CRITICAL REMARKS BY A CONSTANT READER. 
203 
To the Editor of the Horticultural Register. 
Sir, — I beg to trouble you with a few remarks on the contents of 
your number for June. Some of the papers I feel inclined to commend, 
but they are not all of equal merit nor free from errors, which I am 
surprised should have escaped your own eye. 
Mr. Mallet’s paper on Arbours ” is certainly well written as far as 
it is descriptive, but it is sadly defective in the choice of plants which 
he recommends for such ornamental structures. Who would have ex¬ 
pected to have seen any of the Rhus family recommended for an arbour ? 
Is the writer ignorant that the whole genus is more or less frightfully 
poisonous, insomuch that labourers whose duty it is to prune or pro¬ 
pagate these plants must have their hands protected by thick gloves, 
lest they should be blistered by the poisonous juice ? To children such 
plants would be particularly dangerous. 
Neither do I approve of the Smilax being employed about an arbour; 
it has too hostile a character for such a place. Nor do I think the 
Clematis vitalba should be admitted to the exclusion of the C.jlammula 
with its varieties, and the C. crispa, cirrhosa , &c., all hardy, and some 
of them highly fragrant. Instead of such very suitable climbers as the 
Glycine [ Wistariasinensis and other plants of like character, we have 
a long list of roses, and among them Passijlora edulis and alata, both 
stove plants. Such mistakes (no doubt unintentional) destroy the 
object the writer intends to advance, and detract from his otherwise 
amusing article. 
I shall next take the liberty to advert to the subject of another 
writer, who fills your pages without enriching your work—I mean the 
Linnaean system of botany by F. F. Ashford. I know nothing person¬ 
ally of the writer, but I consider his labours on this head superfluous. 
Have we not Lee’s and Smith’s introductions to botany, books of far 
greater authority and far more explicit for acquiring a knowledge of 
the science than any of the thousand and one new works of the same 
kind lately emitted from the press ? The natural system by Jussieu, 
with all its learned terminations and. hard names, is an actual incubus 
on the far more intelligent system of the venerated Swede, and it really 
is a pity that your own or any other periodical should be disfigured by 
the admission of any of its terms, its new divisions and subdivisions, 
which distract rather than enlighten the student or young lover of 
plants, and which has, moreover, disturbed the old nomenclature so 
much that but few plants are now known by their old names. 
