“APRIL. . 101 
blown out of the ground, through the want of those natural supports 
which nature has given to all plants, but which man, by treatment in 
cae Opposition to Nature’s laws, has perverted, so as to render them 
useless. 

HOMES OF THE FLORIST.—No. III. 
CHRIST CHURCH PARSONAGE, DONCASTER. 
HAVE you ever, kind and fair reader (why are all readers gentle, and 
kind, and fair ? Is it a sort of honied phrase, to take the sting out of 
some waspishly inclined critic?) been in Doncaster, where is the great 
and noble church, of which, I fear, it may be said that it divides the 
homage of the Doncasterians and of the world with its, perhaps, more 
celebrated race-course—a church of which both Gilbert Scott and the 
inhabitants may be proud ; though the latter are too much inclined to 
the shout of ‘‘ Great is St. George, of the Doncasterians!” If you 
have, you must have noticed that it is a town in which the blacks have 
as much sway as they have on the banks of the Niger; and that, owing 
to some peculiarity in the atmosphere, they are continually descending 
in no very refreshing showers on houses, gardens, and people ; you 
might any hour of the day be accosted, as | was once in town, by a 
man of whom I asked my way, “ I'll tell you, Sir, ina minute; but— 
beg your pardon, Sir—there ’s a smut on your nose.” Now, to grow 
anything zwed// in such a place might be pronounced an impossibility ; 
and therefore when my friend the Rey. Henry F. Brock, has success- 
fully accomplished this, he deserves quite as much to be regarded as a 
true florist as any of the most successful originators of new things. I 
never raised a seedling worth a dump, but I have grown flowers well 
on top of a bank exposed to the sea, and in a small yard in a town, and 
think this entitles me much more to be considered a florist, no matter 
how humble, than anything I did when I had means and appliances of 
all kinds within reach. But, besides being a florist, Mr. Brock is a 
mechanician of no mean order; and consequently he has carried out 
what I consider one of the most—if not the most—perfect greenhouses 
I have ever seen for a town residence. I have thought that perhaps an 
account of it might not only be interesting, as showing how skill and 
perseverance will surmount the greatest difficulties, but also be of 
service to some similarly situated. His object was to grow Camellias, 
Azaleas, Roses, and Geraniums, the two latter of which, especially, 
greatly resent the invasion of the blacks. When I say to grow them, 
I do not mean that he was content to have a few long and miserable 
looking plants, but to really grow such as would not disgrace an exhi- 
bition table, even in the neighbourhood of London. How was this to 
be done? How were the blacks to be circumvented? The house is a 
span-roof, about thirty feet long, built on to a portion of the dwelling- 
house, in which, on the ground floor, is the kitchen. No openings 
whatever were to be allowed in the roof, which was to be glazed as light 
as it could be; but in order to give a full circulation of air, the wall on 
