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FLORA AND SYLVA 
easy to open up views and connect 
squares and parks in more airy ways, 
and to simplify, and at the same time 
dignify, many parts of the city and 
suburbs. The great outer parks should 
be connected by broad-planted roads : 
Hampstead Heath and Regent's Park 
with Victoria Park ; fine squares like 
Lincoln's Inn Fields made accessible 
and brought into view from the main 
points near, and such precious and inter- 
estingpossessions as the London docks. 
That dismal broad walk in the Regent's 
Park, with its lines of a mean kind of 
Elm, should be made a broad airy way 
with stately trees on each side. This 
it might be made without lessening the 
green area of the park, and the avenue 
should be continued through Park 
Square and the crescent ; the view which 
would result would be worth the sacri- 
fice of the privacy of these enclosures. 
The gardening of all these squares is 
disgraceful, and will, it is to be hoped, be 
some day changed. It can never be so 
as long as it is controlled by men who 
are not well-trained gardeners. Let 
anyone who cares about garden-design 
see the hideous stone walls placed lately 
around the islands in Victoria Park by 
the County Council, as well as those 
ugly and useless "rockeries" made of 
the refuse of brickyards in Dulwich 
Park and the Thames embankment 
gardens. It is a disgrace to the name 
of garden design, and there are many 
other instances of the most ignorant 
practice in the parks under their con- 
trol. 
In Lincoln's Inn Fields, one of the 
finest of London squares, they have 
lately put a ring of the common varie- 
gated Privet all round — the most 
stupid thing that could be done by the 
most ignorant of jobbing gardeners. 
GORDONIA. 
In this group are autumn-flowering 
shrubs of great beauty, yet so rare as to 
be almost unknown in our gardens and, 
in the case of G. pulescens apparently 
extinct as a wild tree, seeing that since 
1790 its home in Georgia has been 
scoured in vain for specimens. The 
genus consists of ten or more species, 
of which two are fairly hardy and come 
from the Southern United States ; the 
rest belong to the warmer parts of Asia, 
forming another branch of the great 
Tea-tribe to which Stuartiaand Camellia 
also belong. This relationship is trace- 
able in the tea-like fragrance which has 
! at times caused the leaves of Gordonias 
to be used as a substitute for tea. Per- 
haps not more than four or five kinds 
have been in cultivation, and it isdoubt- 
: ful whether even these are now to be 
j found in gardens, this being due to 
their short life and difficult increase. 
The hardier kinds, with which we are 
mainly concerned, will grow with some 
coaxing in sheltered places of the south, 
particularly along the coast, Gordonia 
having bloomed this autumn 
with Messrs. Gauntlett of Redruth. In 
Loudon's time plants were growing here 
and there in the Thames valley, but 
they are become so rare that the collec- 
tions containing Gordonias could prob- 
ably be counted on the fingers. 
These outdoor kinds come from the 
Pine-barrens — a region of sand, broken 
by scanty peat-bogs in moist and shel- 
