December 12. J 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
150 
under the management of Mr. Fortune, it is humiliating to 
our boasting pride of the improvements of the 10th century 
to find that the discovery, a mare’s nest, was very much 
inferior to Watts’ stove of the 17th century, and was soon 
abandoned as impracticable. 
“ In the centre of the garden is a marble statue erected to 
the memory of Sir Hans Sloane, by the eminent Rysbrack. 
The rockwork around the aquarium, near the statue, is 
worthy of particular notice for its historical recollections. 
It is composed of the tulfa, corals, and madrepores brought 
from Otaheite by Captain Cook. The ideas which these 
objects immediately suggest, expand to circumstances con¬ 
nected with far distant lands, from which they are recalled 
by the beauty and seclusion of the home grounds, 
“ * Where in the grass sweet voices talk, 
And strains of tiny music swell, 
From every moss-cup of the rock, 
From every nameful blossom’s bell.’ ” 
NEW PLANTS. 
THEIR PORTRAITS AND BIOGRAPHIES. 
Mr. Ingram’s Begonia ( Begonia Ingramii ).— Gar¬ 
deners’ Magazine of Botany, vol. ii., p. 153.—The genus 
Begonia was instituted by Linnaeus to commemorate 
the name of Michael Begon, a French patron of botany. 
The whole order numbers about 150 species, which are 
objects of considerable interest with our gardeners, and 
a bone of contention with the cultivators of botanical 
science—no two of them agreeing as to the place it should 
occupy in the natural classification of genera. Like the 
cucumber and the filbert, the Begoniads have the male 
and female organs in different flowers on the same plant, 
and are, therefore, referable to the 21st class of the Liu- 
mean system. It has been long a matter of opinion, and 
now of fact, that points of difference which separate 
one genus, or one species of plant, from another, are to 
be depended on in proportion to the nearest approach 
they make to the seat of reproduction, or that of the seed. 
Thus, a difference in the envelope of the flower, the 
calyx, is less to be depended on as a specific or generic 
distinction than that in the floral leaves or petals ; and, 
in their turn, petals when they differ in two plants are 
less trustworthy marks than such as occur among the 
stamens; and so on to the seed cord and the body of 
the seed itself. Relying on this minute kind of investi¬ 
gation, Begoniads are now found close by the side of the 
cucumber. But this research is pushed to the negative 
pole; for we find young aud old splitting these Bego¬ 
niads into fanciful genera in the absence of more novel¬ 
ties on which to exercise botanical acuteness. A solid 
or a two-lobed seed cord—not a double cord, as is 
asserted—being the point of separation. We, too, have 
been eyeing the cord of Begonias, but our glass is some¬ 
what worn with close inspections, aud will not reveal to 
us a separation of this same cord ; we can make out the 
two lobes representing the folded leaf in embryo, but 
still the folds join what should he the midrib ; and 
in our scbool-boy days, when our blankets were put over 
us doubled, the nurse never said they were double blan¬ 
kets ! Be that as it may, Mr. Ingram has here doubled 
our gratitude to himself in having united two of the best 
Begoniads and produced a third, which will some day 
strengthen the most cherished cord which binds the cot¬ 
tager to his flower-pots. And we do hope those Bego¬ 
niads, which Hartweg discovered climbing up trees like 
cords of cucumbers “ to the height of 25 feet,” will soon 
be coiled round all discordant botanists, and thus enable 
them to harmonise their disagreement about Begoniads. 
Mr. Ingram’s Begonia was raised in the Frogmore 
Gardens by Mr. T. Ingram, jun., by crossing B. fuclisi- 
oides with B. nitida. Seed sown at the end of 1849 pro¬ 
duced seedlings which bloomed last August, aud this is 
one of them. Stem erect, warted; leaves four inches 
long, unequal-sided heart-shape; dark glossy green 
above, pale glossy green beneath, with ribs reddish, 
and edges waved and round-tootlied; flowers in droop¬ 
ing two-ranked bunches; the male and female flowers 
are alternate in separate bunches. Male flowers, calyx, 
or outer flower cup, pale pink; the outer pair of its 
sepals, or sections,roundish, egg-shaped, and fleshy; and 
the inner pair narrower, boat-shaped, and paler; stamens 
united into a column, and crowned with yellow ohlong 
anthers. Female flowers, sepals five, oblong, and pale pink; 
styles divided into two spiral, downy, pimpled, yellow stig¬ 
mas ; ovary tliree-celled, longish egg-form, three-sided. 
The Kamtchatka Rhodotham (Rhodothamnus Kami- 
