AUGUST. 
237 
an unpleasing and unsatisfactory design, and should not have been 
allowed a place in the book. Among so many charming examples, 
however, a few slight drawbacks only serve, like spots placed purposely 
upon a lovely cheek, to set off and heighten the more attractive 
features; for upon almost every page in the book there is something 
attractive, something beautiful in itself, as well as appropriate to its 
intended purpose. 
This notice would hardly be complete without an extract from the 
book itself; we therefore give a paragraph, which, while it affords an 
example of the author’s mode of treating his subject, conveys at the 
same time some excellent advice upon a matter which has a wide 
application. 
“ Persons who have a fancy for a rock or Fern garden would do well 
to keep it somewhere in the background, and not in sight from the 
windows of the house or the principal parts of the lawn. It may be 
made very interesting if thus excluded, and be approached from the 
main walk of the garden through a rustic arch mantled with climbers, 
or by a kind of narrow winding passage, canopied and darkened with 
evergreens. Masses of rockery may even be placed fronting the chief 
line of walk, at some distance from the house, where a dense screen of 
planting can be interposed between them and the lawn, or where they 
can be made to look as if they were naturally cropping out of a bank. 
Or they may be employed as a sort of rustic basement to a building. 
To grow Ferns upon them the shade of trees, or some other objects, 
will be indispensable ; but many rock plants prefer an open, sunny 
situation ; so that rockeries should not be entirely shaded. If accom¬ 
panied with a small pool of water, having a broken rocky margin,, a 
few of the rarer aquatics and sedgy plants may be grown, and gold fish 
can be cherished. * * Rockeries should be formed as 
much as possible of natural materials. All the products of art, such 
as fused bricks, scoriae, and the far more vulgar constituents with which 
such ornaments are often constructed about towns, are nearly if not 
quite incompatible with any amount of rusticity ; and the last should 
be the distinguishing element of all rockeries.” 
GRAND NATIONAL ROSE SHOW. 
Given the thermometer at 90° on the 15th of June, what likelihood 
would there be of a good Rose Show on the 1st of July ? None, we 
should be inclined to say; and doubtless, had the heat continued to 
the same degree, or the show been less national in its character, the 
first grand Rose exhibition would have been a grand failure. Many 
were our misgivings, when sitting in a railway carriage about that 
time, vainly endeavouring to get a little air from the rapid motion of 
the train, and wiping off the big drops that would settle there, even 
when one was quite at rest; and right pleased were we, when entering 
St. James’s Hall, to find that all our anticipations were groundless, 
