Plate 295. 
CAMELLIA, NONPAREIL. 
Each returning spring brings with it new candidates for 
public favour in the universally admired Camellia, although 
the present year has been less prolific in this respect than most 
of its predecessors, and of the very few which we have seen or 
heard of during the present season not the least beautiful will 
be found, we believe, to be Nonpareil , which we now figure. 
We have again to express our astonishment at the very 
meagre exhibition of this flower which we are accustomed to 
see in our great metropolis. No greater proof of the truth of 
our statement can, we think, be given than this, that at the 
spring show at South Kensington, where special prizes were 
offered for them, there was but one collection exhibited by 
amateurs, and that was considered by the judges to be so 
beneath the mark as to be disqualified, while those exhibited 
by growers for sale were by no means equal to the plants exhi¬ 
bited in other sections; and yet when we visit many of the 
establishments of the patrons of horticulture we find there fine, 
yea, magnificent, plants of Camellias; so that it cannot be, we 
should think, any ignorance of the method of cultivation that 
produces this paucity of display. 
There are few plants more easily cultivated than the Camellia, 
and certainly none which more thoroughly reward the pains 
and labour bestowed upon them. The necessity which it was 
thought there was of always placing them in a high tempera¬ 
ture after they had done flowering to induce growth, is by no 
means so great as was supposed, for they will and do make in 
the moderate temperature of a greenhouse quite as healthy 
growth, and set their flower-buds quite as well as in a stove, 
—attention being given to shade them from burning sunlight, 
