NOVEMBER 243 



is written in a cheerful, parochial, kindly tone, most 

 helpful to those who live rural lives in and near villages. 

 He rejoices, as one would think everyone must, in the 

 allotment system. He suggests in his preface that 

 pohticians should send horticultural teachers into our 

 villages. This has now been done, and I am told the 

 lectures given this winter in our own village at home have 

 been most helpful and instructive. I myself should much 

 like to see flower and vegetable shows managed on some 

 other system. I think that prizes should be given for 

 healthy quantity grown in a small space, and for the general 

 clean and healthy appearance of well-stocked gardens. 

 Such things are a great deal more important, for food- 

 producing purposes, than that there should be a few giant 

 Onions, Carrots, or Cabbages ; for size rarely adds to the 

 excellence of vegetables. Dean Hole truly remarks that 

 the allotment system wiU always have two opponents : 

 there will always be idle men who wiU not have gardens, 

 and ignorant men who will not know how to use them. 



1894. ' ItaUan Gardens,' by Charles A. Piatt. This 

 is a book pubhshed in New York ; it is very pretty, and 

 full of excellent reproductions of artistically taken photo- 

 graphs. The letterpress describes the gardens. Of ViUa 

 Lante, at Bagni near Viterbo, there are four illustrations. 

 The book was given to me by two kind American ladies, 

 a mother and daughter, who came to spend a summer's 

 day with me in my garden. They had been all round 

 Europe, studying gai'dens large and small, and the 

 daughter hoped to lay out some original and typical 

 gardens in America that would be suitable to the soil and 

 the climate ; also to try and preserve the beautiful flora 

 of that country, which is in danger of dying away. I 

 thought the idea interesting. In their time and way, under 

 their blue skies and in their lovely situations, nothing, I 

 imagine, will ever come near the beautiful Mediciaa 



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