1875. ] 
RESTRICTIVE CULTURE V. FREEDOM. 
105 
bounds, and to prevent the more tender varieties from being killed, we are under 
the necessity every now and then of giving the whole a severe cutting-back. The 
number of seedlings in this house and everywhere about is something surprising. 
Along the sides of the paths of our stoves, wliat with Begonias , Caladiums , Ferns , 
<fcc., the paths are almost lost sight of; so also is the path of the greenhouse with 
hardy exotic and British ferns, and sore does my heart ache when I see a lady 
pass through with distended dress, unconscious of my tenderlings. Long rows 
of the hardy Adiantum Capillus- Veneris fringe the path-sides of our melon and 
pine stoves, enough of which could be had to turf down a goodly-sized lawn. 
A few years ago we planted out a house of Camellias, and they, too, have 
grown so tremendously that it is now necessary to introduce the process of both 
thinning and selection of the best varieties. Gardening, in every department, 
like unto everything else, is continually undergoing change. The transition 
within the last few years is something marvellous, and the pace at which we are 
now drifting may perhaps be better imagined than described. I have been a 
country gardener myself all my life, and seldom had much opportunity to dwell 
long at a time in the national Botanic Gardens of Edinburgh or Ivew, but I carry 
with me a lively recollection of the enormous quantities of boxes I saw in the 
great palm-houses of those establishments, out of which palms were growing ; 
some of them perhaps healthy, some sickly, some dead, and some with long weird 
stems, with green tops high aloft, and some, too, pushing their -way through the 
glass for the inhalation of fresh air. Such a state of gardening and such a state 
of culture may not inaptly be described after this manner :—- 
“ Boxes stood round like open presses, 
Which showed the palms in their last dresses; 
Wi’ mair o’ horrible and awfu’, 
Which ev’n to name wad be unlawfu’.” 
At Frankfort-on-Main not very long ago I had an opportunity of seeing the 
celebrated palm-garden there. The palms I found, at least the greater portion of 
them, not in boxes as above described, but tastefully planted out on a glade of 
undulating ground, beautifully and completely carpeted over with Selaginella. But 
they do these things better on the Continent. The example of the Palm-garden at 
Frankfort might well be imitated in this country. What can be more repulsive 
to a mind fond of observing nature in all its freedom than to observe in our 
large garden establishments so many thousands of plants some in tubs, some in 
pots, and others in all manner of places of torture conceivable, struggling hard for 
dear life ? In this way thousands of valuable plants are committed weekly, 
monthly, and yearly to a premature grave. Plants are dumb, and cannot cry 
aloud for water, or more freedom of space to grow in ; they can only indicate 
their distress by decay or death. To check all this terrible wholesale plant- 
torture, -would that we had a horticultural Plimsoll to keep watch amongst our 
garden establishments, a Gustave Dore to represent the carnage of plant life, and 
a Dante to make plants consigned to the nether regions give voice to the cruelties 
practised on them whilst in the upper world! Would that retributive justice 
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