412 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



keep in the earth's heat. Have you noticed that " Plants seem to 

 know (if I may say so) when they are going to die, and then to be 

 able to put forth more vigorous means for their reproduction ? " 



The Canon tells us : " For many years I have grown a pretty 

 little Sea Lavender (Statice cosyrensis) from Cosyra, a small island 

 between Italy and Africa, now called Pantellaria. Though a free 

 bloomer, I never knew it to produce a seedling or to form seed. Last 

 year it showed signs of decay from old age, and it entirely disappeared 

 in the winter, but this spring I found a flourishing young seedling 

 about a foot from the parent plant, and since that . . . two or three 

 more." 



The reviewer of the second edition in the St. James's Gazette 

 described it as "a rare combination of erudition and observation,'' 

 and concluded by saying, " The result of reading the book is to fill 

 one with a longing to take Orders and study gardening if possible as 

 Mr. Ellacombe's curate." 



Besides this book, his " Plant Lore and Garden Craft of Shake- 

 speare " and " In m^y Vicarage Garden and Elsewhere " have charm.ed 

 many readers. 



But Canon Ellacombe also carried with him an immense personal 

 influence in instilling the love of the flower and the garden. Fond 

 of books, he was one of the first to remind us what a treasury of 

 gardening literature the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had 

 produced, and we feel, with him, that there is, on the close of the day, 

 no more beautiful walk than that from the sunht garden into the 

 sombre shadows of the library. 



But the books that make one determined to undertake garden 

 alterations, to re-group one's plants, and attend more carefully to 

 their good cultivation, are a certain three of the many delightful 

 volumes written by Miss Jekyll. Her first book, " Wood and Garden," 

 set many gardeners on a new road, teaching them what m.ay be done 

 in gardening for beautiful effect. 



As with all books chronicHng the work and results of one garden, 

 readers must be careful to translate all statements into terms of 

 their own soil and cfimate. 



Few can make their garden in the clearings of such a beautiful 

 Surrey woodland as Miss Jekyll found read}/ to hand at Munstead, 

 or be able to have green paths of closely mown Ling, but the great 

 value of this account of the growth and success of a very lovely garden 

 lies in the fact that the great majority of plants used in its construction 

 are perfectly hardy and easily obtained and grov/n. 



The second book, " Colour in the Flower Garden," strikes me 

 as the most valuable guide for making a beautiful garden an amateur 

 can possess. It is the experience of years of successful work, reduced 

 to masterly order — one might say a code of horticultural statutes, 

 a working knowledge of which should be required of every under- 

 gardener as well as gardening amateur to bring about the ideal Utopian 

 conditions of gardening. 



