SOME BOOKS FOR AN AMATEUR GARDENER'S LIBRARY. 411 



well-known plants. You are sure to find on every page some allusion 

 that shows you the author has seen and read and remembered more 

 than most men have, and the effect of this on the reader is to make 

 him long to see for himself place and book and plant, that he too may 

 experience the same delight in them as they have so evidently afforded 

 to the author. For I know of no other gardening book that is so 

 stimulating and so full of encouragement ; that points out so clearly 

 that, to the patient planter and careful student, there will be interest 

 and beauty in his garden from January i to December 31, if only he 

 will look for it and work for it. 



I will try to illustrate this with a quotation or two. 



"It is very pleasant to be able to show growing together the 

 Antarctic bramble,* with its curious skeleton leaves and white thorns, 

 and the Iceland Poppy from the Arctic Circle, which is reported to 

 be the most northern flowering plant known — so extrem.ely northern 

 that I was told by one of the officers in the North Pole Expedition that 

 if there was land there he should expect to find the Iceland Poppy." 



Do you not at once feel a new interest in these and wish to plant 

 them side by side ? 



Of the Hardy Palm, Trachycarpus excelsus, he writes : " The culti- 

 vation of the Hardy Palms is perfectly easy. The Arabs say that they 

 require to have their feet in cold water and their head in a furnace. 

 This combination we cannot give them, nor is it necessary ; they 

 only require to be planted in good soil, to be protected from wind and 

 not disturbed, and they will give a continual dehght to the grower." 



This I have proved, for, stirred up by this passage, and by admira- 

 tion of the two very tall Palms at Bitton, I asked Canon EUacombe, 

 when he was staying with my parents, tvv^enty years ago, to select a 

 site in our garden for a Palm, and no plant gives me more continual 

 pleasure than the fine fifteen-feet-high specimen that now stands there. 



From this book I learnt to watch its leaves on snowy days, for he 

 writes : — 



" From the times of the Greeks and Romans, the Palm has been 

 the accepted symbol of victory ; and the reason given was that however 

 much the palm-leaves are laden with heavy weights they do not break, 

 and are with difficulty bent, and if bent at all they soon rise up again. 

 I have seen this prettily illustrated in severe winters, when the heavy 

 snows have bent the tough leaves of the Phormium tenax, so that they 

 could not rise again, . . . and Cedar branches were broken, the broad 

 leaves of the Palm carried the heavy load of snow, and immediately 

 the snow was removed the leaves sprang up and the plants were quite 

 uninjured. The old emblem writers made good use of this character ; 

 and Mary, Queen of Scots, took for her device a Palm bending under a 

 heavy weight." 



Do you know that " in a slight hoar-frost no hoar-frost is found . 

 on the plantains " ? Canon EUacombe has noticed it on his lawn, 

 and tells us it is because the broad leaves lying flat on the ground 



\ Rubus cissoides var. pauperaius. 



