10 
THE LADIES' FLORAL CABINET. 
tlie uninitiated with wonder, and when studded with its 
cone-like fruits it certainly presents a highly ornamen¬ 
tal appearance. High temperature and dense shade 
are, however, by no means necessary for its welfare ; 
it enjoys a light, somewhat airy position, and when so 
placed it assumes a more shrubby, compact, short- 
jointed habit, and may be utilized for the decoration of 
apartments, corridors, &c. It should always find a 
place in sub-tropical arrangements, as it does well in 
sheltered nooks or similar situations throughout the 
summer. Although the Monstera will thrive in a low 
temperature, it will not develop its true character as a 
fruit-bearing plant unless a brisk, growing heat be 
maintained during the spring and early summer 
months. The elements of success in order to obtain 
fruit are heat, light, and moisture, and, provided these 
conditions be one and all supplied, success will be in¬ 
sured. Any form of training may be adopted which 
will bring the plant well up towards the glass. It may 
be made to cover a portion or the whole of the back 
wall trellis, or, what is' preferable, it may be trained 
round forked tree-stumps, a system which suits it 
admirably. It may be grown in a tub, but preference 
should be given to planting it out in a good body of 
fibrous peat and loam in equal proportions, which 
should rest upon a good drainage of brick rubble. 
Thus placed, unlimited supplies of water may be given 
in hot weather, and the fruit will be fine in quality and 
abundant. 
‘ ‘ It may be seen thriving on the rock-work in the 
winter garden, Regent’s Park, where the temperature is 
that of a cool conseryatory. Here, however, it was 
originally planted when the part of the house it grows 
in was kept at an ordinary stove temperature.” 
FLOWERING SHRUBS. 
The pursuit and the enjoyment of the beautiful con¬ 
stitute one of the greatest delights of the dweller in the 
country. Not that a person confined to the limits of a 
city does not experience the same delights when oppor¬ 
tunities offer, but one who lives in the country has 
abundant facilities for the pursuit, which are denied, by 
his environments, to the dweller in a city. A.nd yet 
we find too frequently that the farm or the rural villa 
has but little of the beautiful about it beyond the green 
grass and the always attractive trees. At the same time 
one finds that the opportunities of making even grass 
and trees more beautiful by arrangement, grouping, 
choice, and culture are too often neglected, and the 
homestead is surrounded by an uncouth, tangled, and 
unattractive growth, which is by the attempt at culture 
made a libel upon Nature. Better have a field of pota¬ 
toes, or a simple meadow, or a piece of natural woods 
in the front of the dwelling, than an abortive attempt 
at a plantation, which may have all the elements of 
beauty in it, but hidden under a rough, ugly crust of 
neglect; as the native brilliance of the gem may be hid¬ 
den in the unattractive appearance of the rough dia¬ 
mond, or the glitter of the gold may be obscured by the 
stony covering of the rock in the ore. 
There is beauty in Nature, in her wild, errant ways, 
but this is destroyed as soon as man comes in and tries 
to improve it, unless he does this by the exercise of the 
highest art, and displaces the natural beauty by an en¬ 
tirely different one, which is beautiful because it is 
wholly art. Thus one may penetrate into the wilder¬ 
ness of the Blue Ridge, and see there the cascade which 
pours over a ledge of rocks one hundred feet above him, 
breaking into spray, and the white foam tumbling over 
the brown and gray crags, patched over with tufts of 
grass and waving ferns, and behind these, thickets of 
Rhododendrons forming masses of variegated color made 
up of dark green leaf, brown stem, and brilliant white 
or pink flower, and behind these again the nodding 
Hemlocks and stiff Spruces, with the taller Pines and 
Magnolias, clothing the sloping hills which shut in the 
valley, and he will have a glimpse of some of the beauties 
of nature. But to try to improve upon this by art would 
spoil it all. In contrast to this one may see a smooth 
green lawn bordered by trees, and these flanked by 
flowering shrubs arranged skillfully in groups and 
chosen for their successive periods of flowering, all 
these closing in the space and giving an appearance of 
quiet and retirement, which is the charm of country 
life; and besides, here and there a mass of color, fur¬ 
nished by blooming shrubs, which break up the space 
into vistas, and so give an appearance of extent and 
distance to buc a small space of ground, which would 
even appear the smaller were it not thus broken up by 
the use of art, skillfully applied. Every farm house or 
other country dwelling might be made attractive in 
this way at a very small expense if the materials could 
only be well chosen. But there is a too general neglect 
of these aids and helps to the enjoyments of a moral 
life. The means are ready but the ways are not 
known, simply because few know how greet a variety 
of flowering shrubs there are to choose from, or how to 
choose so as to have a succession of bloom. 
The enumeration of these may be useful to many 
readers who are desirous of availing themselves of every 
opportunity of securing all the enjoyment possible in 
the somewhat secluded country life; for on the farm 
there is but little to be enjoyed but what is provided for 
from within. 
First, in the spring, like a shower of golden promises 
for the summer, comes the Forsythia viridissima. This 
is a shrub, with bright yellow flowers, which appear 
before the foliage; popularly it is the “ Yellow-Bells,” 
so-called from the bell-shaped flowers which come 
from buds formed on the wood of the previous year. 
And just here we might mention that upon this and 
the contrary habit of flowering the forming of shrubs 
depends. Clearly, it will not do to prune in the winter 
or early spring a plant whose flower-buds are already 
formed, while it will be an advantage to prune at that 
season one whose flower-buds are formed later, on new 
growth, and which should not be pruned in the sum¬ 
mer or early fall, when the new wood is ripening from 
which the next year’s bearing shoots are to come. This 
difference is one to be studied and well noted. After 
