58 
STANDARD PORTUGAL LAURELS AND RHODODENDRONS. 
follow. But, again, plants must be duly supplied with inorganic substances, and 
such are all that are not the products of vital organization ; earths, metals, potassa, 
and soda. Hereafter we shall have occasion to allude to these more particularly ; 
it will now be sufficient to observe, that they are derived chiefly from the soil, and, 
therefore, in the culture of the floral department, and of all plants in pots, the 
gardener is peculiarly liable to commit error, and incur vexatious contingencies. 
Vegetable physiologists, seeing the impossibility of introducing any solid sub- 
stances through the porous system of the roots, have been tempted to refer to 
carbonic acid, dissolved in, or united with, the sap, as the prime source of vegetable 
nutriment ; and, following up this view, agriculturists have adopted the modern 
theoretic notions respecting humus and humic acid. We are mere infants in ex- 
periment, and what we know may be comprised within a nutshell ! But we are 
arrived at a period of research, and experiments now assume a direction which 
promises to lead to precise results. Heretofore we have seen them conducted upon 
detached parts of plants — mere mutilations ; “ Can,” we ask with Liebig, “ the 
laws of life be investigated in an organized being which is diseased or dying and 
is not “ the mere observation of a wood or meadow infinitely better adapted to 
decide so simple a question, than all the trivial experiments under a glass globe ? ” 
The question is pregnant, and can only be solved by research. 
STANDARD PORTUGAL LAURELS AND RHODODENDRONS. 
To assist in imparting variety to a pleasure garden, and conduce to the aug- 
mentation of its ordinary charms, it has long been the practice to prepare, by 
grafting or budding, a number of low standard trees or shrubs, such as Roses, 
Robinias, weeping Ashes, &c., and intersperse them among other kinds on the 
lawns and in the flower-beds. For a formal flower-garden, disposed in the geo- 
metrical style, such kinds of ornaments are peculiarly appropriate ; and the Roses 
may be very properly pruned to a close round head, to correspond with the 
regularity of the plots among which they are placed. But when they are planted 
on a lawn near the mansion, the tasteful cultivator will allow them to grow much 
more freely and wildly, and to assume a more spreading and drooping character. 
All the shrubs, however, that are commonly used for this purpose, shed their 
foliage annually ; and, in winter, present to the eye nothing but bare branches. 
"When the architecture of the dwelling is of the Grecian or Italian order, and a 
broad straight walk ranges along its front, with one or more similar walks passing 
from it at right angles, it is customary, where orange-trees are possessed, to place 
them at certain distances along the sides of these during summer, in order to give 
the garden a more purely Italian aspect, and assimilate it, in some degree, to the 
style of the house. 
