81 
But the large conservatory has long been considered one of the 
chief attractions of Chatsworth ; in fact, before the erection of 
the great palm house at Kew it ranked foremost in the world as 
a plant house, and even now is without a rival in many respects. 
It contains tropical rarities which in point of cultivation and 
size are not met with elsewhere. The abundant space which the 
lofty and capacious house affords admits of the vegetation it 
contains growing as luxuriantly as in the tropics, and well 
might it be said that one can readily imagine one’s self in the iat 
of a rich tropical jungle or forest. 
Growing not in plots or tubs, but in a deep, rich well-drained 
soil, magestic cocoa-nut, date, ceroxylon, kentia, sabal, talipot, and 
other palms, tower up to almost their natural heights—some of 
them the result of 50 years’ growth—and overshadow with their 
weighty ample foliage their less pretentious but powerful 
neighbours, tree ferns, panax, aralia, cordyline, zamias, and 
eycas. The great bananas (Musa superba and M. Ensete), of 
Abyssinia, vie, in their magnificent groups of broad massive 
leafage, with their allies the strelitzias of Africa, and singular 
urana or traveller’s tree of Madagascar, whilst bread fruit, jack 
fruit, anona or “sweet sop,” avocado pear, spondias or “vi apple,” 
mangoes, mangosteen (king of fruits), diospyros or “ persimmon,” 
liche, longan, papaw apple, durian, Bengal quince, jujube, and a 
host of other fruit trees of the temperate and torrid zones are in 
their element, and, struggling for space amidst pandanus, 
mangroves, banyan, cinnamon, and nutmeg trees, ixoras, jonesias, 
browneas, and scores of others remarkable either for the 
brilliancy, beauty, or singularity of their flowers, or the grandeur 
of their foliage. An exuberant undergrowth of many kinds of 
dwarf ferns—arum, begonia, piper, tradescantia, maranta, Dill- 
bergia, caladium, and like vegetation fills every available space, 
and up the pillars that support the vast roof, as also the stems of 
the taller trees, gay and brilliant flowering climbers find their way 
to the glass and partly obscure it. Glorious effects are produced 
in this large conservatory by massing a number of specimens of 
any particularly strong kind of plant together—Musa coccinea, 
for instance, from Cochin China, five or six in a group, with pale- 
green whorls of broad leafage, and dazzling scarlet bracts, leat a 
charm to a jungle of reeds, bamboos, and alpinias. And such 
delicious tints of colour as are produced by a combination of the 
well-known cissus discolor, yellow allamandas, numerous 
dipladenias, thunbergias, clematis, and aristolochias, festooning 
drooping boughs, binding them together or wrestling with noble 
philodendrous pothos and monsteria, can be better imagined than 
described. 
The Botanic Garden of Edinburgh, which is under the 
directorship of Professor Balfour, is 274 acres in extent, but 
826, F 
