A TALK WITH FLORA AND POMONA. 21 



ever raised ! " [We beg our readers to understand that these were 

 Pomona's words and not ours.] She gave us, after this, very special 

 charge to impress it upon her devotees in the United States, not to 

 be too much smitten with the love of new names, and great collec- 

 tions. It gave her more satisfaction to see the orchards and frail 

 room of one of her liege subjects teeming with the abundance of the 

 few sorts of real golden merit, than to see whole acres of new varie- 

 ties that have no other value than that of novelty. She said too, 

 that it was truly amazing how this passion for collecting fruits a 

 genuine monomania grew upon a poor mortal, when he was once 

 attacked by it ; so that indeed, if he could not add every season at 

 least fifty new sorts from the continent, with some such outlandish 

 names, (which she said she would never recognize,) as Beurr bleu 

 cFett nouveau de Scrowsywowsy, etc., he would positively hang him- 

 self in a fit of the blues ! 



Pomona further drew our attention in some sly remarks that 

 were half earnest and half satire, to the figure that many of these 

 " Belgian pericarps " cut at those handsome levees, which her vota- 

 ries among us hold in the shape of the great September exhibitions. 

 She said it was really droll to see, at such shows as those of our two 

 large cities, where there was a profusion of ripe and luscious fruit, 

 that she would have been proud of in her own celestial orchards 

 to see there intermingled some hundred or so mean looking, hard 

 green pears, that never had ripened, or never did, would, or could 

 ripen, so as to be palatable to any but a New Zealander. " Do so- 

 licit my friends there, for the sake of my feelings," said she, " to give 

 the gentlemen who take such pleasure in exhibiting this degenerate 

 foreign squad, a separate 'green room' for themselves." To this 

 remark we smiled and bowed low, though we would not venture to 

 carry out her suggestion for the world. 



We had a delightful little chat with Flora, about some new 

 plants which she told us grew in certain unknown passes in the 

 Rocky Mountains, and mountainous parts of Mexico, that will prove 

 quite hardy with us, and which neither Mr. Fortune nor the London 

 Horticultural Society know any thing about. But she finally in- 

 formed us, that her real object in making herself visible on the 

 earth at present, with Madam Pomona, was to beg us to enter her 



