212 
REVIEWS AND EXCHANGES. 
Observations upon the Topography and Climate of Crowborough Hill, Sussex. 
By C. Leeson Prince. Second edition. Privately printed. Lewes, 1898, 
8vo, pp. 312. 
This handsome work, which has been presented to the library of the Society 
by the author, is so full of varied Selbornian interest that we leel inclined to 
regret that it is only printed for private circulation. Possibly the meteorological 
tables for the past twenty-four years and much of the detail in Chapter v., which 
deals with twenty-seven years, may be important only to the meteorologist ; but 
most nature-lovers would be interested in the wonderful list of distant objects 
visible from Crowborough, in the snow-crystals, the gigantic hailstones, the 
aurora and the mock suns recorded. Many of Dr. Prince’s weather-prognostics 
have, it is true, appeared in Mr. Inwards’ “ Weather-Lore,” recently reviewed 
by us ; but there certainly seems to us to be ample material here for a smaller 
work of the nature of a Crowborough calendar, which should secure many 
readers. We are grateful to the author for having reprinted most of what is 
worth preserving of the poetry in that nearly forgotten store house, Thomas 
Forster’s “ Pertnnial Calendar.” 
Elizabeth and Her German Garden. Macmillan. Price 6s. 
We have managed to pass a wet Sunday afternoon so agreeably by aid of this 
very pleasantly written book that we can have no hesitation in advising others to 
go and do likewise. Had it been the first of its family, indeed, our praise 
might have been more enthusiastic ; but as it is only the youngest of a group of 
books rather popular with a certain class of readers in the present day, viz., 
“ Ros Rosarum ” and “ A Garden of Pleasure ” by the Hon. Mis. Boyle, “ Pot- 
pourri from a Surrey Garden ” by Mrs. Earle, and “ The Confessions of an Amateur 
Gardener,” it naturally challenges comparisons which would not otherwise fall to 
its lot. All these books resemble each other in certain respects. They all deal 
with gardens and gardening on a generous scale, gossiped about in an easy, 
discursive, dilettante fashion, and interlarded with pleasant li'tle domestic 
touches, and scraps, more or less smart or pertinent, of feminine philosophising. 
They are all written by ladies, and in a cultured and graceful style which rarely 
descends to pedantry or rises to originality, and is not over-weighted — some 
people may perhaps think is not weighted enough — by the more prosaic details 
and technicalities of the subject under discussion. They are all, in fact, books of 
which we can feel that the writing them has afforded a pleasant occupation for 
the leisure hours of ladies of property ; while the reading them will fulfil the 
same office for other ladies of the same class. Where “Elizabeth” has the pull 
(in point of originality) is that her garden is a German one, the authoress being 
evidently (and none the less evidently for her frequent allusions to herself as a 
“foreigner” !) a joung English lady married to the noble proprietor of a large 
estate in the north-east of Piussia. It is of this estate, or rather of the re-laying 
out of a flower garden which has been allowed to degenerate into a wilderness, 
that she gossips, and gossips so pleasantly that we are inclined to forgive her 
when, having come to the end, we try to garner up our sheaf of added knowledge 
from the field she has opened to us, and hnd little beyond a long list of standard 
roses hardy enough to endure a Prussian winter, whose colours lone prettily 
above a carpet bedding of purple pansies or mignonette ; and the description of 
one or two flower borders, an arrangement in red, also of roses ; and in yellow — 
“ the chief feature of which is to be the number of ‘ ardent mangolds'— /Iowa s 
that 1 very tenderly love, and nasturtiums. The nasturtiums are to be of every 
sort and shade, and are to climb and creep and grow in bushes, and show their 
lovely flowers and Laves to the best advantage. Then there are to be eschschottzias, 
dahlias, sunflowers, zinnias, scabiosa, porlulaca, yellow violas, yellow stocks, 
yellow sweet peas, yellow lupins, everything that is yellow or has a yedow variety : 
and the place 1 have chosen is a long, wide border m the sun, at the foot of a 
grassy slope crowned with lilacs and pines and facing south east." 
That is “ the idea ; ” but whether it comes oil successfully Elizabeth does not 
say. She owns to “ lots of failures ” without specifying them or their causes 
