146 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
May 25. 
picturesque and beautiful, which amply reward the excursion 
of the tourist. But, unfortunately, it would seem, these 
beauties (principally natural ones) do not seem to inspire 
that taste for pure and even simple nrtistic decoration which 
evinces the love of the beautiful in a community which bears 
testimony to its refined tastes, and is the guarantee of its 
advancement on the path of social and intellectual pro¬ 
gression. 
The soil and the climate of the colony, combined with 
the romantic beauty of the harbour, together with the 
hitherto unabated verdure of its wooded though rocky 
banks, have been sufficient for the conceptions of the pic¬ 
turesque, in the minds of the citizens of Sydney. It 
should, however, he remembered, that with the progress of 
population, these natural beauties will give way before the 
step of the occupier and clearer of the land ; and that 
artistic adornment must take the place of the wild loveliness 
which Nature originally implanted. 
It is, therefore, with much pleasure we notice that in 
almost every suburb of the city beautiful gardens are, and 
have been, rising up, in which floriculture and horticulture 
have been attended to, and encouraged on no mean scale. 
Of course these gardens for the most part surround the 
private residences of those, whose lucrative avocations enable 
them and their families, after the turmoil of the day is done, 
“ to live at home at ease,” and are intended for the private 
and select recreation of themselves and their friends. 
Still, wherever patrons of floriculture exist, there will be 
found the unpretending, though perhaps not less scientific, 
and more industrious purveyors to their wants, in the shape 
of nurserymen and landscape gardeners; and it is matter 
of great congratulation in a soil and climate capable of 
being modulated to almost every degree and variety of cul¬ 
ture as that of New South Wales, that in and about Sydney 
these purveyors are to be found possessed of great practical 
ability and skill. If, as it is to he hoped they may be, the 
monthly exhibitions of the Australasian Botanic Society 
should continue, and thus give an opportunity to judges of 
comparing the merits of various plants and flowers, as they 
come into season, we shall soon have an opportunity of test¬ 
ing the abilities and skill of the various growers, and of 
establishing their reputation on a firm and proper basis. 
There can bo no doubt that under such a regulation, emula¬ 
tion and competition would be very keenly excited; and 
provided a fair, proper, and discriminating encouragement 
be afforded to exhibitors, and proper rules be framed for the 
regulation of exhibitions, it will tend more rapidly than any 
thing else could do to advance the floriculture and horticul¬ 
ture of the colony. It will make gentlemen more particular 
as to the quality of the plants they introduce into their 
gardens, and it will heighten the interest which scientific 
men in foreign countries feel in all that relates to the 
botany of this singular and interesting continent. In anti¬ 
cipation of this result it may not be uninteresting, particu¬ 
larly to new arrivals, to give some account of the gardens in 
the neighbourhood of the city, which are open to their in¬ 
spection, premising at the same time, that it is not the 
intention to enter into any minute discriptiou of them, or to 
indulge in any scientific enumeration of the plants they con¬ 
tain. This may be very well left for the exhibitions already 
alluded to, at which scientific productions may be scien¬ 
tifically discussed, with propriety, and to public advantage. 
It is necessary to make a start somewhere, and we make no 
invidious seclection, nor do we confer any precedence in re¬ 
gard to comparative superiority on the garden selected for 
the first notice. 
It is that of Mr. Guilfoyle, nurseryman and seedsman 
grower of exotic plants, and landscape gardener. To the 
j whole of these professions Mr. Guilfoyle seems to have full 
I claim. Mr. Guilfoyle, shortly after his arrival in the colony, 
| became the gardener of Thomas S. Mort, Esq., whose 
| beautiful grounds, and still more beautiful garden, green- 
; houses, and hot houses, owe much of the celebrity they have 
| acquired to the judicious care and superintendence of Mr. 
j Guilfoyle. When he commenced on his own account, he 
took a piece of land at the foot of Mr. Mort's beautiful 
grounds, and adjoining the government reserve at the head 
j of Double Bay. The nursery is on a fertile and well 
watered flat, and was perfectly free from cultivation a few 
| years hack ; but at present, almost every yard of it presents 
one accumulated wealth of verdure and flowers. The un¬ 
sightliness of new buildings, of rough sheds, of tool houses, 
and wells, is veiled beneath a profusion of creeping vines, 
native and exotic, which grow with a luxuriance and a ra¬ 
pidity which will astonish the European visitor. 
The garden and nursery, which have little of the pictures¬ 
que in themselves, except that arising from their lux uriant 
cultivation, derive this desirable attribute from the fine bold 
view which they have of the numerous bays of the harbour 
to the North Head; and also of the elegantly laid out 
grounds of Mr. Mort, with their ornamented terraces, rising 
one above the other. And when the splendid mansion now 
in progress of building is completed, little will be left wanting 
to fill up the beauty of the effect. 
Mr. Guilfoyle’s garden is essentially a nurseryman’s gar¬ 
den ; it has no pretension to landscape beauty, or artistic de¬ 
coration. Every foot, aye, every inch of it, is appropriated 
to its useful destiny. Amidst the elaborate details of culti¬ 
vation, and the rich luxuriance arising from it, the wonder 
is that order can be maintained, and that much that is 
i prized and valued is not either forgotten or trodden down as 
worthless. The attraction of the garden at present, or, as 
it is more proper to say, at the time of the writer's visit, was 
its splendid collection of Roses, of upwards of 100 varieties 
—its display of Pinks, l’icotees, and Carnations, not yet at 
I its perfection,—the variety of Verbenas, and Pansies, and 
the glory of what is the weakness of the proprietor’s heart— 
his beautiful specimens of Gladiolus and Ixia. In the nur¬ 
sery, corresponding care and attention are exhibited, and 
plants from all portions of the globe are thriving. 
There were Pines and Tea trees from China, the Syca¬ 
more, and the green Holly from the fresh groves and 
verdant hedge rows of old England, and representatives of 
all the intervening varieties of climate and soil had a local 
habitation and a name in this thickly habited conservatory. 
This collection of Pines and of Camellias was particularly 
j fine, and Mr. Gulifoyle exhibited with some laudable pride 
several thriving specimens of the “Dammara,” from the 
I South Sea Islands, first introduced into the colony by 
| Charles Moore, Esq., of the Botanic Gardens, Sydney, on his 
I return from his trip to those islands some three years ago. 
i —Sydney Morning Herald. 
SIGHTS IN SWEDEN. 
There is nothing that strikes a stranger more forcibly, if 
he visits Swedeii at the season of the year when the days 
are the longest, than the absence of the night. Our 
countryman, Dr. Baird, tells us that he had no conception 
of the effect produced, before his arrival at Stockholm, five 
hundred miles distant from Gottenburg. He arrived in the 
morning, and in the afternoon went to see some friends. 
He had not taken notes of time, and returned about night; 
it was as light as it is here half an hour before sun-down. 
You see distinctly. But all was quiet in the streets; it 
seemed as if the inhabitants had gone away, or were dead. 
No signs of life; the stores closed. 
The sun in June goes down in Stockholm at a little before 
ten o’clock. There is a great illumination all night, as the 
sun passes round the earth toward the North Pole; and 
the refraction of its rays is such that you can see to read at 
midnight without artificial light. There is a mountain at 
the head of the Bothnia, where, on the 21st of June, the 
sun does not go down at all. Travellers go there to see it. 
A steamboat goes up from Stockholm for the purpose of 
carrying those who are curious to witness this great phe¬ 
nomenon. It occurs only one night. When the sun goes 
down to the horizon, you can see the whole face of it, and 
in five minutes it begins to rise. 
At the North Cape, latitude 72°, the sun does not go 
down for several weeks. In June it would be about 25° 
above the horizon at midnight. The way tho people 
there know that it is midnight, is—they see the sun rise. 
The changes in these latitudes, from summer to winter, are 
so great, that we can have no conception of them at all. In 
the winter time the sun disappears, and is not seen for 
weeks. Then it comes and shows its face. Afterward, it 
remainsfor ten,fifteen or twenty minutes, and then descends; 
and finally it does not set at all, but makes almost a circle 
