128 
NATURE NOTES. 
been during the early months of 1893. Never, in spite of drought, 
have the wild flowers, from the time of primroses and bluebells 
down to the wild roses and honeysuckle, been so early and so 
numerous as we have had them during the last months. One 
effect, and that a strange one, of this unusual period of sun- 
shine is not likely to be regarded with favour by an important 
portion of the community ; for it is said that the depression in the 
book-trade is attributable to the spell of fine w’eather. Be this 
as it may, those who are preparing to spend their summer 
holiday either at home or abroad, in country houses with pleasant 
gardens, away on the moors and fells, by the seaside, or further 
afield in the various continental tourist resorts, are certain to 
lay in a store of books w’hich they at any rate intend to read : 
books of all kinds, novels and poems, travels and essays, and, we 
may hope, among them a certain number of volumes bearing 
more or less closely on the side of natural history which it is 
the office of the Selborne Society to develop and promote. To 
these we would commend two or three, the notice of which 
cannot be longer delayed. 
Handsomest of these is the new edition of Mr. William 
Robinson’s English Flower Gar den, \Nhich Mr. John Murray issued 
early in the year, and which is, in our judgment, distinctly the 
most beautiful book on gardens which has come under our notice. 
To a thorough knowledge of his subject from a practical — -that 
is to say, a cultural — point of view', Mr. Robinson unites a 
thorough appreciation of the artistic side of gardening, and a 
faculty for seizing the most striking features of well-ordered 
gardens and bringing them before his readers. No man has 
done more to emancipate the country dweller from the tyranny 
of fashion and of the professional gardener ; to liberate him from 
the demon of “ bedding out,” and the Mephistophelian glare of 
the scarlet geranium and the yellow calceolaria. The ciiltus of 
the lily and the sunflower may indeed claim another origin ; but 
we who have lived through the period of the “ribbon border” 
and the formalism of “pattern” bedding, cannot be sufficiently 
grateful to Mr Robinson for having stemmed and turned the 
tide of popular taste in a more rational direction. “ Carpet- 
bedding” — that system by which at the cost of an infinity of 
trouble, time, and money, plants are degraded to producing an 
effect which might be more effectively and cheaply obtained by 
an arrangement of coloured chalks — is indeed still to be seen in 
our parks ; and beds of the open-jam-tart order may yet be seen 
where better things might be expected, e.g., on either side of the 
broad walk in Kew Gardens ; but their reign is over, and the 
long interminable lines of blue, yellow and scarlet, which used 
to meet our gaze everywhere with wearisome monotony, have 
almost ceased to be. For this, and for very much more, Mr. 
Robinson is to be thanked. 
For very much more : for the danger of your reformer is 
that he will begin by being destructive, and end there. Now it 
