AuRust 21, 1884. ] 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
169 
ances. Yellow masses are best relieved witb pink, or preferably blue of a 
lilacy shade. Blue, again, is never so effectively managed as with white or 
blue of a lighter shade. Blue is always hest treated, not by way of contrast, 
hut in harmony with other cool soft shades. A mass of blue, if too cold 
and depressing, is wonderfully brightened by the addition of a few white¬ 
leaved Pelargoniums with scarlet flowers dotted about the bed. As a rule, 
I think far too little blue is used in gardens. Properly treated, it can be 
made the base of most restful effect ; a very little crimson and less of yellow 
is only necessary to give the required brightness. White is also a most 
important feature too often overlooked. In isolated beds almost anything 
can be planted so long as the honest principles of good taste are not 
violated ; but here, as in other things, careful taste will show itself at 
once. 
Another matter in connection with flower gardening is that of the 
change of flowers from year to year. Verbenas are hardly ever seen now, 
Calceolarias are scarce, and many other flowers well worthy attention are 
never seen in many gardens. Now what seems to me to be the best way 
of imparting interest to flower gardening is to break away from some of the 
novelties which have taken the place of these discarded plants and grow 
these once again. JIan likes change—novelty—but he is also much 
attached to old flowers. Let us try something of this. In most gardens 
we can manage to keep the stock of plants in abeyance for a season while 
some old acquaintances have an innings, and most likely will make a good 
score. 
To young men I may be allowed to offer this advice. Study flower 
gardening in its best aspects as much as you possibly have the means of 
doing. It requires as much training or more to lay out a garden of flowers 
with taste and without regularity as it does to manage any other depart¬ 
ment of garden work. Very much painstaking work is completely marred 
by a want of knowledge, which it is in the power of most young men to 
obtain it they study good models when they have opportunity of doing 
so. It hardly need be said again what has so often been written, that now 
is the time to arrange for another year’s display—now the time to decide 
on the plants to use and the way to use them. Forethought in all garden 
matters is necessary, but I do not think it an exaggeration to say that in 
nothing does forethought prove of so much value as in this matter. We 
know exactly the kind and number of plants wanted, and under ordinary 
circumstances can work with precision to gain that point cheaply and with¬ 
out loss.— Sylvan us. 
A DAY IN THE COUNTRY. 
Commenting on the appeals for aid that are so frequent at this 
period of the year for affording “ city arabs ” a day in the country, 
a writer in one of the London papers thinks a longer period advisable. 
“ The day,” he says, “ is rather a dissipated weary day, a bank holiday 
on a diminutive scale; an affair of crowds, shouting, and eating things 
of doubtful wholesomeness.” Such was not our day; there was no 
crowding, no shouting, and the dinner in a “ Royal ” establishment was 
considered a splendid finish to an enjoyable ramble among the historical 
Burnham Beeches, the magnificent Dropmore Conifers, and the wide- 
spreading lawns of Cliveden. 
At the close of an interesting ceremony at the “ Healtheries ” a 
few kindred spirits in solemn conclave assembled were invited by Mr. 
Harry Turner to leave Babylon just for a day, reach Slough by a certain 
train, and he would give them a drive in the country. True to time our 
genial guide, duly equipped, and with an ample commissariat, was at 
the rendezvous. “ Stoke, Farnham Royal to Burnham,” was the order, 
and through smiling cornfields, down shady lanes, past Stoke Poges 
church, immortalised by Gray in his famous Elegy, we spun, drinking in 
the sweet fresh air until we reached the halting place and had our first 
rest under the great gaunt Beeches, which, by the recent act of the 
Corporation of London, belong to the public “ for ever.” 
Marvellous trees are these, relics of the primaeval forest, with hollowed 
trunks like sentry boxes, and multitudinous branches as the result of 
pollarding. Tradition says that Cromwell was the lopper; but though 
he was no sentimentalist, and spared not what he wanted, there is no 
evidence that he pruned these Beeches. But there is another tradition 
far older than this, and less worthy of credence—that they were pollarded 
in the time of Canute eight and a half centuries ago. Whenever, and 
by whom they trimmed, they are wonderful relics. Many of them mere 
shells supporting a hundred branches, and in some instances other large 
trees are growing out of their capacious trunks. Yet these venerable 
trees are, as a rule, healthy and densely umbrageous, only a few bearing 
signs of approaching collapse. 
Let us for a moment see what others say about the Beech. “ There 
is,” says Mr. G. W. Johnson, “no reasonable doubt of its being the 
Fagus of the Romans. Pliny says that this bore the sweetest of mast, 
that it was a nut enclosed in a three-angled rind, that hogs delighted in 
the mast, and that the pork they formed was esj)ecially wholesome. The 
fruit of no other European tree than that of our Beech agrees with those 
particulars. It has been concluded that the Beech is not a native of 
England, because Caesar in his ‘ Commentaries ’ states that ‘ timber of 
every kind, the same as in Gaul, except the Beech and Fir,’ are in Britain. 
If he had prefixed to that sentence ‘ 1 saw,’ he would have truly recorded 
the extent of his knowledge ; but he was not justified in writing so 
comprehensively, inasmuch as that he never penetrated into what are 
now our midland counties. He never advanced as far as that district 
which the Romans’ successors—the Anglo-Saxons—named Buckingham, 
which, using Camden’s words, * is given to bring forth Beech trees plenti¬ 
fully, which the English Saxons in elder times called Buoken.’ As early 
as the times of Edward the Confessor, more than 800 years ago, the woods 
of Burnham in that county afforded pannage for 600 hogs. Pannage was 
the old legal term for the right to the food afforded to swine by the mast 
of the Beech and Oak, and there is little doubt that the still celebrated 
Burnham Beeches were then in existence. The Beech has a peculiar 
mode of revivification. Its trunk may be hollow—the wood entirely 
decayed—but one branch remaining vigorous thrusts down to the earth, 
along one side within the hollow, a slender stem, which roots and becomes 
another trunk. 
The poet Gray observes that ‘ There is a character about the 
Burnham Beeches distinct from all others. They are not lofty, for they 
appear to have been headed down at some time or other, but they are of 
enormous size, and the pruning of the heads seems to have thrown a 
superfluous amount of vigour into the trunks. Nowhere else do the 
trunks of Beeches, as a rule, burst into such strange forms, or so wreath 
their old fantastic roots on high. Every second Beech trunk here is a 
study for a painter.’ They are still all that Gray described nearly a 
century and a half ago. 
Gilpin remarks :—‘ Its trunks are often highly picturesque. It is 
studded with bold knobs and projections, and has sometimes a sort of 
irregular fluting about it, which is very characteristic. Its smoothness 
also contrasts agreeably with these rougher appendages. No bark tempts 
the lover so much to make it the depository of his mistress’s name. It 
conveys a happy emblem— 
‘-crescent ill®; crescentis amores.’ 
. (As they increase ; the loves increase.) 
Virgil was right in choosing the Beech for its shade. No tree 
forms so complete a roof. If you wish either for shade or shelter you 
will find it best 
‘-patnl® sub tegmine Fagi.’ 
(Under the cover of a spreading Beech).” 
The truth of that we experienced during our sultry day in the 
country. 
Then the Beech has its uses ; indeed it is one of the most useful of 
trees. In Switzerland mattresses are stuffed with its leaves. Its nuts 
yield an oil useful either as olive or lamp oil ; and the cake which 
remains after the expression is a good food for fowls and pigs. The 
wooden shoes, sabots, worn by the French peasants are made of the wood ; 
it is excellent for fuel, and vinegar (pyroligneous acid) is distilled from 
it. Turners form of it trenchers, bowls, and other utensils. Joiners and 
cabinet-makers employ it for furniture. If kept constantly under water 
it is as durable there as the wood of the Elm. The exterior rings of the 
wood are used for forming band-boxes. The millwright uses it for the 
cogs of wheels, and the wheelwright for spokes. In the coal mines it is 
used under the name of “ Newcastle railing.” Like the wood of the 
Lime it is used for piano sounding-boards. Tool-makers employ it for 
handles, and cask staves for dry goods are made of it. 
So much for the Beech and the remarkable examples at Burnham. 
We are now off to 
DEOPMORE. 
There is nothing whatever gardenesque, nothing imposing in the 
approach to Dropmore. There is a pretty Swiss chalet-like lodge at 
the entrance to the road—not a trim carriage drive—passes through a 
wood or wilderness in which Gaultheria Shallon luxuriates in places as 
an undergrowth, the sprays being laden with berries, which it is said are 
tempting morsels to pheasants ; here and there we see glints of colour in 
the ripening fruits of the Mountain Ash, but more of these anon. We 
are nearing the mansion, which seems embossed in trees, and in a moment 
are awaiting the presence of the renowned octogenarian gardener, Mr. 
Philip Frost, who has occupied his present position for upwards of fifty 
years. Whether the celebrated Conifers or the planter of most of them 
constitutes the more remarkable features of Dropmore would be a difficult 
question to determine ; but this much is certain, that linking them 
together, and having regard to their characters and associations, there is 
nothing equal in its way to the combination on the face of the earth. 
Here is a man who has struck cuttings of Abies Douglassi, tended and 
watched them into magnificent trees 80 or 90 feet high ; who has raised 
Araucarias, guided them to maturity, gathered the seed from them and 
raised young plants ; who is the “ author,” so to speak, of the most 
magnificent example of this tree in Europe; who carried an inch-high 
seedling of Pinus insignis from Chiswick nearly half a century ago 
ensconced between two thumb pots in his waistcoat pocket, as much 
prized as the present Superintendent of those gardens can prize his watch, 
and has watched the waistcoat-pocket tree attain a height of apparently 
80 feet, with a band of equal circumference, and a rugged trunk girthing 
10 or 12 feet; who has grown Deodar Cedars from the smallest to the 
largest proportions, or to a height of 70 feet, and has sown the seed that 
produced the king of the trees at Dropmore, a Douglas Fir that towers 
above all others to a height of 120 feet. There is no record of any such 
results as these attained by a man who can still look upon his work. 
We are now waiting his approach, nor need we be surprised to see a 
tottering silvery-haired relic of the past supporting himself on his staff, 
greeting his friends in faltering tones, and with drooping head listening 
intently for their reciprocations. This is what might reasonably be 
expected from a man who has worked so hard and so long, in heat and 
in cold ; but let it be said, with all the emphasis possible, that the reality 
is as far as possible removed from the fancy picture. Here he comes—a 
sturdy, strong, thickset specimen, with a firm and springy step, ruddy 
countenance, clear resonant voice, sharp eye, and quick ear, with not a 
hair in his head changed from the normal colour of youth. Surely 
Her Majesty has few such subjects in her realms, and not one of them 
