Jclv 21, 1888.1 



THE GARDENERS' CHRONICLE. 



71 



times confused, and to separate that plant from the 

 true nareissiflorum. To this group of large indi- 

 vidual flowered Alliums belong A. macranthum 

 (Baker, Gard. Chron., and Bot. Mag., t. G789), a 

 native of the Lachen Valley, in Sikkim Himalaya, 

 at elevations of 13,000 feet above sea-level. This is 

 a most charming species, with pretty mauve-purple 

 flowers, perfectly hardy in our borders. A. nareissi- 

 florum is a Dauphiny plant, while A. pedemontanum 

 is a native of Piedmont, with larger and handsomer 

 coloured flowers. 



Horticultural Club.— The annual excur- 

 sion, in which ladies are invited to take part, is 

 fixed for Wednesday, July 25. The members and 

 their friends will meet in the first-class waiting-room 

 at Charing Cross (S. E. R.) Station, at 10.15 on the 

 morning of July 25, and will then proceed in a 

 second-class saloon carriage at 10.32, calling at 

 Cannon Street at 10.42, to Tunbridge, where brakes 

 will be in readiness to convey them to lledleaf and 

 Hever Castle, returning to Tunbridge for dinner, at 

 the " Kose and Crown " Hotel, at (i o'clock precisely, 

 whence they can return to London at 7.35. Further 

 particulars may be had from H. Hoxvwoon D'Om- 

 bbaik, Secretary, Westwell, Ashford. Kent. 



St Swithin'S DAY.— The loth of July will 

 long be remembered as one of the wettest of St. 

 Swithin's Days on record about London. It rained 

 fully twelve hours without cessation, and towards 

 the evening it resolved itself into a perfect down- 

 pour. The soil was literally soaked, the trees 

 washed beyond all previous July experience, and the 

 Apples — what there are — were cleansed by ablutions 

 far in excess of the requirements of the case : for, to 

 accord with the water used, the crop should have 

 been fifty times "as large. If what is standing does 

 not become remarkably fine in the autumn it will 

 not be for lack of moisture at the tree roots. It is 

 worthy of note, however, that the trees so far have 

 not made growth in excess of what was made by this 

 time last year. If we get a tine warm autumn, not 

 only should the fruit be fine, but there should be a 

 wonderful swelling up of fruit spurs for another year. 



Funeral Wreaths.— The last number of the 

 Gartenflora gives a series of illustrations of the 

 wreaths forwarded by various illustrious personages 

 on the occasion of the interment of the Emperor 

 Fbhderick. For the most part they seem to have 

 been sufficiently ugly, lacking in taste and refine- 

 ment. Oddly enough, a wreath sent by King George 

 of Tonga seems to have been the least objectionable 

 of the whole. It consisted of a leaf of a Latania 

 as a background, on which was placed a bouquet 

 loosely arranged and surmounted by an imperial 

 crown. Obtrusive ribbons form a prominent feature 

 i if all the designs. 



N anodes MEDUS/E.— Mr. J. Cahvii.t. writes: — 

 " A very fine specimen, with thirty flowers, of this 

 most peculiar Orchid, is now flowering in Mr. 

 BnrEESEHANS collection at Paragon House, Black- 

 heath." 



Tree Guards in Sheep-runs.— Mr. Sidney 

 Ford, of Leonardslee, made at the recent meeting 

 of the Fruit Conference committee the interesting 

 statementthat the best form of tree-guards in orchards 

 and fields where sheep fed, was found in loose coats 

 of stout mesh wire, 3 or 4 feet high, fixed securely yet 

 loosely round the stems of the trees. Against these 

 the sheep would rub and the guards would revolve 

 with the friction, until the animals, soon tired of the 

 operation. The wire is cheap and enduring, and 

 would prove a protection also against ground game. 



Table Decorations.— The following note, 



extracted from the Queen, may prove serviceable to 

 some of our readers : — " Beautiful have been the 

 flowers at the dinner parties. Mrs. Pattison showed 

 what a great effect could be produced by foliage of 

 rare kinds, set in silver stands. Alpine Poppies 

 have found favour with Mrs. Newgate, at Prince's 



Gate ; Mrs. Rickards, in Cavendish Place ; Mrs. 

 Dimsdale, in Palace Gate ; and with Countess 

 Rosse, at the pretty dinner she gave last Saturday ; 

 the Duchess of Leinster, the previous day, chose 

 similar flowers, which were placed in silver bowls, 

 with the Directoire wreaths, on the table. Mrs. 

 Gwynne Holford had them in silver bowls and 

 stands. Mrs. Dennistoun placed hers in a notably 

 handsome gold service, and Mrs. Johnston Foster, 

 in Chesterfield Street, in silver baskets, with cres- 

 cents and Directoire wreaths on the cloth. Mrs. 

 Naylor Leyland carried out the original idea of a 

 green velvet cloth, with the alpine Poppies upon 

 them in glasses, and arranged as wreaths — a triumph 

 of colour. The Countess of Kimberley displayed 

 them in fine Kose du Barry vases. Mrs. Dennis- 

 toun, of Golfhill, placed the alpine Poppies in a • 

 gold service, giving a posy of Roses to each lady. 

 The Hon. Mrs. Oliphant had trelliswork baskets of 

 the Poppies. The Shirley Poppies are, perhaps, 

 newer. Mrs. Van de Weyer gave a most enjoyable 

 dinner on Tuesday, and her table decorations were 

 particularly admired, with these Poppies placed in 

 gold baskets. Mrs. Phelps also showed them to the 

 best advantage in baskets, and Mrs. Akers, in Hyde 

 Park Terrace, enhanced the beauty of a very fine 

 service of plate with these same Shirley Poppies. 

 Mrs. Ambroise Ralli had them arranged in in- 

 numerable devices, and Mrs. Turner in wreaths 

 and crescents. The June Roses were especially 

 beautiful. Mrs. Dunsterville displayed blush 

 and yellow Roses on her table, in silver baskets 

 and in wreaths, and no flower makes such 

 perfect wreaths. Mrs. Siltzer, in Cromwell House, 

 had yellow shaded Roses, which loaded the air with 

 sweetness. Lady Constance Gore, in St. George's 

 Place, had a table of pink and yellow Roses, the 

 combination which Madame La Valiere loved so 

 much. Mrs. Whish mixed red and pink, and Mrs. 

 Henry White, black, red, yellow and pink Roses, the 

 former being, of course, extremely rare, but adding 

 mightily to the effect. Miss Monk, at Buckingham 

 Gate, had red Roses. Mrs. Russell Gole, pink and 

 vellow Roses. Mrs. Montagu again had another 

 variety, the finest shaded Roses in silver baskets, 

 which were interspersed with wreaths on the cloth. 

 Mrs. Arthur Wilson celebrated her silver wedding by 

 a large dinner party, when each guest received either 

 a bouquet de corsage or a buttonhole of Devoniensis 

 Roses, matching the blooms placed on the table in 

 silver bowls. Mrs. Estcourt started a pretty generous 

 fashion ; her table was arranged with branches of 

 Catherine Mermet and Marechal Niel Roses, so that 

 they might be worn afterwards by the guests. Mrs. 

 Peebles, on Friday, displayed pale pink and yellow 

 Roses ; and Countess Cadogan, on Monday, had 

 shaded Roses, which were laid on the cloth. Mrs. 

 Powles intermixed fairy lights with her Roses. All 

 white flowers are now much used for the decoration 

 of dinner-tables. Lady Burton had quite a country 

 rustic bouquet in her amalgamation of Forget-me- 

 Nots, white Poppies. Marguerites, and other wild 

 flowers." 



RALEIGH. — Attention is this week turned to the 

 memory of a great national event, which we all, 

 even as children, learned to look back on with pride. 

 So familiar to us are all the incidents that history 

 has preserved, that we hardly realise the gap in time 

 between the 1815 Waterloo and the 1588 Armada. 

 Lucas' ideal picture of the " Game of Bowls on the 

 Hoe" is as fresh to us as a sketch from "our 

 special artist" of an illustrated paper at Bur- 

 mah or the Cape, and we almost in the inter- 

 vals forget what our living friends, wearing V.C.'s, 

 did in the Crimea. We feel we have given 

 the last honours in funeral rights to the Elizabethan 

 heroes in our own lifetime. Happily one part of 

 the Plymouth programme is the game of bowls ; 

 for our warriors then were not always leading 

 troops in Flanders or running little ships against 

 Spanish galleons in Mexican waters. They had 

 their periods of rest from fighting, though fighting 

 then, ashore or afloat, occupied so much time. And 

 it is pleasant for those of us who enjoy the pleasures 



of cultivating trees and flowers to remember how 

 the peaceful times — times to be reckoned only 

 in months and weeks — of one of the most 

 prominent men of Elizabeth's Court were passed. 

 Raleigh, who has been so misrepresented in 

 history — who has been called an upstart adventurer, 

 while his family connections on both sides were of 

 the highest in the country, who had relatives at 

 Court long before the apocryphal cloak incident — 

 was, though a warrior who had served abroad, a 

 fore-thinking colonizer, a courtier, a scholar, and a 

 statesman. He was also a naturalist, and while the 

 bunting is still flapping in the Plymouth breezes to 

 remind us of cannon and sword point, we may turn 

 to this side of his life with a calm pleasure. 

 Those who have had the good fortune to wile away 

 a lazy holiday near Budleigh, on the South Devon 

 coast, wheie his boyhood was spent, can have no 

 difficulty in understanding his keen appreciation of 

 natural beauties. The woods, the flower-decked 

 banks, the hedgerows, attractive with insect-life, 

 and the sea-shore, with its many voices, from those 

 of gentle murmur to angry storm, all spoke to him 

 before he went to Oxford to pa«s on to his duties as 

 a man in troublous times. An.l all through his life 

 we can trace this influence. Was ever man more 

 called on to show his many-sidedness than 

 Raleigh? There have been his equals, but few 

 his superiors, in this — yet, if it be that we read him 

 rightly, in his times of repose he enjoyed natural 

 beauties. His idea of the planting of Sherbourne i3 

 an illustration of it. Even in his account of his 

 exploration in Guiana, where he was occupied with 

 the care of his men, and noting the course of rivers 

 and the position of hills, he breaks away to speak 

 of verdant plains and " deer trooping down, as 

 if called by a keeper," notes the trees he sees, 

 and speaks of the plants new to him as " enough 

 to fill ten herbals." So keen was his eye, 

 that on his second visit to Guiana he noted 

 the "change in habitat" of plants. We revere 

 writers like Herodotus and Pausanias who have told 

 us what thev saw, but Raleigh stands as one of the 

 first who used his pen as an artist would his brush to 

 give us glimpses of beautiful scenery abroad. Bota- 

 nists will ever be thankful to his memory for having 

 sent so accomplished a scholar and naturalist as 

 Heriot to Virginia — Heriot's report stands as the 

 prototype of reports by naturalists " attached 

 to expeditions." That Raleigh introduced Tobacco 

 and the Potato we know is mere fable, but 

 he will always be remembered as the first English- 

 man who sent a naturalist abroad to report on the 

 flora of a country intended to be a colony. May he 

 have a memorial not only among his comrades-in- 

 arms, but also in our Imperial Institute as the first 

 Englishman who with careful foresight thought of 

 colonisation. 



THE MUMMY PEA. — Every year we receive 

 specimens of a Pea in which the stems are more or 

 less flattened into a riband-like form, and twisted 

 spirally. There is a nonsensical story of its having 

 originally been derived from seeds found in the 

 wrappings of a mummy. A better designation 

 is Crown Pea, as, owing to the distortion 

 of the stem, the flowers and buds are often 

 collected into a sort of crown at the ends of the 

 stalks. The case is interesting as showing that a 

 particular monstrosity can be reproduced from seed. 

 A figure of this Pea was given in our number for 

 January 11, 1873, where a full history of the Pea is 

 also to be found. 



Liquorice Culture in Russia.— Liquorice 



root (Glycyrrhiza glabra), which is now but little 

 cultivated in this country, the chief supplies coming 

 to us from Spain and Italy, is said to have become 

 of late an important article of cultivation in the 

 neighbourhood of Batoum. A few years ago its 

 existence was scarcely known or heeded. It is now 

 grown in great abundance at Liakha, in the district 

 of Elizavetopol. The quantity exported from this 

 place in 1887 amounted to 1400 tons, and the average 

 price on the spot of production is about £2 per ton, 

 and at the port of Batoum, properly pressed and 

 packed, it realises over £6 per ton. 



