EXOTICS IN THE OPEN AIR IN DEVONSHIRE. 



20p 



combe is the very first for climate and shelter. The cele- 

 brated Doctor Huxam used to call it the Montpellier of 

 England. In 1774, a large i^merican aloe, only twenty- 

 eight years old, and which had always stood in the open 

 ground, without covering, flowered there; it grew to the 

 height of twenty-eight feet, the leaves were six inches thick, 

 and nine feet in length, and the flowers, on forty-two 

 branches, innumerable. 



Several plants of the verbena triphylla are growing at Three leaved 

 Salcombe in the open ground, and are now six feet high, vervain. 

 I have not tried any of them myself; but as I expect to be 

 more at home in future, than for some years past, I shall 

 HOt fail to add this plant to those tender shrubs already 

 growing around me. 



Oranges and lemons, trained as peach trees against walls, Oranges and 

 and sheltered only with mats of straw during the winter, have ^'^'*"** 

 been seen in a few gardens of the south of Devonshire for 

 these hundred years. The fruit is as large and fiueas any from 

 Portugal ; some lemons from a garden near this place were, 

 about thirty-five or forty years ago, presented to the King 

 by the late Earl Poulett, from his sister Lady Bridget Bas- 

 tard, of Gerston ; and there are trees still in the neigh- 

 bourhood, the planting of which, I believe, is beyond me- 

 mory. The late Mr. Pollexfen Bastard (uncle of the frees from 

 M. P. for Devon,) who had the greatest number of oranges seed bear the 

 and lemons of any one in this country, remarked above 

 thirty years since (what tends to confirm your experiments), 

 that he found trees raised from seed, and inoculated in his 

 own garden, bore the cold better than oranges and lemons 

 imported. T have the honour to be. 



Sir, your very obedient Servant, 



A. HAWKINS. 

 Alston» near Kingshridge, Devon, 

 December, 11, I8O9. 



Vol. XXXI.— March I8II. P XII. 



