an altitude of 1500 

 to 2000 feet above the sea, where winter nights 

 are cold, and snow sometimes falls, though not 

 to lie. At least one garden at such an altitude 

 has a character perhaps unique — a glorified 

 English garden, where English flowers hold 

 their own amid sub-tropical trees and shrubs ; 

 where avenues of camelias rehabilitate the fame 

 of that too long unfashionable flower, and 

 Australasian tree-ferns fill the dells with a 

 luxuriance unknown elsewhere in the Northern 

 Hemisphere. 



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