282 



FLORA AND SYLVA, 



with antique relief work of the finest 

 character. So exquisite is much of this 

 work that it seems sad to expose it to 

 the weather, which is fast telling its tale 

 even in so soft a climate as that of Rome. 

 But the charm of the Pamphili gardens 

 lies in the profusion and luxuriance of 

 their vegetation, and even where there 

 is much stone work it is so draped and 

 varied by plant-life that the artificial 

 sinks into its true place. From one point 

 is gained a distant view of St. Peter's, 

 with such a foreground of green slopes 

 studded with Stone Pines, Aloes, Ever- 

 green Oaks, and the like, as to form a fa- 

 vourite subject with landscape painters. 

 The plan of the alleys and shrubberies 

 recalls the famous Bosquet of Versailles, 

 as do also the fountains, though on a 

 much smaller scale; in fact, the plan 

 of both the house and its surroundings 

 are so like Versailles in miniature as to 

 give weight to the claim that this old 

 Roman villa served as a model for the 

 great French palace. Amongst the strik- 

 ing features of the gardens are their fine 

 groups of Stone Pine, many of great age 

 and beauty, beneath whose shade in 

 early autumn, generations of the Roman 

 populace have sipped their wine and 

 nibbled the sweet nut-like kernels fallen 

 ready to hand. 



Woodland Music. — It is good to listen to the 

 wind minstrelsy till one can say with closed 

 eyes whence it is blowing and what is the 

 time of year, simply from the music overhead. 

 Winter has its own wild chords which change 

 and soften when the tree-tops are a maze of 

 swelling buds, till in early May-time the sounds 

 are most winsome of all. But at all times there 

 is music to be had for the heeding ; music in 

 which the initiated may hear mysteries un- 

 utterable in human tongue. — M. R. J. 



THE PERENNIAL TROP^- 

 OLUMS. 



That these plants are beautiful is not 

 to be denied; that they are popular with 

 growers can hardly be urged. Their 

 beauty of structure in every detail, their 

 quaint form and fine colour, their very 

 vigour and the rich grace of their dis- 

 play wherever at their ease, are charms 

 with which few groups are so richly en- 

 dowed, and yet many of these dainty 

 trailers have died out of cultivation, 

 while others flourish only here and 

 there with a caprice which has earned 

 for them a bad name amongst growers. 

 They are not common in gardens as a 

 whole, though often abundant in those 

 districts to which they seem best suited, 

 and yet the fact that patient effort to 

 establish the most uncertain kinds is 

 often crowned with full success after re- 

 peated failures to coax them into beau- 

 ty, proves that the skill of the adept 

 can do much to remove the causes of 

 failure, be they what they may. 



There are about thirty 

 distinct kinds of these 

 perennial trailers, and a 

 few garden crosses, the whole series 

 offering a rich variety in colour, foliage, 

 and time of flower. A good many kinds 

 — many of them of great beauty — have 

 never reached this country, and others 

 have died out, or have, at least, disap- 

 peared from public gardens and trade 

 lists, though from time to time one 

 comes across one kind after another 

 surviving in places to all appearance the 

 least likely. Though their precise range 

 is unknown — being favourite garden- 

 plants throughout a vast region — they 



Natural 

 Conditions. 



