10 KEW GARDENS. 



•with US tlie yearimmd in the open air, and to adopt conclimated^ 

 to express the innate power of doing so, originally given to it. On 

 the rockery there, on the other side of the non-perplexing laby- 

 rinth of British plants, are a few spare Cactuses and Euphorbias, 

 inserted to give a little style to the group. They are scarcely ex- 

 pected to conclimate, though some of the Opuntias do set up a 

 sort of pretence to half-hardihood, which is no hardihood at all. 

 But till plants, in a new home, are thus tested one by one, the 

 most skilful vegetable anatomist and the most learned physiologist 

 cannot say decidedly, on mere inspection, what lowest degree of 

 temperature any novel species may be exposed to and survive. 



We are now approaching an assemblage of glass houses conve- 

 niently near to each other, and of most varied contents. Their 

 very outside shell is made to protect and support plants that would 

 by themselves give interest to an ordinary garden. Here, in a 

 narrow bed in front of the house No. 13, are growing in the open 

 air both the Black and the Green Tea shrubs, from either of which 

 the Chinese appear to make any sample at pleasure. (See For- 

 tune's ' Wanderings.') The Museum has shovf n us the powdered 

 Prussian blue which confers the bloom, and other matters employ- 

 ed in the first adulteration in the East, before tea becomes ac- 

 quainted with the strange company introduced to it in England. 

 In No. 16 is the Assam tea, by means of which we hope to keep 

 these amusing processes entirely to ourselves. Side by side with 

 the Black and the Green grows the Sasanqua Tea, whose blossoms 

 are used to give the bouquet to the two former. At the end of 

 another house grows a Chinese tree pseony, the showy and deli- 

 cate Moutan ; — not apparently a very remarkable specimen — but 

 it is the original plant introduced by Sir Joseph Banks, and the 

 grandmother or great-grandmother of most of the Moutans that 

 have settled in European gardens. Take off your hats to it, ye 

 Nurserymen — that plant has been the means of putting something 

 like 100,000^. into your pockets ! 



There are one or two low small houses that everybody is anx- 

 ious to peep into. Prying curiosity examines what can be discov- 

 ered through the keyhole and some supposed chink in the door. 

 Many are the noses flattened against the glass ; little regard is 

 paid even to the dimaging of a bonnet; a crushed trimmxing 

 would be a cheap price for a glance into the interior. Why is 

 this ? On the door stares tlie word Private. ' The Director 



