264 
the gardening world 
December 22, 1894. 
A HOMILY FOR THE 
CHRISTMAS SEASON. 
In one of his books, the late lamented Robert Louis 
Stevenson says " Little do ye know your own_ 
blessedness ; for to travel hopefully is a better thing 
than to arrive; and the true success is to labour." 
To those who find in the realisation of the thing 
upon which they may have set their hopes one of 
the chief delights of life, the philosophy contained 
in the foregoing sentence" may appear harsh, but d 
after all there is something about it which operates 
to brace up nerve and fibre to the task of doing. . To 
the gardener it . may be something worthy of his best 
endeavours to arrive, but the process of travelling 
along the way which leads to the end is, to the 
patient and intelligent worker one of constant revela¬ 
tion, if he be an observant man, and every revelation 
adds to the store of his knowledge and experience. 
When he arrives at a point upon the attainment of 
which he has set his heart, he may be led to think 
his work done, whereas in the sum of experience it 
is-only the casting up of another column of figures, 
for the arithmetic of life is an unceasing task at 
" which we work, and work to our heart’s content, 
till death idly jumbles all together, and rubs all 
out." There is no ultima thuh in the experience of 
a life, it is augmented daily—no man can say he has 
gained all the knowledge he should acquire, and it - 
is particularly so with the gardener, and especially 
one who is bent upon raising new forms of beauty 
in flowers, for ever present in his mind must be an 
ideal towards which he works, and that realised, 
he instantly conceives another ideal more perfect 
in detail than the preceeding one, and towards the 
realisation of that the best energies of mind and 
body are bent. Thus he travels hopefully with a 
set purpose before him, and it is through his labour 
he will find success. 
•We put the matter thus—that the gardener may 
find an ever present interest in his garden and the 
work it finds him to do. Winter brings its round of 
duties, as does the long days of the benificent sum¬ 
mer. The repose of winter, which is to ordinary 
vision a period of inactivity, is yet absolutely 
necessary for the garden and all things in it. Try as . 
it may, no human intelligence can keep vigorously 
active in leaf and flower all the year through. It 
must have its period of rest, when its natural powers 
are dormant, but it needs some attention notwith¬ 
standing, for success in its culture comes from a 
round of attentions. In tropical countries, where 
winter never comes to bring the restorative of a 
period of rest, there are seasons of drought 
which answer. a similar purpose; and the gar- - 
dener in the case' of many tender plants imitates 
these conditions in his greenhouse and stoves, for 
by these and other means every tree and plant must 
have its opportunity to refrain from growth, and 
arrest, the flow of its juices’. . 
Some plants- have, at times, certain appearances 
which indicate a condition of repose as exhibited in 
the phenomena designated the sleep of plants. Says ; 
Charles Darwin in his book on the "Movement of 
Plants"—" The leaves of many plants place them¬ 
selves by night in widely different positions front 
what they hold by day, but with the one point in 
common, that their upper surfaces avoid facing the 
zenith, often with the additional fact that they come 
into close contact with opposite leaves or leaflets, 
clearly indicating that the object gained is the pro¬ 
tection of the upper surfaces from being chilled at 
night by radiation. There is nothing improbable in 
the upper surfaces needing protection, more than the 
lower, as the two differ in function and structure." 
But there is really analogy between the sleep of 
animals and the sleep of plants, nor does the latter 
designate that suspension of the active functions 
denominated rest. Thus much by way of parenthesis. 
The repose of winter is then necessary to success in 
the. work of the gardener. 
At the Christmas season he may be said to stand, 
in the parting of the ways. On the one hand he 
looks back upon a season that has brought perchance 
many disappointments, which may outnumber 
successes; but failures often occur through, the 
pressure of conditions over which the gardener has 
no control. He has had to contend with frost when 
balmy spring weather should have happened, and 
when it was rightfully his due; he has had heat so 
early in the year as that tree and shrub leapt forward 
into activity only to be chilled by cold in May and 
June; when he wanted sunshine and dryness, mist 
and dullness with heavy rainfalls have been his 
heritage; and he has laboured with moderate 
success. ■ But if he has been faithful to his task he 
has laboured looking for the time when the original 
birthright is to be given back to him—a power over 
the elements, and a command over the material 
world. 
He is looking forward with intermingling hopes 
and fears into the new year rapidly approaching. 
What will that bring him ? Of labour, much ; of 
success, what portion ? Who can tell. So far, 
winter frost has scarcely touched him, but who can 
tell how soon the wintry blasts will come from the 
northern hills, bringing keen and perhaps lasting 
frosts in its train, And spring invariably comes with 
halting steps, teaching him the lesson of patience : — 
" When Nature falters, fain would zeal 
Grasp the felloes of her wheel, 
And grasping, give the orbs another whirl." 
And there are times when a cry of passionate 
entreaty bursts from him :— 
" Turn swiftlier round O tardy ball, 
And sun this frozen side ; 
Bring hither back the robin’s call, 
Bring back the Tulip's pride." 
The spring season brings one lesson the gardener 
must learn at once and through the year never forget 
—a lesson which every garden has taught to every 
man since Adam and Eve went forth from Paradise. 
That the work of the gardener embraced two things : 
one to prepare for plant and cultivate the things he 
would have grow in the garden; and to suppress and 
extirpate the plants he would not have grow there— 
the natural growth of weeds and useless plants. 
And then comes the summer, refulgent summer 
with its glowing days and the luxuriant and exuber¬ 
ant beauty, upon which the sun gleams. It is then 
success follows hard upon the heels of labour. Has 
it ever occurred to the gardener to wonder at the 
apparent wastefulness of this redundant beauty! 
Probably not a thousandth part of what is thrown 
broadcast over the face of the earth was ever seen by 
human eye ; and we have reason to believe the lower 
animals do not possess what we term the sense of 
beauty. But rains are needed in summer as well as 
sunshine. They serve important purposes in the 
economy of Nature, they purify the air; every 
animal adds some impurity to the air which the 
rain washes. The driest seasons are by no means 
the most healthy. A wet summer is often a very 
healthy one; the air is purified, brightened and 
rendered healthful by the copious rainfalls, and the 
impurities carried down into the soil, nourishes the 
plants the gardener rears. The winds of summer 
have their benificent uses also. An intelligent 
gardener once made an interesting experiment; he 
selected some trees of the same kind of equal age, 
size and breadth, and planted them very near 
together. One he secured so that it moved freely 
when the north or south winds blew, and was stiff 
and immovable when it came from east or west. 
After a few years he .found the stem of each secured 
tree oval and not round, and the longer diameter of 
each was in that direction in which the tree had been 
freely.moved by the winds, and slowest on the sides 
which were guarded against all motion. 
And then autumn, the period of harvest and the 
treasuring up for future use ; the season of reward for 
labour done. The autumn is said to be the happiest 
season of the year for the gardener, and those of us who 
know his patience, perseverance, courage, endurance 
and devotion to his work, can always desire that the 
autumn, of his life, like that of the year, shall be the 
happiest part of it.— R.D. 
-- 
PRIMULA FLORIBUNDA. 
A batch of this pretty little Primula is at present a 
pleasing sight in the greenhouse at Kew. Why is it, 
I wonder, that plants of this description are so 
seldom seen outside the bounds of botanic gardens ? 
The flowers are of a bright yellow colour, and, 
although rather small, are produced in great abun¬ 
dance upon the erect growing scapes, which are some 
6 or 8 in. in height. The leaves of a beautiful dark green 
colour are rather deeply toothed and elliptic lance¬ 
olate in shape. The plant is a native of the Western 
Himalayas, from which it was introduced in or about 
the year 1883. There can be but little doubt but 
that it is a real acquisition to the list of suitable 
greenhouse subjects and one well worthy of the gar¬ 
dener's attention.— G. 
NOTICES OF BOOKS- 
A Manual of Exotic Ferns and Selaginellas : Also notes 
on their History, Culture, and Management. By E. Sandford 
London : Elliot Stock, 62, Paternoster Row, E.C., 1894. 
5 S 7 HI 5 is a cheaper edition of the book written by 
Mr. E. Sandford, gardener to C. J. Fletcher,Esq , 
Dale Park, Arundel, Sussex, and published some years 
ago. The work consists of several short articles on such 
subjects as basket ferns, fern cases or shades, insects 
that infest ferns, propagation, the construction of 
ferneries, soil, potting, preserving and drying fronds, 
and other topics. The greater portion of the book 
is occupied with short descriptions, given in an 
easy style, of something like 1,000 species and 
varieties of the more popular ferns in cultivation. 
As there are something like 3,000 known species, it 
is evident that a large proportion of them have been 
introduced at one time or another ; but as they are 
scarcely so popular as they were some twenty years 
ago, it is more than probable that the number of 
species in actual cultivation in private establishments 
is smaller than it was then. In speaking of the 
popularity of ferns from the purely amateur point 
of view, we do not overlook the fact that the 
commercial interest has greatly increased in the 
case of relatively a few ornamental and easily grown 
kinds which are reared in thousands by the market 
growers. 
The arrangement of the book is alphabetical, and 
in that respect agrees with most of the modern ones 
on different classes of garden plants that bid for 
popularity. A portion at the end of the book is 
devoted to Selaginellas similarly arranged. In 
speaking of the method of raising ferns from spores, 
the author advocates the sowing of them upon small 
crumb-like pieces of peat in pots or pans. Those 
who now raise Ferns in large quantities for com¬ 
mercial purposes, use various composts for this 
purpose, but finely sifted loam is much more largely 
used than peat; in fact the latter is very little used. 
Some use a sharp or gritty compost, but in all cases 
it is fine so as to favour the separation of the pro- 
thalli into small pieces when being transplanted. 
The article on the preserving and drying of fronds 
must prove interesting to a good many amateurs who 
wish to preserve fronds for various ornamental pur¬ 
poses and educational utility. Some fronds may be 
bleached to mix with others of the natural hue when 
mixed with various dried grasses. A simple method 
of photographing the outline of Fern fronds without 
the use of any special apparatus will doubtless com¬ 
mend itself to amateurs who wish to turn the 
beautiful outlines of their Ferns to various purposes 
in ornamental design, or even for comparison with 
other species. Very little of the folk lore of Ferns 
has been given by the author, doubtless on account of 
the space it would occupy ; but amateurs take special 
delight in stories attached to the plants they cultivate. 
The vegetable lamb is apparently the only instance 
of the kind which has been given. 
In his short preface the author makes no pretence 
to priority of names ; but so far as that is concerned 
and his acknowledged incomplete synonymy we do 
not complain. Indeed, a host of synonyms only 
confuses the amateur. But there are some names 
not recognised by the botanist at all. For instance, 
Selaginella caesia arborea is only a garden name for 
S. Willdenovii, which grows to a height of 12 ft. to 
20 ft. Then, on the other hand, S Wildenovii is 
applied to S. Braunii, a species only growing 12 in. 
to 18 in. in height. These are, of course, mistakes 
widely disseminated in gardens, but they should be 
corrected in books. S. Lyallii is recorded as a 
species, whereas it is only a variety of S. laevigatum, 
the latter name being only given as a synonym of the 
so named S. caesia arborea. S. Kraussiana is said 
to be a native of South Europe, but so far as that 
continent is concerned the species is only recorded 
from Sicily. It really comes from the Cape, Natal, 
the Azores, Madeira, and some other places. There 
are also errors of orthography of minor importance, 
but generally speaking the editing has been carefully 
done, and the type and printing leave nothing to be 
desired. The book runs to 286 pages, including the 
index. 
The Fruit Growers’ Year Book.— The leading text book 
of the fruit growing industry. Edited under the direction of 
the Earl cf Winchelsea. London: ‘‘Cable ” Office, 30, Fleet 
Street, E C. 
A Shillingsworth of puff. 
