300 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
On the subject of halos and the colours of clouds the author makes some 
remarks of import. Altogether, the book seems remarkably 'well put 
together. Without affectation of style, but with a serious earnestness of pur- 
pose, the author appears to us to have gone about his work, and therefore 
that he has thoroughly succeeded need not surprise us much. 
THE SUB-TROPICAL GARDEN.* 
TX7HETHER the term sub-tropical be familiar enough to gardeners and 
» * those connected with the culture of flowers we know not, but we 
think that the author of the work before us would have done better had he 
employed some expression which better conveyed his meaning. However, 
as he has expressed the signification of the term in his preface, we may as 
well give it to our readers. Sub-tropical gardening, he says, means “ the 
culture of plants with large and graceful, or remarkable foliage or habit, and 
the association of them with the usually low-growing and brilliant-flowering 
plants now so common in our gardens, and which frequently eradicate every 
race of beauty of form therein, making the flower-garden a thing of large 
masses of colour only.” We confess we are not very well satisfied with this 
definition of what sub-tropical implies, but we suppose we must accept it, 
though it clearly does not imply the plants of any particular tropic or division 
of the globe. Mr. Robinson appears to be one of the very few gardeners of 
the present era who have the slightest possible degree of taste. Hence we 
find him at variance with most of the existing race of gardeners ; and in his 
book he sets out his plan of grouping large and small plants, trees, and 
shrubs, and ordinary garden flowers, in such a manner as to produce a har- 
monious and a handsome result. We cannot help uniting in the author’s 
remarks upon the abominable style in which our London parks are laid out. 
Speaking of the lumpish monotony of gardening, he says : “ It is fully shown 
in the London parks every year, so that many people will have seen it for 
themselves. The subjects are not used to contrast with, or relieve others of 
less attractive port and brilliant colour, but are generally set down in large 
masses. Here you meet a troop of Cannas numbering 500, in one long formal 
bed ; next you arrive at a circle of Azalias, or an oval of Ficus, in which a 
couple of hundred plants are so densely packed that their tops form a dead 
level. Isolated from everything else, as a rule, these masses fail to throw any 
natural grace into the garden, but, on the other hand, go a long way towards 
spoiling the character of the subjects of which they are composed. For it 
is manifest that you get a far superior effect from a group of such a plant 
as the Gunnera, the Polymina, or the castor-oil plant, properly associated 
with other subjects of entirely diverse character, than you can when the 
lines or masses of such as these become so large and so estranged from their 
Surroundings that there is no relieving point within reach of the eye. A 
* “ The Sub-Tropical Garden ; or, Beauty of Form in the Flower Garden.” 
By W. Robinson, F.L.S. London : John Murray, 1871. 
