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JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



that our Secretary had asked me to make these observations before the 

 Royal Horticultural Society, he promptly presented me with a list of 300 

 different plants in the garden, any one of which he said it would be a 

 shame to omit ! However, out of the 1,600 varieties which are in the 

 plant list of my garden I must try and select the most desirable ones. 



One word about the garden where these things are grown. It is on one 

 of the foot hills of the Mourne Mountains in the county of Down, about 

 three miles from tiie Irish Channel, thus benefiting by the mild influence 

 of the Gulf Stream : it faces east and south, and is surrounded by old 

 forest trees, so that it is well sheltered. We suffer little from frost ; ten 

 degrees is the average ; once, in the hard winter of 1895, we had fifteen 

 degrees. The rainfall is about thirty-two inches ; the subsoil is gravel, 

 and as it lies on rather a steep hill there is perfect drainage — a great 

 advantage for tender, as indeed it is for all plants. 



If I were asked the country from which we obtain the greatest 

 number of our choicest hardy plants I should name J apan ; and I believe 

 there are still many beautiful things there which are not known at all in 

 our gardens. For instance, has any one ever seen here — 



DISANTHUS CERCIDIFOLIA,with leaves blood-red; or 



RHUS TBICHOCABPA , with scarlet and orange leaves ; or 



P ICR ASM A QUASSIOIDES, with leaves changing from orange to 

 scarlet ; or 



ILEX SUGEROKI, with fruit of a bright scarlet ? 



They are in no catalogues that I have seen, either in this country or 

 on the Continent, and I have tried in America without success ; not even 

 in the beautifully illustrated catalogue of the Yokohama Nursery Company 

 are they to be found ; and yet from the description in Professor Sargent's 

 book they are very much to be desired. One of the principal points to be 

 attended to in beautifying a garden is the contrast of colour, of brilliant 

 colour if you can manage to get it; and the plant from Japan which of 

 all others I find most useful in this respct is the Acer japonicum poly- 

 morplium atropurpureum (it is a pity it has such a long name, but we 

 can follow the example of the ladies and call it the Red Maple). Those 

 who have seen the Canadian forests in the fall of the year, when the 

 Sugar Maples are first touched by the frost, will tell you how glorious 

 colour can be ; but I have never seen even there anything more magni- 

 ficent than this Japanese Maple when it turns scarlet about a week or so 

 before the leaf falls off. If you get a large plant of it between you and 

 the sun at that time, it is so brilliant and intense a scarlet that a soldier's 

 coat would look dull and colourless beside it. In the early spring the 

 foliage is bright blood-red, and as the sun increases in power it changes to 

 a dark purplish green where the rays strike. It is perfectly hardy, and 

 Everest frost has no effect on it. Notwithstanding all these good 

 qualities, how is it that you hardly ever see it even in the best gardens ? 

 At Kew, even, there are very few plants of it. There is a story of Dr. 

 Johnson being asked by a lady how he came to spell a word wrongly in 

 his dictionary, and he replied, " Ignorance, madam ; pure ignorance ! " I 

 must suppose that it is only from ignorance of the beauty of the Japanese 

 Nfaple that it is not to be found in every garden, as it surely ought to be. 



