Jur.Y 20. 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
271 
be more beautiful than these flowers, or more charming | 
than those open smiles. Rhyneospermum Jasminoides, all 
but a hardy climber, Messrs. Eraser had an immense 
specimen of. It was also at all the exhibitions, and 
early in the spring at the Rooms in Regent-street; hut 
no one who has seen it in a flourishing state planted out 
in the open air, against a wall, pillar, or paling, will ever 
make up his or her mind to it in a pot. It is just the 
! same with MandeviUa suaveolens; and they tell me it is 
I the same also with the Escallonict macrantha, and with 
S Mitraria coccinea, both of which stood out last winter 
| in several places in Scotland, and I think Mr. Veitch 
I told me that Mitraria coccinea is one of their finest out- 
hordor shrubs ; those, therefore, who do not know this 
fine plant may get an idea of it by supposing Correa 
ptdckeUa studded all over with the flowers of some scarlet 
gesnera. It has been at all the summer shows, aud 
deserves universal cultivation. 
I cannot go farther without mentioning the gratifying 
fact, that a whole row of the (Enothera speciosa, opened 
its pure white blossoms with me on the first of July; 
that they are in a light, rich border, where the sun does 
not reach them till four o’clock in the afternoon; and 
that they keep open day and night, and promise to do so 
to the end of the season. Every one who has a flower¬ 
bed, or nice border to fill, ought to get hold of this 
(Enothera , for it will answer equally well for growing in 
masses, and for distributing in single plants along a 
border, as S. P., of Rushmere, uses it. 
I see they have began to raise seedlings from the 
Crassula coccinea ; and there was one exhibited at Chis¬ 
wick which seems a cross between miniata and coccinea, 
for it is exactly intermediate between the two; less 
white in the eye than miniata, and the white lower down 
in the throat. It is called Beauty of Charonne. 
Mr. Appleby’s employers sent their beautiful Phlox 
Mayii variegata, and their crimson-purple one, called 
Thomsonii ; two of the very best yet seen from Drummondii. 
Also two very nice dwarf blue Lobelias for beds, with 
part of the habit of gracilis, hut not quite so strong ; one 
is called Ramosoides, a dark blue, and the other Erinus 
occulata, meaning white-eyed, because it is bright white 
in the eye, and the blue is lighter than the other. 
Mr. Veitch had two very nico Collin sins; one a pur¬ 
plish and lilac colour, and much streaked, called Multi¬ 
color, and a lighter one than Bicolor, called Bartsifolia. 
Also a yellowish Leptosiphon, with a reddish eye, which 
will make a nice early bed ; I did not learn the second 
name, hut I believe Mr. Bentham named it from Mr. 
Hartney’s specimens. 
There was a fine plant of that extraordinary A raucaria 
I called after Cook, the groat circumnavigator, from Mr. 
Appleby’s employers; and I saw Araucaria Bidu'illii 
' in the large conservatory of the society; it looks as if 
[ intermediate between imbricata and Braziliensis. This 
! brings me to Mr. Fortune’s new conifers from China, 
which are really splendid evergreens, and if they are 
quite hardy, as he and Mr. Standish believe they are, 
they will vie with the best from California and Patagonia, 
| and also be fit companions to the latter— Saxgothea, 
and Pitzroya. First of all, there is a spruce, which 
looks exactly as if it was a cross between our common 
\ yew and silver fir, hut of more open and freer growth 
than either of them ; the name is Abies jezoemis. The 
history of it is very singular. Mr. Fortune sent off a 
tree of it nearly as thick as my arm, which died down to 
the ground on its passage to England, and as conifers 
do not stole, or throw up suckers, the Bagsliot folks 
thought it was all up with this treasure; not so, however; 
for after awhile suckers came out as thickly as bristles on 
the back of a hedgehog, and no doubt they were all made 
into plants except one, and that one was on the old stump 
at this exhibition, and nearly six feet high, with all the 
character of a seedling, as visitors took it to he; but I 
scratched off the moss from the top of the pot to see 
that all this was true to the letter. I think Dutrochet, 
or Decandolle, once mentioned a fir in the south of 
France that make a sucker some years after being cut 
down, but I forget the story. The next is called | 
Cephalotaxus Fortuni. The literal translation of this 
new name is, Mr. Fortune's head of yew; and the mean- | 
ing is, that one might take it for some kind of yew if 
seen at a long distance off’, but when you come near to 
it you would say it was a cross between the new Ever¬ 
green Cypress aud some monster yew ; the leaves being 
just like a yew leaf, but longer and more wide, and set I 
farther apart from each other, and the growth is qnite 
as free and fast as that of Evergreen Cypress; altogether ! 
it is one of the very finest trees ever introduced. Mr. 
Fortune told me lie did not see it grow higher than 
thirty feet; that Oaks, Chimonanths, Weigela rosea, and i 
such hardy plants were growing in the same parts, and ! 
that he believes it to he quite hardy, hut he could not 
meet with it in fruit. He employed some natives to get 
cones for him, and from these two very distinct plants 
have been reared, which they call male and female, hut 
I doubt that altogether, and I think they are two very 
distinct species; the second is much smaller in all the 
parts, and more like a silver fir than a Cephalotaxus. 
The next greatest curiosity was a beautifully trained 
large plant of Stephanotis floribunda, in full fruit and | 
bloom. The fruit looked like young green vegetable 
marrows, when fit for a French cook to slice up for white 
sauce. A branch of the Date Palm in fruit was also 
exhibited; perhaps the most useful fruit of this noble 
family, supplying, as it does, food and sustenance to the 
wild desert tribes. Also a very nice Pear Tree in a pot, 
looking as well as could be, and having green fruit, but 
not a great crop as the pot was but small. They often i 
show grapes in pots, hut by the time the grapes are ripe j 
the vines are not fit to he seen, and I often thought 
they would he much better left at home; and no one 
has ever made a fortune or a reputation by growing 
vines in pots; hut apples, pears, and cherries, with 
plums and apricots, peaches and nectarines, w r ould 
really he a great acquisition to London sight-seers if 
tire plants could he brought out in healthy leaf. 
Ferns. —Many of these are shown, hut with the excep¬ 
tion of Lycopods aud a few others, I see no soit of use 
in crowding the tables with them. People are almost 
tired of Cape Heaths and large Pelargoniums, although 
the main supports of the shows. Who then will stretch 
his leathers to see what is the difference between this or 
that fern, when all the botanists in Europe, and every¬ 
where else, are at loggerheads about what-is-wliat in a 
fern? Mr. Fortune’s purplish and light-green Lycopod, 
Casimn, is the prettiest thing in that class, and the 
climbing or true variety of it is really worth a dozen of 
the newest ferns ever seen; but all the Lycopods, and 
many of the small-leaved ferns, are very useful for fring¬ 
ing or otherwise mixing in nosegays, and for covering 
rockwork and borders in hothouses. All this useful 
garnishing is a very different tiling from carving for the 
multitudes at public shows or festivals. D. Beaton. 
WINTERING TENDER PLANTS IN ROOMS 1 
AND COLD PITS. 
A few weeks ago an answer was given to an in- j 
teresting letter of a correspondent on this subject in the ; 
usual column, with the promise shortly to revert to the j 
matter more in detail. With a word or two of advice as 1 
to the formation of the pit, I once thought it would be 
better to leave the matter until the cold nights came to 
visit us, as it did not seem quite in character to he 
writing about wintering when we were broiling under 
something like a tropical sun; but two reasons have 
