156 



JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



bulbous plants the Cape peninsula hclds a pre-eminence. But England 

 is now so amply provided with them, and has succeeded so well in hybrid- 

 ising so many of them, especially the Gladiolus and Ixia sections, that 

 I need do no more than refer to them ; but I may be allowed to refer for 

 one moment to the large Lily-white Watsonia, named by the Botanic 

 Society of Cape Town after me, Watsonia Ardernei (fig. 5). The original 

 bulb was brought by me from a farm some eighty miles distant from Cape 

 Town, and was found growing, a single specimen, amid thousands of the 

 pink variety. The owner of the farm was as much astonished as myself 

 when he saw this white variety, for he had traversed and retraversed the 

 farm for years and had never seen any but the pink variety, W. rosea (fig. 6). 



Fig. 5. — Watsonia Ardernei alba. (The Garden.) 



That one bulb has increased in arithmetical progression, and I believe at 

 the present moment there are more than 100,000 of it in existence. The 

 first box of bulbs was sent by me to the Countess of Lytton, who first 

 saw the blooms in my garden, and was very much struck with their 

 beauty. Another bulbous plant, very much admired by Mr. Peter Barr, 

 V.M.H., who has paid my garden about a dozen visits, is the Agapanthus 

 umbellatUs aXbidm> which attains with me the height of between five and 

 Bix feet and grows at the foot of the Araucaria c.rcelsa. 



The garden is further largely indebted to Australia and New Zealand 

 for many of its most striking trees, but as time presses I can only briefly 

 enumerate thorn, the most prominent being many varieties of the 

 Euealyptut t E. Globulus being specially striking from its colossal growth, 



