March 7, 1894.] 



Garden and Forest. 



93 



sion. It does very well for the outline of his figure ; but 

 the heights of aesthetic extravagance are reached by using 

 painted porcelain for the finer touches and features which 

 cannot be made sufficiently realistic by green twigs alone. 



Facing the entrance there were two Ligustrum sinensis 

 dragons, about ten feet high, with painted porcelain eyes, 

 scarlet sheet-tin jaws, serrated iron backs and shell-tipped 

 claws. These monsters, which werecrouchingtospringupon 

 the first St. George that entered, were really quite tame and 

 were growing in eighteen-inch pots. There were men 

 made of a species of Ulmus, and women of Cerissa fcetida. 

 The latter tottered on tiny clay-formed feet, the mark of the 

 highest Celestial beauty, and had enameled heads and 

 hands to match. The long sleeves and flowing robes of 

 the high-caste Chinese dame were skillfully contrived with 

 pliant branches. They all looked limp and languid and 

 had the demure downcast look which is the regulation 

 mien of the modest dwellers of the "inner chambers." 



These artists select plants to suit their subjects, and there 

 is certainly something appropriate in that aggressive 

 prickly plant, Euphorbia splendens, to represent the tragic 

 villain of the Chinese play. He does not resemble the 

 cool, cynical black-mustached villain that parades his ras- 

 calities in our theatres. The Chinese villain is a demon, 

 and looks it. The red and black lines painted on his face 

 make him look very terrific. His Euphorbia body is girt 

 about with edge tools, and he invariably carries a murder- 

 ous-looking trident ; his posture is the one of tragic menace, 

 which he assumes before he turns a somersault and 

 spears his rival in the final leap. 



But I am inclined to think that the figure of the "foreign 

 man" is the highest achievement in the garden. This effigy 

 usually masquerades in a suit of Atalantia buxifolia, and 

 occasionally Zizyphus vulgaris, and the Celestial artist 

 who trained the twigs to form the "foreign devil" that 

 honors the "City of Rams" with a visit, had a fund of 

 sardonic humor that puts Cruikshank and Du Maurier in 

 the shade. He stands erect on a brick pedestal, with one 

 of his legs bent forward, a la militaire ; his baggy trousers 

 and long claw-hammer coat, the tails slightly curled up at 

 the ends, are of the cut of a by-gone generation. His 

 right arm is raised, and in his hand he flourishes a cane. 

 His face is painted in a patchy fashion ; he has mutton- 

 chop whiskers, a delicately curled mustache and a wedge- 

 shaped imperial. This is crowned with an old-fashioned 

 plug-hat, which is slightly tilted back and bent over at an 

 angle which gives the figure an air of conceited and com- 

 ical audacity. The "foreign man" is not grown exten- 

 sively, and he is not nearly so popular as the Euphorbia 

 demon. 



Boats called "sam-pans" are shaped in Rubus rosas- 

 folia, and junks in Photinia Japonica. The clay figures 

 that people these boats are cast in natural attitudes, and 

 they have nothing in common with the perpendicular 

 Shems and Hams associated with the Noah's arks of our 

 earlier days. The postures and natural attitudes of the 

 floating population are caught as if by a photographic snap- 

 shot. Men, women and children lounge, squat, gesture 

 and mimic the playfulness of youth, the inertia of age, and 

 the workaday life of manhood ; all within the limits of a 

 model two feet long. 



Ficus retusa, the Banyan-tree of China, is peculiarly 

 amenable in the hands of the trainers, and figures of the 

 melancholy stork, the stately crane and the strutting pea- 

 cock are cunningly fashioned with its branches. This tree 

 and the Ligustrum are also used to mimic griffins and pa- 

 godas. The latter have small bells hung from the abutting 

 angles of each story that tinkle melodiously to passing 

 zephyrs. On models of fish the vegetable sculptor expends 

 considerable labor, and, judging from their number and 

 variety, they must be his favorite subject. All sorts offish, 

 from the festive shark to the untinned lobster, were sport- 

 ing about among the pot-plants in lively profusion. These 

 all had large round earthenware eyes with a comically 

 cold and stony expression. The gardens also abound in a 



collection of jars, vases, urns and other -curiosities, not in 

 blue china, but in green privet. 



A frame-work of whole or split stems of Bambusa flexuosa 

 is used for the larger figures, and the branches are tied 

 sometimes with "rhea," the fibre of Bcehmeria nivea, but 

 more generally with "wong-ma," the fibre of the Wong- 

 ma-chuk, or Yellow Bamboo. This last-named fibre is ex- 

 ceptionally strong and durable, and much superior to 

 raffia, the cuticle of Raphia rufta, or the old-fashioned 

 bast, the inner bark of Paritium elatum. 



It is remarkable that the Chinese " fa-wong," or flower- 

 king, as the gardener is called, does not care to part with 

 his works of art. If you offer to buy, the price he quotes 

 is almost prohibitive. The fact is, these plants are not 

 grown for sale, but for hiring out as decorative plants at 

 marriage ceremonies and for other festive occasions. 



I have heard the Chinese described as stolid and un- 

 imaginative. This is a mistake. When the vegetable 

 sculptor gives his genius rein he can ascend to heights of 

 delirious conception, and he creates strange contorted 

 monstrosities in moulded clay and green branches. The 

 dragon and the griffin may be mythical monsters to us ; to 

 the Chinaman they are real, and their pictures have been 

 handed down to him by the long line of ancestors he wor- 

 ships. But his fertile fancy conjures up animal horrors far 

 exceeding the dragon and the griffin in the complicated 

 anomalies of form and hideous expression. However 

 ridiculous or anomalous foreigners may be inclined to con- 

 sider these clever distortions of vegetable growth, one cannot 

 fail to admire the skill and patience so conscientiously ex- 

 pended on the work, and to appreciate the imagination and 

 genuine creative faculty which can conceive so clearly 

 what is afterward carried out so successfully. 



Manchester-by-the-Sea, Mass. A.B. Westland. 



Foreign Correspondence. 



London Letter. 



Edgeworthia chrysantha is a handsome winter-flowering 

 shrub which does not appear to be known in horticulture, 

 although introduced from China by Fortune fifty years ago. 

 In the temperate-house at Kew it is represented by a large 

 bush five feet high, with numerous thick stems, branched 

 above and bearing, in summer, terminal clusters of broad 

 lanceolate green leaves, which fall off in the autumn, and 

 are succeeded in February by terminal ball-like umbels of 

 bright lemon-yellow Daphne-like fragrant flowers. These 

 last several weeks, gradually changing color to creamy 

 white ; they are attractive to the eye throughout, and ex- 

 hale a most alluring Violet-like odor. Planted out in a bor- 

 der of good soil this shrub has taken care of itself for many 

 years, but it has never flowered so freely as this year. It 

 may be propagated either by division or from cuttings. 

 There is a figure of it, a very poor one, in Zina/ey's Botan- 

 ical Register, 1847, t. 48, where Fortune states that it flow- 

 ers in Chusan in July, and that in order to induce it to 

 flower the Chinese bend the stems round so as to form a 

 loop, but this has not been found necessary at Kew. In 

 the Botatiical Magazine, t. 7180, there is a figure of E. Gard- 

 neri, prepared from a plant flowered at Kew in 1891, and 

 which had been raised from seeds sent from the Hima- 

 layas. Sir Joseph Hooker considers this Edgeworthia and 

 E. chrysantha to be specifically identical, but for garden 

 purposes at any rate they must be kept distinct, E. Gard- 

 neri having thin hairy stems and smaller and less silky leaves 

 than the Chinese plant, from which it also differs in not 

 losing its leaves during winter. E. chrysantha is a hand- 

 some shrub for the greenhouse, but, so far as I know E. 

 Gardneri, I should scarcely recommend it to the notice of 

 horticulturists. 



Senecio Ghiesbreghtii, although in cultivation for many 

 years and long a conspicuous object in the temperate-house 

 at Kew, had not received the distinction of a first-class 

 certificate until last Tuesday, when it was shown by Sir 



