4-56 Recollections of a Tour made in May, 1839, 



catacombs at some future time. In a central situation is a handsome chapel 

 in the classical style, and at the upper end of the ground is the officiating 

 minister's house. 



The Birmingham Botanic Garden. — Our readers are aware that we made a 

 plan for laying out this garden in 1831, which was published in this Magazine, 

 Vol. VIII. p. 410. The greater part of the plan has been adopted; the parts 

 deviated from being chiefly the range of hot-houses, and the arrangements 

 immediately connected with it. We proposed the hot-houses to be circular 

 in the plan, for the reasons given in the article on the subject referred to; but 

 for economy's sake a straight range has been adopted. This range, taking it 

 altogether, is one of the worst in point of taste that we know of. The 

 centre is semicircular in the front part of the plan, with a lofty dome, sur- 

 mounted by a second small dome, cupola, or glass turret, not unlike in form 

 to those sometimes put up on the roofs of offices for pigeons, and totally 

 unfit for plants ; unless we suppose that the spiry top of an Araucaria imbri- 

 ciita could be induced to rise into it; while the two sides or wings, joined to 

 this curvilinear centre are common shed-roofed structures, not half the height 

 of the dome. The want of harmony between the centre and the wings is 

 most conspicuous, from whatever direction the whole may be viewed, and in 

 our eyes it is most offensive. This impression is by no means diminished 

 when entering these houses, by the circumstance that the lofty dome, instead of 

 being filled with large plants, such as bananas, palms, and tropical trees, rising 

 from the free soil, contains a stage covered by small plants in pots. 



Having found fault with this range of glass, we have nothing but praise to 

 bestow on the management of the rest of the garden, which does the highest 

 credit to Mr. Cameron. The trees and shrubs have thriven in an extraor- 

 dinary degree, chiefly owing to the soil being deeply trenched, and kept cool 

 and moist ; and the plants being placed so far apart as to be clothed with 

 branches from the bottom upwards, and thinned out so as never to be allowed 

 to touch each other. Another cause of their thriving is ov/ing to the 

 situation of the garden ; which being on a slope with higher grounds above, 

 the soil is supplied by moisture from these high grounds, and from the porous 

 loamy subsoil, so that nothing in this garden ever suffers from drought in summer. 



There is also above an acre of natural peat in the Birmingham garden, in 

 which the -Ericaceae, and all the American and peat-earth shrubs, and peat- 

 earth herbaceous plants, thrive to admiration. Such masses of the more rare 

 dwarf rhododendrons and azaleas, vacciniums, kalmias, Andromeda squarrosa, 

 and /jypnoides, Cdrnus canadensis, Gaultheria Shallon, Linnae'a borealis, and 

 similar plants, we have never seen elsewhere. We also observed ylmygdalus 

 pumila, and other species of ylmygdalus, Prunus, and Cerasus, which, com- 

 pared with the same species in the smoky atmosphere of the London gardens, 

 are like different species. The collection of alpine plants in pots includes 

 many rare species, a number of which are not to be found in any other garden. 

 The pots are quite small, and plunged in sand ; under the shade of hedges. 

 The collection of hardy herbaceous plants, as we have mentioned in p. 416., 

 is believed to be the most complete in Britain ; and every gardener will allow 

 that no man cultivates herbaceous plants better than Mr. Cameron. On the 

 whole, we were highly gratified with this garden, and especially with the 

 growth of the trees and shrubs, as a consequence chiefly of the manner in 

 which they have been managed, though partly also of the excellence of the 

 situation. Mr. Cameron has promised us the dimensions of some of the 

 most rapid-growing kinds ; and also drawings by his daughter, Miss Cameron, 

 of some of the rare shrubs which we had never before seen in flower. 



The Birmingham Cemetery is small for the size of the town, but it is for- 

 tunate in being bounded on one side by an irregular cliff of sandstone, in 

 which are being formed galleries of catacombs, in the style of those of the 

 cemetery at Liverpool. Only a part of the grounds are laid out and planted ; 

 but this has bsen done very judiciously, with a great variety of trees and shrubs, 

 by the Messrs. Pope. A classical chapel is also completed. 



