THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN. January 18. 1859. 243 
The new house, of which Mr. Eyles spoke, is for 
Camellias. The aspect is west, or north-west. The 
length is seventy-two feet; width, eighteen feet; length, 
of light, twenty-two feet nine inches ; height of the hack 
wall, eighteen feet, four feet of which is glass, also in 
lights, which arc hinged at top, and open outwards, for 
giving top air, the whole roof being fixed; height of 
front wall, six feet, half of which is glass lights, hinged 
at top and opening outwards for front ventilation. The 
glass is ten inches wide, and in panes three feet long. 
Across the nliddle of the roof runs a trussed girder, and 
each truss twenty-four feet long, or, more technically, 
three truss girders, each twenty-four feet long. Then, 
if you measure one truss twenty-four feet from the east 
end, and a second truss twenty-four feet from the west 
end, you must have a support under each of them, at 
the ends farthest from the end of the house. These 
are the only two supports to the roof; and between the 
two comes the third division of twenty-four feet and 
truss. From the two said supports run two tie-bars to 
the back -wall, and the top of the back is tied to the 
Crystal Palace. 
Doth ends of this house, above the height of the front, 
are of glass ; and there are four runs of four-inch pipes, 
two over, two along the front, and two four-inches pipes 
aloDg the back wall; and the boiler, like all the rest of 
the boilers for heating the Crystal Palace, is the common 
saddle boiler. 
The Camellias in this house were looking splendid, and 
were full of bloom-buds. In another long, low, span- 
roofed house, with a walk along the centre, and raised 
level stages on each side, hundreds of forcing Hyacinths, 
Tulips, and other spring bulbs, are standing under the 
stages, on gravel, in a forward state of showing bloom ; 
also, Dielytras, and Deutzia gracilis, which will soon be 
up. Cinerarias and China Priihroses were in bloom, on 
the stages, in scores. Also, large lots of the variegated 
Hydrangea, and other variegated plants, to brighten up 
the Crystal Palace by-and-by. 
Here I found two kinds of most useful variegated 
plants, which I never saw at an exhibition. One was 
Daphne Japonica variegata —a very rare plant, which 
I never saw before: it looks nearly like a Piltosporum. 
The other is the variegated tree Houscleek, Sempervivum 
arboreum variegatum, as old as the hills, but scarce in 
the trade, as one hardly ever sees it in the nurseries. 
In another division of this house, which is kept hot, 
was the finest lot, and the greatest number of Draccena 
terminalis I ever saw. They were in 32-pots, and from 
a yard to thirty inches high, in strong loam, and the 
tops close up to the glass. In such masses, this is the 
most telling of all the variegated plants- Three or four 
of the top leaves of each plant are fiery crimson, with pink, 
scarlet, and lake tints, in various and changeable degrees. 
There are others,—called Draccena Leonensis, esculenta, 
and marginata, —handsome - leaved kinds, and scarce. 
They came there from the Messrs. Loddige’s rich stoves. 
They do not seem to want so much heat as the purple¬ 
leaved section, as one sees them now, in full beauty, in 
the marble vase beds along the sides of the basin in the 
tropical end, in which terminalis, ferrea, and nobile, 
would get much checked in the dead of winter. Chamcc- 
dvrea elegans, alias Hartwegii, is, indeed, a most elegant 
and useful little Palm, from Mexico, which they grow 
largely, as it flowers through the winter months without 
very strong heat. Also, large quantities of Farfugium 
grande, just the thing for the Crystal Palace. Mr. Eyles 
made a bold stroke in attempting to prove whether what 
the seer said, in the vision, about the origin of Farfugium, 
was teally true; but he did not succeed in getting any 
seeds to ripen. If the origin be what the weird body 
represented,the seedlings would corneas green as anything. 
There was a long row down the passage of the finest 
Ferns from Zew Zealand, just come over in capital con¬ 
dition, in a Wardian case. The plants were planted in 
soil, and the glass painted white. The same case has 
been going from here to hence since the Crystal Palace 
was thought of; and there is a back load each time; and 
each plant in each journey tells its own tale, after a little 
nursing ; but dead plants tell no tales. 
Among these Ferns are huge root-stocks of Dicksonia 
Squamosa, which looks like Cyatliea medullaris, of some 
collections. They have immense quantities of this Dick¬ 
sonia, which does well wherever they put it. The finest 
plant of it, perhaps, in the kingdom, is theirs, on the 
south-east side of the basin, in the tropical end. They 
had it from Her Majesty, and, like many more of them, 
it stands on the water : the bottom of the pots just 
touch the surface of the water, and no more. The water 
is mubk warmer than the air over it; therefore, the 
roots are in moist bottom heat the whole winter; and 
that is the secret of hill and brae plants doing so much 
better on the water than over it, or by the side of it, as 
they most certainly do here. 
Put, about Her Majesty’s present. The said Dicksonia 
squamosa, alias Cyatliea medullaris, stands fifteen feet 
high. Some of tlie leaves are from ten to twelve feet 
long. There are seventeen leaves on the head just now, 
and three more coming; and others from the native wilds, 
in all sizes, down to the prettiest little Dicksonia imagin¬ 
able—no higher than to be able to keep its one set of 
leaves just free from the water, after the manner of a 
water-fowl enticing the boys away from its young. 
Opposite is a golden Gymnogramma, six feet across, 
luxuriating in the bottom heat; and more strange still, 
Adiantum formosum, —the best of them for sprigs for 
nosegays,—full six feet through, and thoroughly at home. 
But the most symmetrically beautiful plant there, is the 
Fan Palm of Australia, Corypha australis. It is ten 
feet through, and only five feet high; and there are 
twenty-five fans on it, every one of which is just as if it 
was put there on purpose to form its share of exactness— 
so many of the fan-like leaves hang over the pot, so 
many just over these, and so many as no artist on earth 
could place more perfect to command the eye of a lady 
of good taste. But where do you think this plant was 
growing P just in a metal vase, inside the marble vase, 
and such as all the old Tom Thumbs grow in along the 
terrace vases in summer, and nothing more. This beauty 
was matched, on the opposite shore of the tropical lake, 
by a Bourbon, or Isle de Bourbon Palm, Latania Bor- 
bonica. The next pair was of the Wax Palm of the 
Andes, Ccroxylon Andiorla ; the next pair, the same ; and 
the last pair, the Bouihon Palm. On this lake is also a 
very dwarf kind of Musa Cavendishii, which ripened 
fruit this autumn better than it would, or ever did, 
plunged in a bark bed. Depend upon it, some one will 
make a name for himself, and his heirs for ever, by hitting 
on a water hotbed, to get up things at half the cost and 
trouble. And if the hippopotamus is really a cow, as 
Mr. Gordon, and Dr. Livingstone say, and if some one 
else could hit on a way of keeping these cows from the 
fruit, we might have Strawberries and cream from the 
same lake,—and why not? 
But do you happen to recollect having seen in the 
Illustrated London News a Palm tree drawn over 
London Bridge by thirty-two horses P That Palm 
was lifted on Harry Moore’s plan, of tunnelling under 
trees, and sloping down to the tunnel, before he cut 
the surface, for the ball. That was a Bourbon Palm, 
and is now the finest of the kind at the Crystal Palace, 
and, perhaps, forty feet high, with a massive head of 
fine leaves ; and not far from it is the largest Australian 
Fan Palm ; also, the aforesaid Corypha, sometimes 
called sylvestris ; and the great spreading Palm at the 
farthest end, the great Palmetto. I ought also to mention, 
that the Lycopodium denticulatum under it, and all over 
the surface’ of the bed, is renewed every spring ; and that 
it is a good plan to renew it wherever it interferes with 
the roots of other plants, as few kinds can make surface 
