382 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, Mabch 26, 1861. 
merits in their shades, their bells, and their spikes; and the 
followin'? are only one point below them in the eyes of first-rate 
judges—Aurora Rutilans, dark red ; Cavarence, salmon, striped 
with rose; Circe, much after the last; Cosmos, rosy pink; 
Johanna Christina, pale rose, and salmon stripe; La Joyeuse, 
fine salmon; Lady Sale, deep red, and purplish shade; Mdlle. 
Rachel, deep red also; Mons. Fesch, pinky, changing to scarlet; 
and Yon Schiller. 
Purple Lilac, or nearest to mauve, Prince of Wales and 
Honneur, the two best; l’L T nique, purplish-mauve; Hydra, 
lilac mauve, and quite new, the tw r o next best; and Dandy, 
which is more of a bronze. In deepening the centre of a group, 
or the back row on a border, these mauve-tinted kinds should 
stand between the dark blues and the very black kinds in the 
centre or at the back. And of these Blacks, General Havelock 
is the very best and the very finest Hyacinth ever seen. Prince 
Albert is the next best black sort, but with much less purple 
in it. 
Among the Double Plues Sir Cohn Campbell has taken the 
lead over old Laurence Coster ; but the two are different in the 
shade of blue, Sir Colin Campbell being the lightest. Another 
one called Paarlboet is also very good; and so is Bloksberg, a 
very cheap, fine, marbled blue flower. 
Single Blues are just as strong as the single reds, and most 
magnificent spikes most of them have. Baron van Tuyll is still 
the favourite of them at the Experimental Garden, and the best 
of them for rows of blue in a ribbon. But the ladies there have 
not seen them all in bloom. Argus, Grand Lilas, and Couronne 
de Celle are my own three greatest favourite blues. Princess 
Alice, the next to Argus, is very fine; it is a better flower and 
a finer spike, but wants the white eye of Argus, which rivets the 
eye of fancy the moment it is seen, and there is a great sale for 
it. Orondates is a first-rate porcelain blue, and Charles Dickens 
stands next to it in point of merit, and Porcelain Sceptre is not 
much behind either; while Blue Mourant is the darkest blue 
and the cheapest blue for bedding by the hundred; but Baron 
van Tuyll, Charles Dickens, Grand Yidette (azure blue), and 
Porcelain Sceptre are nearly as cheap, and all of them fine for 
bedding. 
There is no improvement in Yellows, and only two shades of 
yellow that are really good—that is to say, Anna Carolina (a 
primrose yellow on a prime spike) and Konig van Holland 
(creamy yellow') after the tints of some Belgian Azalea. 
Double Whites are not strong in numbers, nor very striking 
in bells ; but their spikes are more like Covent Garden Asparagus 
than the genteel standards on which the single beauties hang 
up their charming colours. 'The best double white is still 
Prince of Waterloo, La Tour d’Auvergne the next best, and La 
Deese nearly as good. 
Single Whites. —Here is where the front row's for the ribbon- 
border must be looked for, and here are the best three pure 
whites for that or for any other purpose—Madame Yan der Hoop, 
Grande Yidette, and Yictoria Regina. The two latter are the 
cheapest on the roll, and the two placed alternately in a single 
row would very much help each other, as Yictoria Regina shines 
with a waxy lustre, while Grand Yidette is white as the driven 
snow without gloss. Alba maxima is a new one, very large, and 
opens with green tips. Elfrida, a beautiful creamy blush; 
Grandeur ;\ Merveille, pale blush; and Miss Burdett Coutts, a 
deep blush, are three most beautiful in three distinct shades of 
blush, which would make the second row’ behind the pure whites, 
unless, indeed, the price of Miss Burdett Coutts would keep it 
from the other two which are cheap enough. Gigantea, a peculiar 
flower of a deep blush colour, very fine. Lord Granville, another 
peculiar flower with long footstalks to the bells of deep blush. 
Orondates, an old favourite pure white; and Seraphine, a pale 
blush, finish my selections. But we have forced Tulips, of which 
many more have been forced than usual for this Exhibition. 
The yellow Van Thols, and yellow Pottebakker, were the best- 
bloomed flowers I ever saw so early in the season. You could 
hardly distinguish them from out-of-door flowers, and my old 
favourite Canary Bird, the oldest of all yellow Tulips as far as 
I recollect, was equally good. Prince de Ligne, the latest of the 
yellow Tulips, was here put as early as the rest. The scarlet 
Yan Tliol, Cottage Maid, a rosy pink marked with white stripes, 
and Standard Royal, white and crimson, were the three gayest; 
and Yermilion Brilliant was the richest of one colour. Among 
the double Tulips, Imperator seemed an improvement on the old 
Rex Rubrorum ; Tournesol, red and yellow, as good as ever ; and 
a new yellow Tournesol was first-rate. It seemed to be a sport 
of the old one in which the red turned to orange, the rest of the 
flower being clear yellow. 
The large back stage was filled with gay flowers, a3 Camellias, 
Dielytras, Cyclamens, Azaleas, Rhododendrons, Heaths, Epacris, 
Cytisus,Monochsetumensiferum, and vEschynanthus Boschianus, 
Daphne rubra, Fairy Roses, Mignonette, Deutzia gracilis, Aphe- 
lexis humilis, Geraniums, Narcissus, Primulas, and Cinerarias. 
Then there were hanging-baskets all along from the rafters,,and 
these were mossed and filled with Cy tisus, Cinerarias, Tulips, and 
Crocuses; and there was a front row to the exhibition-stages filled 
with double white, double purple, double crimson, double yellow, 
and double lilac Primroses. The purple and crimson hardly for 
sale, and the yellow is primrose or straw colour, and that was 
the first time I had ever seen it, and they would not let me have 
it for love or money. But of the double white and double lilac 
they have bushels, as we say in the country. In this front row 
were some fine Crocuses—and versicolor among them, which I 
thought was lost, as I had not seen it these twenty years. I 
went all over their bedding plants, and found no end of Tom 
Thumbs, Lady Middleton, Lady Plymouth, Alma, Brilliant, 
Flower of the Day, Beauty (a deep rose), Mrs. Lennox, Golden 
Chain, and Lizzie. Yerbenas also by the thousand, Calceolarias 
ditto; Lobelia speciosa, Yariegated Alyssum and Cerastium the 
same ; the double yellow Chrysanthemum regale flore pleno; 
Tritoma and Tritonia, with Yallota purpurea for cottage front 
borders, and to be daily watered; Tropseolum elegans and 
Stamfordiauum (the only hitch in the latter is, that it is the same 
colour a3 Tom Thumb, which is neither a fault nor misfortune 
where there is room and to spare); Uniques and Quercifoliums, 
sweet-scented ; and Cutbush’s Citriodora, (the latter one of the 
best to mix in nosegays) ; a large stock of the white Intermediate 
Stock, or London Stock, with white flowers; all the best British 
and Foreign Phloxes out all the blessed winter and safe as 
Crocuses; Pelargoniums, Fancies, French Spotted in enormous 
bulk; and in a stove at the end of the range, fancy Begonias,. 
Ferns and fine-leaved plants, as Cyanophyllum magnificum. 
Marattia cicutrefolia, a Palm-like Fern, and a match pair of 
Bleclmum braziliensis, and Didymochhena pulcherrima. In 
another place lots of Campanula garganica, an old friend, frail 
as fragilis, the next best creeping, deep blue Campanula. 
Out in the open ground the frost has been more generous than 
in most places, the stools and the young yearling stock of Bays, 
and the Laurustinus of the same stock and substance, being the 
only things killed to the ground. Standard Bays stood it well, 
having only singed part of the leaves, and it was interesting to 
note one row of standards with clear stems of 5 feet at one end, 
and graduating d^wn to three-feet stems at the farthest end of 
the row. The degree of singeing went exactly in the same scale 
as the heights of the plants, the highest being hardly touched. 
Roses much scathed; but no Conifer is killed save the Cupressus 
funebris, and 5 yards from the three dead plants of it are others 
not scarcely browned at the tip of the leaves. An injured Pinua 
insignis, and this funebral Cypress in the Experimental Garden 
here, from the October frost of 1859, have not had a leaf 
browned this winter ; and many Laurustinuses 5 feet or 6 feet 
high in Surbiton, have only a few leaves browned, and some 
none at all—so that a low, sheltered place on a dry sandy or 
gravelly bottom on the south side of the Thames, is as safe from 
the ill effects of the frost of last Christmas as this nursery of 
Highgate, the highest, or if not so, the most exposed nursery in 
England. On the highest point in this nursery a Wellingtonia, 
is as safe as a Scotch Fir, and grows much faster, being now, by the 
measure of my umbrella, over 8 feet high, and as much through 
the bottom branches, with a stem at the surface of the ground 
thick as that of a Scotch Fir of double the height. 
The Prince of Wales Raspberry is still in active demand, anck 
in the rich, yellow loamy soil here it grows strong enough to 
form a hedge against cattle. I never saw such canes, and they 
say the fruit is of the very best. 
But how is it that all the old stools of Bay have been killed to- 
the ground here (Surbiton), and the standard Bays escaped close 
to them ? Or, how can we account for the Cypress from the 
Yale of the Tombs having been killed in one spot, and in the- 
next spot to have escaped entirely ? But the reason why I ask 
the question is this]: A friend of mine has just hit upon an easy 
way of accounting for such deaths, and for such escapes from 
frost in the same species, by supposing that a species—say a 
Scotch Fir, is hardy or less hardy, or altogether tender in a colder 
climate, according to the range or region it occupies in its own 
climate of Scotland ; for the whole of the highlands of Scotland 
