145 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY 
the growth he ever so thick or so rambling. You may 
thin, prune, and regulate; but tie not, and your 
Fuchsias will some day be talked of before the Queen. 
Venus de Medici was again the best fancy colour in 
Fuchsias. Sidonia is just in the same way, with a 
better habit and a smaller flower, purple inside and 
light outside, without being either purple or white. 
The best real purple inside and real white over it 
among all that were shown that day was Fairy Queen. 
Calceolarias. —Mr. Turner and Mr. Cole had the 
only two collections of bedding or half-shrubby Calceo¬ 
larias. Cole’s Queen of Yellows was the best yellow 
therefor a bed, Cloth of Gold the next, and Standard 
the third best. In Mr. Turner’s collection California 
would make the best yellow bed; Gold-finder the next 
best yellow. The best dark yellow is Eclipse , and Rubra 
the next to it, and Tamberlik is a good brown for mix¬ 
ing with clear yellows in beds; and there was one plant 
of a pure yellow bedding. Calceolaria, without the name 
of the owner, which was by far the best bedding sort 
there unless my old eyes made a mistake. It was named 
Aurea fioribunda , and is of the Rugosa section, and 
better than the Rugosa fioribunda , the best yellow at 
the Crystal Palace gardens, and at the garden of the 
Horticultural Society. 
Book down Eclipse, dark ; Aurea fioribunda, yellow; 
Queen of Yellows, ditto; and Tamberlik, brown, to be 
planted in the best and choicest flower-beds, as shall be 
notified after the storm of shows is over. There was 
also a very promising lot of half-shrubby seedling Cal¬ 
ceolarias for pots and beds from a Mr. James Burley, 
Limpsfield, Surrey, and it strikes me that Mr. Burley has 
dug into an old, forgotten vein in one of the golden 
mines of Calceolarias; for once upon a time I was in 
the same diggings, and have known the best veins and 
runnings in all the mines thereabouts. 
Roses.— Mr. Rowland first again, and most deservedly 
so. The very sight of his Roses, without his Macassar, 
is enough to make the hair grow on a bald head like 
mine. Mr. Busby, of “ Golden Hamburgh locks,” was 
only half a nose less sweet than Mr. Rowland; while 
Mr. Paul proved an old and much-worn idea of Ray’s, 
which was embodied by Linnaeus in this remarkable 
sentence, Ncitura non facit saltus (Nature makes no 
leaps). He never could get to the head at one jump, 
only by imperceptible degrees; but, after all, might it 
not be a natural leap? Was it not very natural for 
Mr. Lane, after showing at Manchester and at the 
“ Park,” to stop at home that day to water his Roses ? 
and was it not just as natural for Mr. Paul to jump into 
Mr. Lane’s boots in his absence? and it must be as 
natural to jump into boots as to leap into shoes. 
Messrs. Fraser were second in the nurserymen’s class 
for Roses, Coup de Hebe being the model. Auguste Mie 
was above the model for the first time in Mr. Paul’s 
collection; and the chief kinds in all the lots were these 
two, with Paul’s Ricaut and Terras , the Malmaison 
Rose, Souvenir d’un Ami; Gloire de Dijon, fine ; Madame 
Willermosz , ditto ; Baronne Prevost, and Geant des Ba- 
tailles ; and in a collection of small plants General 
Jacqueminot was by far the best and brightest. 
French Pelargoniums. — Ernest Duval and Lemichez 
were the only two French spotted Pelargoniums; there¬ 
fore this class may not be so early as our own. Mr. 
Turner took the lead here, and means to keep it; his 
Viola was the most Lady Flora-like of them all, and 
Magnificent the richest. Messrs.Frasers’ were splendid; 
Dobson’s, ditto ; Bragg’s, very like them, and the only one 
who had Una, with which he matched Vesper. Mr. Cut- 
bush, of Highgate, had a kind called Brenda to match 
his Sanspareil which I never saw before. Another, 
called Rose-leaf, in Mr. Wiggin’s collection, was very 
highly coloured. 
Seedling Pelargoniums.— Mr. Marnock (Turner’s) 
l GENTLEMAN’S COMPANION, June 0, 1857. 
is a conspicuous red flower, with dark markings as in 
Sanspareil , or in the new French kinds. Rose Celestial 
(Turner’s), best purplish ; Richard Benyon (Ployle’s), 
fiery scarlet; Era (Beck’s), best white; and Bride 
(Beck’s), best circle, also a white flower. 
Miscellaneous. —There was a remarkable streaked 
Petunia, called Attraction, from Mr. Turner, twelve or 
thirteen collections of Ferns, and the best of them all was 
Gleichenia fiabellata in a collection of fine-foliaged plants 
by Mr. Parker, of Hornsey. His Dracccna ferrea was a 
splendid specimen, his Brornelia sceptrum a rare picture 
of superior management, and his Puya Bonplandi is 
one of the finest of that class of Pine-Apple-looking 
aspect. Mr. Morris had an Acacia lophantha, the oldest 
plant in cultivation, brought out as it most certainly 
never was brought out before in a pot; it might be ten 
feet high, and fifteen feet across the bottom branches 
just over the pot! I mention it to say how often I had 
exclaimed that these shows did us old gardeners a vast 
deal more harm than ever they did good to the Cockneys. 
All the good old plants were cast off because they did 
not happen to flower in May and June to go to the Flower- 
Shows. “ The flowers of my childhood,” the home de¬ 
coration flowers, and the flowers for forcing might all 
go to Jericho and back again, and not be worth a button, 
unless they were circles, or came in for competition. 
I had a long conversation on this subject with Sir Joseph 
Paxton, who sees the thing exactly in the same light as 
I do, and he told t me that in his own garden at Syden¬ 
ham, and in the Crystal Palace gardens, and with all 
his influence he made up his mind to stem the abuse 
of shows, and to gather, classify, and arrange all 
the “ spring flowers,” get them improved and made 
popular among the people, as we of the Experimental 
are doing already, and as I hope Mr. McEwen will 
soon commence at Chiswick. I cannot expect much 
at or from Kew or the Regent’s Park, for there botanic 
science must first be attended to, and “ Nature makes 
no leaps.” The honourable member for Coventry moved 
a resolution that the Crystal should assist the Experi¬ 
mental, and that the latter should not be under “obliga¬ 
tions” to the former. I seconded this motion, which 
passed unanimously, and the “house” resumed by 
“ counting out” the Cape Heaths thus: ventricosa of 
sorts, numerous mundula, Beaumontise, vestita of sorts, 
tricolor ditto, Yernonii, perspicua, two sorts, elegans, 
suaveolens, Bergiana, Albertus, propendens, depressa, 
Cavendisliii, longiflora, tortulseflora, breviflora, jas- 
minoides, Batemani, and so on ; a large number of best 
Heaths for one month. One Albertus in the first prize 
collection of sixes, from Mr. Laybank, was full seven 
feet across, and his others were from four to five feet in 
diameter. As the collections of stove and greenhouse 
plants, the Orchids, and the extras will be staged again 
at Chiswick, and as the list of winners will be published, 
I need not give them here. 
The company was above twelve thousand, and very 
select, this being a half-guinea day. The garden was 
nearly cleared of spring flowers, and the bedding-out 
plants were just beginning to be planted. All the 
oblong beds in the bottom of the centre portion of the 
garden, filled with brown Wallflowers and edged with 
Cheiranthus Marshallii, had a very fine effect, and looked 
at a distance as if filled with brown and yellow Calceo¬ 
larias. The tree Pa3onies, the Rhododendrons, Weigelas, 
and Azaleas made gay masses all over the lower gardens, 
and the whole of the fountains at play for half an hour 
in the afternoon were magnificently grand, aud far better 
than on the first trial when the Queen was there. The 
whole arrangement for the Show was also much im¬ 
proved.' The large Orange trees and others in tubs were 
brought out in lines to flank the stages, and, with an 
awning of canvass over the plants, the glare of the 
Palace, which took oft' much of the effect on former 
