130 
NATURE NOTES. 
flowers to grow ; the first two hundred pages he devotes to 
telling us in a genial way what to have and what to avoid, how 
to design our beds and borders, what to put in them, what 
climbers, and shrubs, and trees, and bulbs to select, how to 
arrange for a sequence of flowers, so that we may not have a 
blaze of colour for four months or so and bare beds for the rest 
of the year. All this he illustrates with pencil as well as pen ; 
he gives us visions of lovely houses and delightful gardens, and 
these are no unsubstantial presentments, but actual places “ in 
their habit as they live ; ” he shows us the effects produced by 
flowers — often the commonest — growing in a simple and natural 
manner — of mulleins on a Surrey heath, of evening primroses 
by night, of Japanese aneniones and summer snow’flakes, and 
such “beautiful accidents” as this “colony of sweet cicely 
in shrubbery, with white harebells ” (seemingly the too often 
weedv and ineradicable Campanula raptinculoides) which, by Mr. 
Robinson's kindness we are enabled to reproduce, as well as 
another cut showing the treatment of an individual flower. 
We would willingly dwell longer upon this charming and 
suggestive volume ; but space is limited, and other books call 
for notice. We welcome another instalment of essays by “A 
Son of the Alarshes,” who might surely by this time reveal his 
identity. In Forest Tithes (Smith, Elder & Co.), we have more 
of those records of accurate and loving observation, carefully set 
down in straightforward readable English, which we are justified 
in expecting from this writer, who never disappoints his admirers. 
Here is a new sermon — would that all sermons appealed as for- 
cibly to our sympathies ! — on the old text “ Eyes and no Eyes ; ” 
here we learn what to look for “ In the Weald ” and “ Under 
