Proceedings of the London Horticultural Society. 577 



more hardy than C. Laurocerasus, the common laurel. This could not have 

 been expected from what are reported to be the natural habitats of those two 

 species; the former inhabiting the mountains of Portugal and Madeira, where 

 the climate is softened by the mild air of the Atlantic, and the latter being 

 found on the mountains of the most eastern parts of Europe and of Persia, 

 where the winters are more rigorous than in western countries. The death of 

 the sweet bay and the laurustinus, on the other hand, corresponds with what 

 might be anticipated from their inhabiting only the warm rifts of calcareous 

 rocks in the south of Europe, where, if their branches are ever killed, their 

 roots are secured against all chances of destruction. 



" On Cape plants there is little to observe further than that all the shrubby 

 species are evidently too tender to deserve cultivation, without protection, 

 north of Cornwall and Devonshire. It is, however, satisfactory to find that 

 the hard-skinned Cape bulbs and tuberous pelargonia will live in the open 

 border, with only the aid of a covering of fern leaves, provided the border is 

 well drained; and the undoubtedly hardy habits of Aponogeton distachyon, 

 and Richards africana, have secured to us two additional handsome aquatics. 



" The low southern latitudes of South America have furnished a few ac- 

 cessions to hardy collections, among which the Araucaria Dombeyi is the most 

 interesting for the possessors of parks and large gardens, and it has now 

 become an object of some national importance to procure supplies of seeds of 

 this plant from Valparaiso; for to introduce in abundance so remarkable a 

 vegetable production as this when old, with columnar trunks often 100 ft. high, 

 surmounted by a pyramid of its grotesque branches, would be an object 

 scarcely less than national, even if the plant did not furnish excellent timber, 

 and an abundance of valuable resin. It also appears that Aristotel/a Macqui, 

 and the escallonias, rubra and glandulosa, all beautiful evergreens, are about 

 as hardy as a laurustinus, that the graceful little Berberis empetrifolia is re- 

 gardless of cold, and that Collet/a horrida, Duvau« ovata, and Heimk salici- 

 folia, also seem likely to bear this climate. 



" Of Californian and Mexican plants, the former prove more tender than 

 those from Mexico ; a circumstance doubtless to be explained by the Cali- 

 fornian species having been taken indiscriminately from warm valleys and 

 mountain sides, while no one has thought of naturalising any Mexican species 

 except from the cold mountain ridges. All the beautiful pines and firs from 

 these regions, of whose habits so little was previously known, prove to be 

 hardy wherever they have been tried, with the exception of Pinus insfgnis 

 and P. leiophylla. 



" The winters of North America are usually so rigorous north of the dis- 

 tricts warmed by the Gulf of Mexico, that to state that a plant is from the 

 United States, is usually equivalent to saying it is hardy. There are, how- 

 ever, some exceptions to that rule, and it is requisite to possess the experience 

 of such a winter as this, in order to judge whether the plants from British 

 possessions on the Pacific would be as hardy as those from the Atlantic side 

 of the Rocky mountains. The latter seems now to be well established, for 

 of all the numerous valuable plants introduced by the Society from North 

 West America, not one of any importance, with the exception, perhaps, of 

 J'rbutus procera, proved tender ; and, what is of the utmost practical im* 

 portance, it is now clear that /i v bies Douglasif, a species which grows as fast 

 as the larch, has much better timber, is evergreen, and reaches an enormous 

 size, is perfectly suited to the climate of Great Britain. Yuccas also resisted 

 the frost so very generally, that they may be safely introduced into gardens as 

 hardy endogenous shrubs ; and the same observation applies to Faccinium 

 ovatum, one of the handsomest of evergreens." 



The author next proceeded to advert to the singular fact, that in those 

 places where the cold was very severe the more plants were exposed the less 

 they suffered, and vice versa. This he explained upon the supposition, that 

 in warm places vegetation had already made some progress, and plants were 

 stimulated prematurely into growth, their stems were filled with fluid, and 



