90 Notes and Recollections of a Tour. 



conducts to the cascade and thence to the grand conservatory 

 — at present, one of the principal objects of Chatsworth. 



The conservatory is the largest structure for plants in the 

 country, and covers more than an acre of ground. Its exact 

 measurement is two hundred and eighty feet long, one hun- 

 dred twenty-two wide, and seventy feet high, and contains 

 over sixty-two thousand feet of glass. It is buiit on the 

 ridge and furrow system, in the curvilinear form, and the 

 sides being only half as high as the centre, it has somewhat 

 the appearance of one house being set upon another. The 

 centre is supported, at its junction with the sides, by large 

 hollow iron columns, through which the water is conducted 

 from the roof. As it was put up when iron was extremely 

 high, it is erected wholly of timber ; this gives it a heavier 

 appearance. Iron would have made a far more graceful 

 building. Many of the principal beams are thick, to ensure 

 strength, and although it is intended to cover them with 

 climbing plants, yet it will be scarcely possible to shut 

 them out. A carriage drive, twelve feet wide, runs through 

 the centre, a narrow walk all round it, and a cross walk 

 divides it into four parts. A gallery extends completely 

 around the interior from which the plants may be viewed 

 to great advantage. The following plants were the most 

 noted here : — Araucaria braziliensis thirty feet high : Mi- 

 mosa Smithidna thirty feet, and a fine flower; Sterculia 

 jolatanifolia fifty feet; Cbcos plumosa thirty feet; Corypha 

 umbracaulifera twenty-five feet; Bombax aculeata thirty 

 feet ; Sabal Blackburnid/ia twenty feet ; Brownea grandiflora 

 ten feet; Bouganvillea spectdbilis, forty feet, with elegant 

 rose-colored bractea. Our native i/ibiscus palustris was 

 blooming as finely as in its native habitat, although ex- 

 posed to a temperature of 75^] this shows that it is an ad- 

 mirable plant for forcing. >S'olanum grandiflorum, Aralia 

 Sabin^d/m, iifibiscus pulcherrimus, with showy scarlet flow- 

 ers ; Passiflora fragrans, Abutilon striatum Crassula falcata, 

 Francisea Hoped/ia fragrant and fine, &c. Brugmansia 

 suaveolens had upwards of three hundred flowers expanded 

 and was exceedingly showy; Stephanotus floribundus had 

 run up one of the columns more than twenty feet, and was 

 displaying hundreds of its fragrant white flowers. Durantia 



