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FLORA AND SYLVA, 



pure beauty in the result. Indeed, they 

 act rather in the manner of mnemonics, 

 keeping the laws of the art before the 

 eyes of the pupil. 



But when one looks from words to 

 things the Japanese way lies mainly 

 in recognising the beauty and import- 

 ance of form, and of showing the whole 

 beauty of the plant, instead of jam- 

 ming flowers into "nosegays" in shape 

 like a Cauliflower — a rooted habit in 

 England. It leads the excellent rose- 

 growers of London to send their flowers 

 to the market with the heads cut close 

 off and without a bit of stem, so that 

 one cannot place a Rose in any natural 

 way if we depend upon such supplies. 

 In Paris and America, Roses are sent to 

 market with long vigorous stems, and 

 there need not be the slightest difficulty 

 in cutting them here in like ways. In 

 our country the beauty of the whole 

 plant is not thought of but the flower- 

 ing part alone ; the Japanese method is 

 the opposite and true way. The com- 

 monest things, such as a spray of Larch, 

 a stem of Solomon's Seal, or a tuft of Iris, 

 are arranged so as to show the whole 

 beauty and form of the plant, leaf, bud, 

 and flower. This is a very important 

 lesson to learn, though as we see the Ja- 

 panese arrangements done in London it 

 occurs to us that the same results could 

 be obtained in a simpler way than that of 

 the Japanese. They, in working in their 

 beautiful bronze vases, take an amount 

 of pains not always justified by the re- 

 sult ; the more so as in our country we 

 can have a greater variety of vessels, 

 many so shaped as to receive a flower at 

 once and to show its beauty completely. 



Some of the Japanese skill arises from 

 the need of adapting flowers to their 

 bronze vases. 



One of these Japanese artists in 

 flowers looking at some of our pictures 

 by Mr. Moon at once said, " Why, these 

 are our ways of arranging flowers," sim- 

 ply because of the fact that the artist 

 had chosen a very few simple things 

 and shown them in their full beauty. 

 The Japanese attach, and rightly, great 

 importance to form. Their difficulties 

 of getting plants in this country to show 

 this phase of their art are serious, be- 

 cause in our markets all the flowers are 

 cut in quite a different way, and much 

 less attention is given to form, whether 

 of the foliage of flowering plants, often 

 very fine, and Reeds, Grasses, Bamboos, 

 and tree-shoots. 



New Kinds of Cyclamen. — The active search 

 for new bulbous plants within recent years 

 has had the result of bringing to light several 

 new species of Cyclamen, three of which belong 

 to Asia Minor and two to Greece. Their de- 

 tailed descriptions appeared in a recent issue 

 of Gartenjiora, to which we are indebted for 

 the following notes : — Cyclamen libanoticum, 

 the first of these new kinds has already been 

 introduced to gardens, and was figured in our 

 issue of September last. C. pseudoibericum, dis- 

 covered in the mountains around Smyrna, has 

 been introduced by M. Van Tubergen, and is 

 nearly related to 67. ibericuw, but larger in 

 flower. C. Mindleri is a little known species, 

 discovered by the botanist Heldreich, and be- 

 longs to the same group as the last, but is re- 

 markable for four black glands carried upon 

 the edges of the lobes of the corolla. C. Melia- 

 rakisiz, also due to the researches of M. Held- 

 reich in the mountains of Greece, is akin to 

 C. grtecum, but differing in the silvery white- 

 ness of the centre of the leaf. And lastlv, C. 

 hiemak, a new kind found by M. Siehe in Asia 

 Minor, is said to flower in winter and is about 

 intermediate between Cs. ibericum and coum. 



