SOME BOOKS ON ROCK-GARDENING AND ALPINE PLANTS. 405 



adequately, cheaply, and appropriately as a constellation of rock 

 plants." But as Mr. Farrer has lavished his rich store of picturesque 

 adjectives on a vast number of plants, the reader can scarcely fail to 

 develop a longing to grow them all, so that even those with large 

 collections already will be stirred up by this glowing little book to 

 add to those collections. The Saxifrage, Campanula, Primula, and 

 Dianthus chapters are each a pocket monograph of those families. 

 I have heard the illustrations highly praised, and some are certainly 

 wonderfully good for so cheap a book. But others have a nasty, 

 aniline, bright yet thin colouring that I dislike. It reminds me of 

 a water ice, a tinny-flavoured substitute for the real thing. 



A book by a good cultivator and full of useful hints is " Rock and 

 Alpine Gardening,"* by H. Hemsley (1908, 8s. 6d.), but the shiny 

 paper and brownish tint of the illustrations are not very pleasing. 



The last few years have brought a rush of books, and among them, 

 in 1911, " Rock-Gardens and Alpine Plants,"* by E. H. Jenkins 

 (2s. 6d.), a concise and well-illustrated little book dealing with the 

 whole subject, written by a man with a deep love of, and a long fami- 

 liarity with, the best Alpines. The classified lists of plants at the end, 

 and the chapters on Alpines in frames, and the Alpine house, should 

 prove of great use. 



A new and enlarged edition of this work has been published recently 

 (1915) as ' Rock-Gardens and Alpine Plants,"* by T. W. Sanders (n.d., 

 3s. bd.). It contains all the original work of three sections on Rock- 

 Gardens by E H. Jenkins, with an additional fourth section, the chapter 

 in which on Moraines is by S. Arnott, and the remaining three chapters 

 apparently by T. W. Sanders. Five coloured plates and a large 

 number of black-and-white illustrations have been added, which, 

 together with the use of wood-pulp instead of glazed paper, have 

 caused the book to appear as a comparatively bulky quarto. A 

 beautiful illustration of a fine clump of Cyclamen repandum, facing 

 p. 164, is unfortunately described as C. neapolitanum, but taken as a 

 whole the 103 illustrations are good and useful, considering the price of 

 the work. 



Mr. Jenkins' next work appeared in 1913, " The Small Rock- 

 Garden "* (2s. 6d.), one of the " Country Life" Series. Its highly 

 glazed paper, smelling like fresh mortar, offends both my eye and nose, 

 but by its aid the illustrations are very well produced. They are 

 numerous and interesting, and almost every aspect of rock-gardening 

 is dealt with, and so it would prove useful to the maker and owner 

 of a large rock-garden in spite of its title. 



A new feature is the chapter on Rockwork as edgings to flower 

 borders, a means of growing Alpine plants in flat and formal gardens too 

 little used. It is illustrated by a capital photograph of the recently con- 

 structed rockwork edgings in the kitchen garden at Aldenham House, 

 the most successful example of this style of rockwork I have ever 

 seen. The chapter on the Town and Suburban Rock-Garden should 

 be useful to anyone who contemplates building one in such localities. 



