June 27th, 1885. 
THE GARDENING WORLD 
681 
size of its flowers, which are as large again as those of 
the popular species named, being about 3 ins. wide, 
pure white, and produced in clusters of two and three 
blossoms. It is more effective as a roof-climber than 
as a pillar plant, but is free blooming and highly 
ornamental in either position. 
— g_- o —- 
CHINESE HORTICULTURE. 
If the Chinese do not care to grow Potatos except 
where there are Europeans to eat them, they grow 
the Batata, which is sold boiled at every street 
corner. Of the Water Lily sacred to Buddha, they eat 
the sugary seeds ; and also a sort of sago made from 
the roots. “ Water Chestnuts ” too (eaten by the old 
lake dwellers in Switzerland) are largely grown. 
Every canal is full of floating islands of them; 
and the gathering must look like the picture of 
“ Athelney in Flood,” where young and old are going 
every patient plant a wild Apricot on that bare hill 
to the east.” Fifteen years went by ; the hill 
was pretty well covered. “ Now,” said the good 
man, “ I am growing old, and after me you will 
perhaps not be able to get your doctoring gratis. Let 
the village undertake to keep up this Apricot orchard 
that has cost you nothing. The oil will not only pay 
a doctor and buy as much medicine as you can want, 
but it will also do a good deal towards supporting your 
old men and your orphans.” . . . Wax-trees and 
tallow-trees are invaluable to the Buddhists, who, of 
course, must burn no animal fat on their altars. 
There are half-a-dozen trees and plants which make 
better paper than the Bamboo—what v e call rice- 
paper, for instance, comes from the paper-mulberry. 
A Chinese Nettle and a giant Hibiscus make 
excellent rope ; and the Ramia has its leaves covered 
with threads just in the right state for spinning. 
When Virgil said, “ The Seres comb from leaves a 
and Sir Hope Grant both paint it in glowing colours 
—such a pleasure garden as Kublai Khan planned 
round his “ wondrous dome, by Alp, the sacred river.” 
“ Twelve miles of pebble paths leading through groves 
of magnificent round lakes into picturesque summer 
houses; as you wandered along herds of deer would 
amble away from before you, tossing their antlered 
heads. Here a solitary building would rise fairy-like 
from a lake, reflected in the blue water on which it 
seemed to float. There a sloping path would carry 
you into the heart of a mysterious cavern leading out 
on to a grotto in the bosom of another lake. The 
variety of the picturesque was endless and charming 
in the extreme. The resources of the designer appear 
to have been unending.” And what the Emperor had 
in its full glory round his summer palace, every 
Chinaman who has made a little money tries to have 
on a small scale round his house. It is the gardens 
which, in the absence of many of our modes of 
IPOM.EA THOMSONIANA. 
aboiflJafter the Apples in boats. Instead of boat put 
tub, each pushed with a Bamboo pole by a yellow man 
or woman, and paint two or three upsets, for John 
Chinaman is full of fun, and those who have seen a 
Water Chestnut harvesting, say that everybody is on 
the broad grin, and accepts a ducking with the same 
good humour with which he gives one. They 
cultivate fungi too, burying the rotten stump of a 
tree which bears harmless ones, and so ensuring a 
crop. One kind, the lin-chi, is one of the emblems 
of immortality. It gets as dry as those honey¬ 
combed fungi which they eat in mid-France, and 
“keeps good "for years. The bonzes use it as the 
foundation of their ambrosia, and picture their gods 
with lin-chi in their hands. The “ five fruits ” are 
Peach (sign of love, because it blossoms in winter), 
Apricot, Plum, Chestnut, and Jujube. The wild 
Apiicot is valuable for the oil extracted from its 
kernels. The first came into use, say the Chinese 
bolany books, in our fourteenth century. A good and 
wise physician lived in a district so poor that he scarcely 
ever got a fee ; so, having found out the use of Apricot 
oil, he said, “ If you can’t pay you must do this. Let 
slender fleece,” one used to fancy he was speaking of 
silk, confounding in fact the worm with the food 
it eats; but the latest idea is that some notion of 
the Ramia and its produce had travelled as far as the 
Greek naturalists on whom Virgil relied. If any of 
your friends are homoeopaths you will have heard 
plenty about Rhus; one of the many kinds, the Rhus 
vernix, makes, along with the Elaeo-cocoa (added 
because its juice is fatal to insects), the famous lacquer. 
Great at dyeing, the Chinese have managed to find out 
vegetable mordants. Hair-dyeing they manage in a 
peculiar way; they drink their dye. A six months’ 
course of some vegetable decoction is said to be 
infallible ; and was regularly used, we are told, by 
the Christians to darken the hair of their European 
priests, that so they might escape detection. Nearly 
all their dyes are vegetable, the imperial yellow being 
got from the root of the Curcuma; Saffron and 
Gardenia flowers, and Mignonette, and all other yellow 
dyes being held unworthy of this great object. 
And now, to prove what has been said about their 
great skill in landscape gardening, let us say a word 
about the Pekin Summer Palace Park. Mr. Swinnoe 
sanitation, keep the dense populations of Chinese 
cities tolerably healthy, for trees are great absorbers 
of bad and diffusers of good gases. We have a great 
deal still to learn from them in the way of gardening, 
and it is no use crying down our climate—the climate 
of North China is a very harsh ungenial one, far 
worse for both men and plants than ours. It is not 
the climate that is in fault, but the gardeners ; ours 
do not put the heart and patience into their work 
that John Chinaman does into his .—All the Year 
Round. 
Liquid Manure. —At the recent half-yearly meeting 
of the Highland and Agricultural Society, Mr. Ward- 
law Ramsay announced that the committee appointed 
to consider the above subject had recommended the 
society to offer a premium of £400 for the discovery 
of the most practicable and satisfactory method of 
utilizing the urine of house-fed animals. The com¬ 
mittee had further recommended that the directors 
of the various show districts should be requested 
to undertake the collection of subscriptions towards 
this premium. Mr. G. Syminton, Glenluce, has 
already intimated subscriptions in his district to the 
amount of over £80. 
