THE AURICULA AS A TOWN PLANT. 



383 



time and won fourteen out of a possible sixteen prizes, cultivates 

 his plants in a garden situated between two rows of houses 

 running from east to west, totally devoid of vegetation or natural 

 shading in any form, and fully exposed to all the fury and 

 withering influence of the cold easterly winds. Our own small 

 strip of a garden is also much exposed to the north-east and 

 devoid of shade, but our great enemy is the smoke from the town, 

 which is constantly pouring down show r ers of black smuts ; this 

 and the dust we find a great nuisance to contend with, but with 

 these drawbacks we manage to grow the Auricula fairly well. 



Travelling from Reading to Birmingham and neighbourhood, 

 we here again find the flower cultivated most successfully under 

 most adverse surroundings. The dense mass of smoke and 

 poisonous acids emitted from the countless number of smoke- 

 shafts does not prevent the Birmingham florists from producing 

 splendid specimens of the Auricula. Mr. Bullock, of Stourbridge, 

 near Birmingham, a well-known florist and successful grower of 

 the Auricula, grew 7 his plants, not in a garden, but on the house- 

 top ; and even here, with the air filled with poisonous gases from 

 the chemical works and busy manufactories of the district, the 

 Auricula grew and flourished where the trees stood leafless, 

 standing skeletons of w T hat should have been verdant vegetation. 

 The last town garden to describe, but the first in the heart of every 

 true lover of the Auricula, is that of the well-known and greatly 

 respected florist Mr. Ben. Simonite, of Sheffield. This celebrated 

 garden is situated on the east side of the town, where the dense 

 mass of smoke constantly overshadows and blackens everything, 

 on a bleak hillside sloping northwards and overlooking what was 

 once the beautiful valley of the Don with its market gardens and 

 fruit orchards, then in the fulness and wealth of natural beauty, 

 but now covered with factories and workshops noted for the pro- 

 duction of armour-plates, large guns, &c, and wdthin a quarter 

 of a mile of the coal-pits. Our friend grows his plants in a span- 

 roofed house with ventilators on all sides ; here they remain all 

 the year round, and are never placed out in the open, and con- 

 sequently never get the benefit of any gentle showers in the 

 summer months, as the Sheffield rains, being heavily impregnated 

 w T ith poisonous acids, would be positively injurious to the health 

 of the plants. 



Mr. Simonite, through no fault of his own or his plants, 



