V,,.] 



LIST OF SHRUBS. 



248 



leave all the rest unmentioned, that I may have the more room lo 

 speak of the two or three sorts that I deem the most ornamental, 

 and, in every way, the best deserving mention in this work. The 

 English florists have become celebrated for their collections of a 

 vast variety of green-house geraniums, which equal, or surpass, in 

 number, that of the auricula, and which certainly does include a 

 set of flowers of unrivalled beauty. The plant is, among English 

 florists, what the tulip and hyacinth are with the Dutch florists : 

 they spare no expense in erecting propagation-houses and con- 

 servatories for it, they have shows of it, they give a high-sounding 

 name to every new variety, and whole works have been published 

 laudatory of its beauties. The common scarlet and the ivy-leaved 

 are the only two sorts that I shall particularize. The first is well 

 known in most gardens. It is a w^oody plant, though its wood is 

 of a succulent nature, and is not a match for our winters in the 

 open air ; it grows to the height of four feet or more in good 

 ground in England, and much higher at the Cape of Good Hope or 

 in the south of Africa, where it is indigenous. It has large dowiiy 

 soft leaves of a beautiful luxuriant green, placed at the end of 

 foot-stalks, and it bears its flowers in scarlet bouquets, or bunches, 

 at the end of foot-stalks longer than those of the leaves. It will 

 spread to a great width when planted out, and in a good warm 

 summer. I have had it at Kensington full five feet over, and 

 covered with blossoms from the middle of June to the middle of 

 October. It is said to like a light rich mould best. Rich mould 

 it does like, but I never found it do otherwise than well in the 

 deepest and stifi^est garden mould that I have occupied, and I have 

 occupied some of the stiffest that I ever saw^ in my life. In its 

 native country it likes sand, because it has nothing else ; but I look 

 upon it that a geranium in African sand under an English suuy 

 would become a very poor thing indeed. Gravel suits it ill, as do 

 also the extremes of chalk or clay, but a good depth of mould over 

 a bed of either of these latter, w ith well rotted manure and 

 good tillage, will make a very fine geranium, and will keep 

 it in blossom four months of the year. As it is infallibly 

 killed by hard frost, unless most cautiously covered over with 

 litter and mats, the way to perpetuate it that I generally fol- 

 low is this : in July take some cuttings of young wood that is 

 ripening, and put them in separate pots of nice mould, obsemng 

 to have two joints below the earth and one above it. Then 



