596 Recollections of a Gardening Tour. 



The labour of keeping the pleasure-ground here, as in all 

 old places, might be considerably diminished by leaving off the 

 digging, hoeing, and raking of the borders, and giving up the 

 idea of growing herbaceous plants, roses, and such like articles 

 in them. There is a kind of keeping appropriate to every place, 

 according to its age. A newly formed place may have the shrub- 

 beries dug for a few years, till the permanent shrubs are firmly 

 established ; when herbaceous plants, roses, and such temporary 

 shrubs as some of the short-lived species of Genista, Cytisus, 

 Hibes, i?ubus, &c., should be removed, and the ground sown 

 down with grass, turfed up to the points of the recumbent 

 branches, or allowed to become covered with moss, according to 

 soil, situation, and other circumstances. After a place attains a 

 certain age, such as Blair-Drummond, all the deciduous shrubs 

 that are under the shade of trees should be removed, for assuredly 

 there is no deciduous shrub that will thrive under trees, and 

 only broad-leaved (as opposed to needle-leaved) evergreens re- 

 tained, as they alone thrive in the shade. When evergreens 

 among old trees are allowed abundance of room, they form 

 splendid objects ; the colour of the foliage becomes much darker 

 than when the plants are fully exposed to the light; and it also 

 shines more. In winter, nothing can be more delightful than to 

 walk in such a wood, where, owing to the radiation being checked 

 by the trees, the temperature is much milder than in an open 

 shrubbery. There might be many fine walks of this kind at 

 Blair-Drummond, if these hints were followed out. 



Aug. 10. — Stirling. We devoted this day to seeing the 

 Castle, Messrs. Drummond's Agricultural Museum, the King's 

 Knot, supposed to be the gardens of James II., the Bowling 

 Green, and some other places. There are many curious archi- 

 tectural remains in the castle, which, owing to some misunder- 

 standing between the governor and the keeper, we had great 

 difficulty in seeing. There never appears to have been any 

 good taste in the architecture ; for the proportions of the mem- 

 bers are clumsy, and the sculpture and statuary incorrect and 

 unpoetical imitations. The view of the Forth from the castle is 

 reckoned one of the finest things of the kind in the world ; but at 

 the time we saw it it was low water, and we could not detect the 

 windings of the river. 



Messrs. Drummond's Agricultural Museum is the first con- 

 cern of the kind that was established in Scotland, and it is im- 

 possible too highly to estimate the good which it has done, not 

 only in the immediate neighbourhood, but throughout Scotland; 

 we might even say throughout the world, for Messrs. Drum- 

 mond not only send agricultural implements to England and 

 Ireland, but to the East and West Indies, and to North and 

 South America. To England and Ireland they not only send 



