1878, ] 
ITALIAN VIOLETS. 
G9 
rising glory of the morning sun ; but how often 
is there death to the fruit grown in these early 
morning splendours! The warmth of the sun 
treads on the hardened heels of the frost, and 
transforms their crystallised purity and beauty, 
into sheer blackened masses of death and de¬ 
composition. 
By choosing for the trees a more southern, 
south, or western site, such risks of rapid thaw¬ 
ings, which are at least as destructive to fertility 
as severe freezings, are reduced to the lowest 
limits consistent with the securing of a maxi¬ 
mum amount of sunshine and warmth for the 
setting of fruit-blossoms, and the swelling and 
finishing of the fruit. It is on this account 
that sites even a few points north or we9t are 
often more fertile than those south by east. 
But sufficient has been written to show the 
importance of the subject, and perhaps to 
direct more careful attention to it; for there 
can hardly be doubt that site is often more 
potential than capital, labour, or skill in com¬ 
manding or perpetuating fertility.—D. T. Fish, 
Ilardwicke House , Bury St. Edmund's. 
ITALIAN VIOLETS. 
rwOME time since, says our contemporary, 
the Gardeners’ Chronicle, whence we 
borrow the illustration, “ we received, 
through the kind intervention of the Marquis 
Corsi-Salviati, specimens of Violets, blue and 
white, from Count Savorgnandi Brazza, of 
Soreschiano, near Udine, about midway be¬ 
tween Venice and Trieste, at the head of the 
Adriatic. As these much excelled all similar 
Violets which we had seen, we sought permis¬ 
sion to have some of them engraved, and the 
illustration now given gives a fair idea of their 
size and regularity of form, and this at the end 
of the flowering season. In January and Feb¬ 
ruary the blooms are yet finer. The plant is 
of very sturdy robust habit, with fine bold 
foliage and a profusion of flowers. How far 
these noble Violets owe their attributes to the 
maritime climate of the Adriatic, we cannot 
say.” The left-hand figures represent the blue 
form, the right-hand the white. They were the 
finest double Violets we have ever seen. 
