THE 
FLORIST’S JOURNAL. 
March, ] 845. 
ON ANTIRRHINUMS. 
WITH AN ENGRAVING OF FOUR SEEDLING VARIETIES. 
Who that has ever enjoyed the romantic pleasure of a stroll 
amid the ruins of some old monastic edifice, or strayed over 
the grass-grown ramparts, or climbed the almost inaccessible 
keep of a decayed baronial residence — once the castle of some J 
Lawless Lord,” now, like its owner, crumbling to dust — 
but has beheld, with mingled feelings of serious sadness and 
delight, the curious appearance of these plants intermixed with 
wall-flowers and stone-crop, jutting out from among the joints 
of the stoutest masonry — heightening tlie evidence of the in¬ 
stability of human efforts, by the striking contrast presented in 
the freshness of nature flourishing on the decay of art? Seen 
thus among the imposing relics of past grandeur, in a state of 
native wildness, the mind, for relief, is led to compare them with 
their own progeny when taken into the care of the culturist, 
and the difference visible in the two stations is most flattering 
to the assiduous, patient, and persevering endeavours that dis¬ 
tinguish the latter: a brilliancy and variety of colouring, to¬ 
gether with an increase of size and vigour both in the flowers 
and the plant itself, is perceptible enough to render it a matter 
somewhat difficult of conception to the common observer that 
flowers like those portrayed should spring from so diminutive a 
stock: yet such is their origin ! 
VOL. VI. NO. III. F 
