LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 
349 
Flowers, a good double, dark crimson ; outer 
petals large and mostly entire ; inner ones 
much smaller and lobed ; foliage like that of 
the old P. papaveracea, but rather narrow and 
more pointed. This is a very handsome, deep 
blood coloured variety, the darkest in colour 
of all the Tree-fiaBonies yet in cultivation. 
Ofhrys vespifera, Willdenow : species 
Plantaruvi, 4, 65 ; Lindl, Gen. et Sp. Orcli., 
p. 372. (Purchased at the sale of the late 
Dean of Manchester's plants.) — In this and 
the following species we have gained two of 
those rare and curious kinds of terrestrial 
Orchids in which the lovers of singular forms 
have always been much interested. Their 
foliage has nothing that deserves special men- 
tion, but their flowers are suihciently remark- 
able. The "Wasp Ophrys was found by its 
late lamented possessor in Corfu, and was 
brought in a living state to England. It has 
a yellow lip, perfectly free from hairiness, but 
marked with brown streaks and spots, so as to 
resemble the body of the insect after which it 
is named ; especially when the sepals and 
petals are curved down upon its base, as is the 
case in its natural state. The species is so 
rare, that it can scarcely be said to exist in 
the herbaria of this country ; the plant called 
O. vespifera by some, and which is usually 
mistaken for it, being quite different, with 
large deep yellow flowers, having a broad 
stripe of crimson wool. That plant, which is 
as common in the south of Europe as this is 
rare, is the Opiirijs lutea oi Civanilles and 
other botanists. Like other species of the 
genus, the true Ophrys vespifera varies a little 
in the form of the lip, which is sometimes 
roundish and sometimes obovate ; but it ap- 
pears always to have the middle lobe emar- 
ginate. 
Ophrys mammosa, Desfontaines, in the 
Annales du Museum, vol. x. t. 15. In the 
same collection which furnished the rarity just 
described was obtained another Ophrys, which 
is apparently the obscure plant hitherto only 
known from a drawing by Aubriet, in the 
Museum of Natural History of Paris, and 
called inammosa, because of its having two 
prominent spaces on the side of its lip. Here 
the flowers are much larger than in the last : 
the petals have a rosy tinge, and form, with 
the green sepals, a flat circle : the lip is a deep 
chocolate brown, downy, nearly square in its 
outline, with a pair of parallel bluish lines 
passing down the middle. It is a very curious 
thing, neai'ly allied to 0. ferrum equinum (the 
Horse-shoe Ophrys) ; a species, that, how- 
ever, wants the two mammse on the lip, which 
moreover is more lozenge-shaped and irregu- 
larly wavy on its edge. Both these plants are 
the subject of an experiment now in progress 
in the cultivation of terrestrial Orchids, the 
result of which will be communicated to the 
Society hereafter. 
DOWNING ON LANDSCAPE GARDENING.* 
The appearance of the fourth edition of a 
Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Land- 
scape Gardening, betrayed us into the reading 
of between five and six hundred pages, by an 
American, we should presume, as he writes 
from New York, and ransacks all our pre- 
vious authors for the history of the science. 
We shall best describe the work by saying 
that it is a neatly written volume, containing 
a large number of the worst cuts we have 
ever seen in a respectable work, and not one 
novel idea in theory or practice. Landscape 
gardening should be, and in good hands is, 
reduced to a principle. It consists in imitat- 
ing as many of the beauties of nature as can 
be comprised in the ground we have to lay 
out ; but whether we have room for one or 
more great features, there should be no mix- 
ture of palpable art to destroy the natural 
scene. Mi-. Downing has evidently read our 
best authors, though he does not appreciate 
them and rank them as we do, and the very 
* A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Land- 
scape Gardening, &c. By A. J. Downing. Longman, 
Brown, Green & Longman. 1849. 
best of them take a good deal more pains to 
inform us what others have done, than they 
do to teach ns what w^e ought to do. As we 
purpose making rather copious extracts, the 
work shall speak for itself, but we cannot 
help regretting the want of novelty. Not 
that a man is obliged to give novel ideas where 
the best that can be given merely work out 
those of other people, but we cannot find an 
excuse for writing on any subject which has 
been written on before, unless the writer 
gives something more than we already pos- 
sess. We are inclined to find fault with most 
authors ; a little practice is worth a good deal 
of theory, and the mere changing of words to 
convey the same meaning that has been con- 
veyed before, has no merit in our eyes. If 
we traverse a forest, and are struck with the 
beauty of a particular scene, it either gives us 
a notion of something that we might carry 
out in landscape gardening, or it confirms our 
opinion upon the effect of scenery that we are 
acquainted with already ; and the whole art 
and science consists in bringing as many of 
these striking effects together as the space 
we have to work upon will admit ; but so far 
