THE LADIES’ MAGAZINE OF GARDENING. 
49 
soil sifted fine, to the depth of nearly a quarter of an inch; and after 
giving the soil a slight sprinkling with water, I place the pot in a warm 
part of a small greenhouse. I cover the top of the pot with a piece of 
w 7 ood or slate, to prevent evaporation as much as possible. As soon as 
the seeds begin to grow, I remove whatever I may have placed over the 
pot. When the plants are an inch high, I pot them singly into very 
small pots, using some of the same sort of soil, and replace them in the 
greenhouse, or in a pit from which the frost can be excluded. If they 
require it, I pot them again before I turn them out, which I generally 
do in the middle of May. 
I find if the beds or borders in which they are planted are richly 
manured, they will not flower or seed so freely as when planted in the 
common soil of the garden, with which is mixed a portion of very rotten 
leaf-mould. 
I have had this very beautiful plant in perfection in December, when 
the Fuchsia glohosa growing in the same bed was killed to the ground by 
the severity of the frost. How long it might have remained uninjured I 
cannot tell, as I destroyed it to make room for some Crocuses. 
In my next, I shall treat of some other favourite plant. 
Tottenham, 
December 24, 1840. 
THE HISTORY OF THE CAMELLIA. 
BY THE EDITOR. 
The Camellia was first known in Europe, from the accounts of the 
early travellers to China and Japan, who related that they had seen in 
these countries enormous rose-trees, as large as oaks, but with dark green 
shining leaves. These stories were at first fancied fabulous, till the Jesuit 
Kamel, who visited Japan as a missionary in 1739, contrived to obtain 
two plants of the single red, which he brought to Europe, and sold for a 
large sum to Lord Petre, then a warm patron of gardening in England. 
They were taken to Thornden Hall (Lord Petre’s seat in Essex), and 
there being kept in a stove, they were absolutely killed by too much 
kindness. At that time the gardener at Thornden was a Mr. James 
Gordon, who soon after Lord Petre’s death in 1742 established a nursery 
at Mile End; and, being aware of the value of the Camellia as an orna¬ 
mental plant, he contrived to procure another specimen, which he planted 
in the free ground of a conservatory, and where I believe it remained till 
the nursery was broken up and the ground let for building, in 1837. 
This curious plant when I saw it in 1832 had a rugged bark, and 
VOL. i. — NO. II, 
H 
