84 



THE PARKS AND GAEDENS OF PARIS. [Chap. V. 



Tuileries, at Versailles, the Luxembourg, and in other gardens, 

 public and private ! Every one of them has cost hundreds of 

 pounds to rear it to a condition that is presentable, and only to 

 produce a deep round tuft of not very healthy green leaves at the 

 end of some seven feet of black stem. Costly tubs that rot ; 

 costly storing in large conservatories in winter ; costly carriage 

 from house to open garden, and from open garden to house, and 

 all to no good purpose whatever. The foliage differs not at all, 

 or in but a trifling degree, from that of evergreens common in our 

 shrubberies ; the clipped head of green is far inferior to that 

 afforded by the hardy and elegant spineless Eobinia : the flowers 

 are few or none. The whole thing is a relic of barbarism, and as 

 such should be excluded from any well-arranged garden. The 



MlkurA'C Ji-BAr.- 



T7ie Survival of the most Unfit > Trees in Tubs. 



kind of efi'ect they produce, if desirable, might be afforded in a far 

 higher degree by perfectly hardy subjects requiring no tubs. 

 They were all very well in an age when exotics were rare, and 

 glass-houses unknown ; but now, when we have exotics in pro- 

 fusion, and among them hardy evergreens handsomer than these, 

 and in days too when there are beautiful Orange and Lemon groves 

 in Southern France within twenty-four hours of Paris, such an 

 expensive and inartistic mode of garden-embellishment should 

 be among the things of the past. 



It is considered " correct taste " to use trees in tubs in geo- 

 metrically-laid-out terrace gardens, but there are many terraces 

 where their absence is no blemish. A row of trees in tubs is no 

 more necessary to the good effect of the terrace garden than a row of 



