1 



FLORA AND SYLVA. 



of Conifers, pages of which are given 

 to variegated (i.e., diseased) and de- 

 formed sports, which are mere garden 

 forms, valueless as trees. If these varie- 

 ties are kept at all, they are quite un- 

 worthy of Latin names. Another evil 

 resulting from this is that the general 

 reader of catalogues and lists take all 

 Latin names as meaning equally good 

 things, until, even in places where the 

 best conditions exist for growing trees, 

 we see distorted and poor forms as often 

 as the true trees, giving a spotty and 

 bad effect to collections, the very oppo- 

 site of what growers of great trees should 

 expect, and may easily obtain. 



Where there is agood English name 

 it should have precedence of all others 

 both for general use, and in books for 

 the garden and woodland. Trees cover- 

 ing vast regions and of great importance, 

 like the Western Hemlock, deserve to 

 be known by their English names, and 

 yet these are oftenest omitted in books 

 and catalogues dealing with them. An 

 Englishman, speaking toEnglishpeople, 

 should be able to rind in his own tongue 

 names for all things to which he need 

 refer. As the Latin names are altered 

 every decade or oftener (Mr. Sargent has 

 now a new Latin name for the Western 

 Hemlock Spruce) there is no keeping 

 pace with the changes rung in their 

 nomenclature. There is no forest tree 

 of Europe, Asia, or America, for which 

 a good English name might not be used, 

 and, once generally adopted, we should 

 have no need to care so much what each 

 succeeding botanist might do in invent- 

 ing new Latin names or hunting up old 

 ones. * * ** 



The Elizabethan Garden. — "The flowers which 

 deck it are for the most part old familiar faces, so 

 long introduced into this country that they are 

 almost like natives ; many of them are familiar to 

 our literature, are endeared by pleasing associations, 

 and sanctified by the highest efforts of poetical 

 genius. While they have enough of art to indicate 

 that they pertain to the abode of man and owe their 

 place to his care, they have enough of Nature to 

 lead the mind to the works of the Great Author 

 of Nature. Their subdued colours harmonise with 

 the English climate ; and the constant variety of 



' form and colour which each day presents, as the 

 flowers of the mixed border develop themselves, 

 affords a constant source of pleasure and varied 

 enjoyment. We cannot say the same of the modern 

 fashionable garden. Its colours and forms being 

 fixed for the season, there is no further interest in 

 watching its progress, and there are no changes to 

 note ; its colours, well adapted to the climates whence 

 the plants are brought are, in this country, glaring, 

 hot, and vulgar, and are rendered still more so by 

 the manner in which an uneducated taste violently 

 contrasts them. They are strangers to us and have 

 no familiar greetings to welcome us ; no poet has 

 sung their praises ; no peasant has given them a 

 loving and heart-stirring English name. They bloom 

 but for two or three months, leaving the gardens 

 desolate and unwelcome all the rest of the year, and 

 are, therefore, unsuited to the residence of the great 

 majority of Englishmen, who have but one abode, 

 and spend the whole of their lives within it. There 

 is no reason why recently-introduced plants should 

 be excluded from the Elizabethan garden. It would 

 be a ridiculous pedantry to limit its flowers to those 

 only introduced in that period. On the contrary, we 

 would imitate the Elizabethan gardener in this — 

 that we would seek out new plants wherever we 

 could find them. But even if some strict pedant 

 were — like the modern mediaevalist in church deco- 

 rations — to insist that none but plants known at the 

 period should be introduced into the garden, he 

 would find an abundant supply in the old gardening 

 books." So far we agree with a writer in Frasers, 

 but the introductions of recent years have vastly 

 added to the store of good plants for giving har- 

 monious effect, as well as beauty of the individual 

 bloom. Iris, Lily, Rose (and above all the Tea Rose 

 with its prolonged bloom) ; Water Lilies in varied 

 and lovely colour, lasting, too, like the Tea and 

 Bengal Roses through the summer, and in some 

 districts into the winter ; Clematis also, unknown 

 in great part in the Elizabethan days, as were also 



| the superb Tritoma, the richly-coloured Vines of 

 Japan and America, and many other beautiful and 

 hardy flowers which have come to enrich gardens of 



! the Victorian era. 



