58 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
Od'OBEK 24. 
the air to such a degree as would hurt the most delicate 
work of art within it, is yet, however, to be learned by 
direct experiment in the Palace itsolf. 
If you have been accustomed to learn plants from 
pictures only, you must conclude that those in the front 
of our view are Palm-trees; but they are not so, the 
Palms are at the further end of the building. What 
j look like Palms in this view are the Norfolk Island 
j Pine (Araucaria exoelm), which grows above one 
hundred feet high ; and I can assure you, that there is 
not one of them in those islands, or in this country, 
which can look healthier than many of thorn that are 
now in the Crystal Palace. One of them, a large tree, 
about which they must have entertained some mis¬ 
givings at the time it was planted, they had covered 
with moss along the main trunk and larger branches, 
such as I reported last year as having been done with 
largo shrubs at Shrublaud Park, by Mr. Davidson. 
This has had the desired effect; the tree suffered 
severely by the transplanting, but now it is past all 
danger, and looking remarkably well. They would 
have lost it, certainly, were it not for the covering of 
moss, which they kept moist for a long time; this, 
therefore, may be considered as an established fact, and 
1 ought to be kept in mind when ono has to deal with 
large trees or shrubs, with which a sufficiency of roots 
cannot be had when they are transplanted; the heat 
| and glare in the Crystal Palace, last spring, was enough 
j to kill any large tree with bad roots, and one of the 
Conifers in particular, but the covering of moss, kept 
! wet, saved it. 
There are, in garden language, “ conservatory beds ” 
along both sides of the nave the whole length of the 
Palace, besides the groups of beds, banks, and ridges, 
at the west end, for illustrating the natural history of 
man and animals; togother with eight flower-garden 
bods round the Crystal and Bronze Fountains at either 
end of the building. Some of those round the basin of 
the Crsytal Fountain are seen in our accompanying view, 
and all these beds are brimful of plants in the most 
| healthy condition from end to end, except the Egyptian 
1 Palms (Phoenix daclylifera), and they aro leafless yet. 
; The steamer in which they came over was pressed into 
the transport service to Turkey, and this delay, I fear, 
; has all but killed these beautiful Palms; but let us 
i hope not, for the Palm races aro very tenacious of life, 
| and there is yet great substance in the naked trunks, 
which aro enveloped in moss—they are in good soil, 
and the situation could not be better, 
i The principal plants in those beds representing the J 
temperato regions are tree Rhododendrons, and the host 
Rhododendron hybrids, with Camellias. All these will 
give a blaze of flowers through the winter; but among 
them is a mixture of all our best conservatory plants 
and climbers, which, in time, will cover every space of 
the airy roofs :—of them, more hereafter. It is astonish¬ 
ing how well this large collection of plants, from so 
many places, look the first year; but more so, that beds 
of Tom Thumb, edgings of little blue Lobelias, and open- 
air-bed mixtures of most of the popular tribes, should 
flourish round the basins in the centre, and in the 
height of summer, without any signs of being “ drawn,” 
or want of free flowering. We must lay all these 
advantages to the credit of so much light, and such a 
large volume of pure air in constant motion. The first 
day that I was there was very hot, and little or no air 
in the open air; but thero was a good draught in the 
galleries, and the thermometer was six degrees lower in 
the second gallery than in the open air at Surbiton; 
the draught made all the difference. People hereabouts 
thought I was mad, or else had more money than wit, 
when I built my cottages, in 1852, and made an extra 
room between each pair of kitchens, which projected to 
the south, beyond the line of the building, by facing the 
openings between two wings with upright glass, and a 
span-roof of glass over, to correspond with the slate 
roofs on either side. So much glass to inclose such 
small spaces, they said, would soon roast dinners and 
cooks without any fire at all; and one of my tenants 
had actually a clause inserted into his agreement, that 
the roof of his back-kitclicn should be taken down, if 
the woman could not stand to wash the dishes, for the 
heat. Now, however, these very women shut tho doors 
of my Wardian cases, in hot weather, to keep them¬ 
selves cool; wo having ascertained, meantime, that, 
generally, thero are from nine to twelve degress of dif¬ 
ference between the heat inside and that out in tho 
garden in front, the inside being the coolest, and that 
entirely by a simple move for causing a rapid current at 
the roof, immediately under the glass; and I maintain, 
that the inside of a large glass globe might be made 
cooler than the open air just in the same way; and Sir 
Joseph Paxton lias managed to do tho same in the 
Crystal Palace. 
The way I did it, was simply to leave an open space 
under the eaves of tho roof, at both ends, and, like the 
force in the liot-water system, the moment a particle of 
air is heated above tho rest, up it is, and is caught in 
the curront, and a cooler particle takes the place of it. 
By inverting the process, I have before now kept the 
top part of a cool plant-house hot enough to grow stove 
plants, and tho same may bo done for stove-climbers in 
the Crystal Palaco, without prejudice to tho plants 
below ; hut that does not meet tho only difficulty which 
appears to me must be got over in tho Crystal Palace— 
that of having sufficient moisture in the air where the 
air plants stand without doing harm to other things. 
In short, without making a “ court” for Orchids, and a 
few other tribes, on the principle of a Wardian case, in 
the Crystal Palace, these jilants caunot possibly be 
grown there at all. 
Seeing the ventilation so complete, and so thoroughly 
under control, I am sure that all other plants, with few 
exceptions, will be found to grow and bloom better in 
tho Crystal Palace than in any conservatory whatever, 
and my old hobby of flowering stove-climbers along tho 
roofs of cooler houses will have a better chance there 
than it ever had before. I see no impediment to the 
progress of sucb climbers as Bignonta venusta and 
Chamberlaynii, Combretum purpureum and grandijlorum, 
Stephanotis Jloribunda, and Henfraya scandens, and 
many more of the like nature, alongside of the common 
Passion-flower and Tacsonia. Indeed, I noticed there 
[ a more curious combination of half-hardy and stove 
plants than these—a noble pair of tho Elephanf’s-foot 1 
plant, from Africa (Testudinaria elephantipes), which is j 
all but hardy in England, growing with tropical Palms, j 
These are the most curious of nil the plants at the 
Crystal Palace, and every lady should look out for them ; i 
they stand at the entrance of the “ Egyptian Court,” and 
look like huge blocks of wood covered with a rough 
bark, which cracks iu all directions, or seems to crack ; 
the whole body of the plant inside that rough bark is 
just as like the inside of a Turnip as can be, and as full j 
of juice as a Beurre Pear. A plant of this nearly 
ripened seeds against an open wall, at Shrublaud Park, 
in 1848, and was much stronger and healthier in the 
stems and leaves than another which was kept in-doors. I 
There are more than a hundred Orange-trees, once the 
property of Louis Philippe, King of France, many of 
them most noble specimens, but the greater part of 
them must have been in very bad health when they left . 
France, and they are not yet quite recovered. Some 
largo Pomegranates, however, have made noble heads 
this season, and were coming into flower by the end of , 
August; next year they ought to ripen fruit. After | 
them comes a number of middle-sized standards, of the I 
Sweet Bay, their heads being kept close by pruning; | 
