1870.] for English Gardens. 357 



cordially recommend Mr. Robinson's ' Alpine Flowers for English 

 Gardens.' The easy and lively style in which it is written, no less 

 than the excellence of its matter, will commend it to every lover of 

 plants. 



Mr. Eobinson is no mere enthusiast in his subject when he says : 

 — " This book is written to dispel a very general error, that the ex- 

 quisite flowers of alpine countries cannot be grown in gardens, and 

 as one of a series of manuals having for their object the improve- 

 ment of our out-door gardening, which, it appears to me, is of in- 

 linitely greater importance than anything that can ever be accom- 

 plished in enclosed structures, even if glass sheds or glass palaces 

 were within the reach of all." His first concern is with the struc- 

 ture of rockeries, in the mode of building which not only is the 

 taste still displayed, or at all events till quite recently, barbarous 

 and inartistic in the extreme ; but it would seem as if the very 

 conditions necessary for the health of the plants were studiously 

 neglected. The ordinary idea of the treatment of rock-plants, 

 judging from the hideous monstrosities which may be seen in many 

 a gentleman's garden, is that you have nothing to do but to poke 

 them in between the chinks of perfectly bare stones or clinkers piled 

 together in a promiscuous heaj), in order to present them in their 

 native habitats. A gardener who commits such an absurdity as 

 this, can never have ascended a mountain with his eyes open. To 

 quote again from Mr. Eobinson : — " Mountains are often bare, and 

 cliffs are usually devoid of soil ; but we must not conclude therefrom 

 that the choice jewellery of plant-life scattered over the ribs of the 

 mountain, or the interstices of the crag, live upon little more than 

 the mountain air and the melting snow ! Where will you find such 

 a depth of well-ground stony soil, and withal such perfect drainage, 

 as on the ridges of debris flanking some great glacier, stained all 

 over with tufts of crimson saxifrage? Can you gauge the depth 

 of that narrow chink, from which peep tufts of the diminutive and 

 beautiful A nd rosace helvetica ? No ; it has gathered the crumbling 

 grit and scanty soil for ages and ages ; and the roots enter so lar 

 that nothing the tourist carries with him can bring out enough of 

 them to enable the plant to live elsewhere." Alpine plants are 

 peculiarly exposed to sudden alternations of heat and cold, of moisture 

 and dryness. The cold, almost frosty night will be followed, in 

 July and August, by an unclouded day, when the rays of the sun 

 beat on the unsheltered surface of the rock with an intensity that 

 would scorch up many an English meadow plant. Only a very 

 small proportion of alpine plants are annuals ; and they are frequently 

 provided with a storehouse of nourishment in the form of rosettes 

 or tufts of thick succulent leaves; but their chief water-supply is 

 through their roots ; and thus we find that while our garden 

 annuals have fibrous roots of insignificant dimensions, and even 



