552 
CAMPANULA FRAGILIS. 
or a bush, may be made one of the most 
beautiful of greenhouse plants. We need 
hardly mention, that when the plants are too 
large for the heath pit, they may be moved to 
the heath house, greenhouse, or conservatory. 
The gardener must, however, bear in mind 
that there never was a more wild notion, than 
that the quick growth of plants displayed 
skill. There is no art in promoting rapid 
growth : it is as easy as growing orehideous 
plants, and this is easy enough, every gardener 
who has grown them knows ; there is less 
room for blundering in it than in any other 
race of plants we know. Exciting soil, plenty 
of it, heat and moisture, will produce a plant 
in one season as large as ordinary treatment 
will produce in three, — but is it worth more ? 
Yes, as a nursery plant to cut up, it is, because 
it may be valued by the yard, or the quan- 
tity of plants it will propagate ; but in a 
gentleman's place such a plant would not be 
worth so much as one of slow growth the 
same age. But there does require great skill 
to grow a plant slowly and keep it in health, 
and those who can accomplish it leave behind 
them, in point of scientific display, all those who 
boast of their rapid cultivation. A man who 
really knows his business must feel disgusted 
at the great rambling specimens of Fuchsia, 
Epacris, Chorozema, and many other subjects, 
with leaves three times as far distant as they 
ought to be, exposing bare stalks and blooms 
equally distant in proportion. We have seen 
at public exhibitions scores of plants which 
were a discredit to the growers' judgment 
and skill, fitted only for the vulgar taste of 
those who value every thing by quantity, and 
indicative of a low mind and bad instruc- 
tions. If those gardeners who pride themselves 
upon being able to grow a thing quicker and 
larger than any one else, had a grain of taste, 
they would look at what a plant is capable of 
being made in the way of symmetry and beauty, 
and would study proportion a little ; we should 
not then see the tables that ought to be occu- 
pied by elegance and beauty, covered with 
specimens which betray utter ignorance of 
what a plant should be to be perfection. 
G-. 
CAMPANULA FRAGILIS. 
(Cyrilli.) 
THE SKITTLE BELL-FLOW r ETC. 
This species is properly a dry-frame plant, 
but it is often met with as a hardy greenhouse 
herbaceous plant, being perhaps more easily 
and safely preserved on the shelves of a green- 
house—where there is such a convenience — 
than in a frame where the latter is confined 
and at all damp. It, however, by no means 
requires the warmth of a greenhouse ; and a 
common frame, with a dry bottom and well 
ventilated, will keep it safe in winter ; in sum- 
mer it of course may stand exposed. 
It forms a diffuse branching plant, of about 
six inches high, and from a foot to a foot and 
a half over. The plant in a barren state forms 
a thick stem with a tuft of leaves, which are 
roundish-heart-shaped, and bluntly crenate- 
lobed, and grow on long stalks ; from this part 
the spreading flowering stems are thrown out, 
and these bear smaller, ovate leaves, all the 
leaves being of a bluish green and quite smooth. 
The flowers are large for the size of the plant, 
pale blue, and very numerous, terminating the 
branches in a kind of racemose panicle. It is 
a native of Italy, and other parts of the south 
of Europe, and is recorded to have been intro- 
duced to our gardens about 1826. The flowers 
are usually borne in the height of summer. It 
has borne the followinsr names : — C. diffusa 
(Vahl) ; C. cocldearifolia (Vahl) ; and C. 
crassifolia (Nees). The plant represented in 
%£M>t0^ /mm 
the above engraving is a variety of this 
species, and is usually called C. fragilis var. 
kirsuta. Tenore however calls it C. fragilis 
var. lanuginosa, the two names having nearly 
the same meauing, and referring to the only 
particular in which it differs from the species, 
namely, in the plant being entirely hispid in- 
stead of smooth, that is to say, covered, as it 
were, with short hair-like woolliness. 
It is easily cultivated. Large tufts are 
most effective, so that it should rather be 
allowed to grow on to that state, than con- 
stantly divided to make small plants. For 
this purpose nothing is necessary but to shift 
it two or three times during the spring and 
summer, until it is placed, say in a nine-inch 
pot : when it has reached this size it would be 
inconvenient to increase the size of the pot, so 
that then, after flowering, it should be turned 
out, the ball reduced, and then the old plant 
repotted into a smaller pot — as small as con- 
venient — very much after the way in which 
