COTONEASTER. 
reddish-purple colour ; its leaves are oval, entire, 
very shortly petiolate, and deciduous; its flowers 
are produced in twos and threes from the sides 
of the branches,—and they are small and of a 
pinkish-purple colour, and bloom from May till 
July; and its fruit is spherical and of a bright 
red colour. But three quite distinct varieties 
are in cultivation,—the red-fruited, the dark- 
fruited, and the depressed, — C. v. erythrocarpa, 
C. v. melanocarpa, and C. v. depressa,—the last an 
import from Sweden.—Two other species have 
the same height, the same deciduous habit, and 
the same general character as the common spe- 
cies,—the loose-flowered, C. laxiflora, introduced 
to Britain in 1826, and sometimes regarded as a 
mere variety of C. vulgaris,—and the woolly, 
C. tomentosa, brought from Switzerland a little 
after the middle of last century, and regarded by 
numerous botanists as a species of medlar. 
The small-leaved species, C. microphylla, is an 
evergreen undershrub or ligneous trailer,—one 
of the most curious and beautiful in the whole of 
the great horticultural collections; and though 
introduced to Britain from Nepaul so late as 1824, 
it is already a well-known favourite, and in com- 
| paratively extensive cultivation. It is clothed 
with a glossy deep green foliage, which retain all 
their freshness and beauty amidst the most rigor- 
ous frost ; and its flowers have a snowy-white col- 
our, and bloom in May and June,—and they seem, 
while reposing on their rich couch of shining 
green, to resemble diamonds strewn on a bed of 
emerald. Its remarkably trailing habit enables 
it to adorn rockwork and spread an opulently 
ornamental covering over spots of rubbish and 
pieces of prostrate wall which no other elegant | 
evergreen shrub can accomplish; and an extra- 
ordinary and powerful habit which it has been. 
discovered to possess of pushing its shoots out- 
ward and upward in the direction of the north, 
gives it adaptations of a still more singular kind. 
Mr. Murray of the Glasgow Botanic Garden men- 
tions a plant of it which grew over a south wall, 
and carried a full complement of both large and 
small branches to the top, without the aid of any 
sort of fastening ; and Mr. Sim of Footscray in- 
stances a bush of it which, while it had not grown 
to the southward, would have extended upwards 
of 20 feet in a northerly direction had not its 
progress been arrested by the intervention of a 
walk. The peculiar flaveur which indicates the 
presence of prussic acid in drupaceous plants, is 
so strong in the small-leaved coteneaster, that a 
botanist who had never seen the plant in flower 
might be induced from the smell to pronounce 
it a prunus; yet the tribe to which the plant 
belongs have the reputation of secreting only the 
malic acid.—Two other species ef cotoneaster, 
C. rotundifolia and C. buxifolia, are so nearly 
akin to C. microphylla, in coriaceousness of ever- 
green leaves, in prostrate and trailing habit of 
branches, and in other interesting characters, 
that they might almost be regarded as mere 
COTTAGE. 
875 
varieties. But four other species, the frigid, the 
related, the elliptic, and the acuminate, are tall 
shrubs of from 9 to 18 feet in height, and have, 
for the most part, a sort of medium habit between 
deciduous and evergreen. 
COTSWOLD SHEEP. See Suuzp. 
COTTAGE. Asmall dwelling-house. But the 
word small is comparative; and while one cot- 
tage may be but a grade superior to a hut, an- 
other may be but a grade inferior to a mansion. 
All cottages, though almost innumerably varied 
in gradation, are reducible to two great classes, 
the ornate and the plain,—the former suited to 
the upper and the middle ranks of society, and 
the latter adapted to operatives and peasantry. 
Cottages of the former class are frequently de- 
signated cottages ornées, and may, according to 
their design or style, be subdivided into ten 
groups,—the suburban cottage, the English rural 
cottage, the pointed or Tudor cottage, the orna- 
mental farm-house, the cottage villa in the brack- 
etted mode, the irregular, Italian, bracketted villa, 
the irregular old English cottage, the Italian 
villa, the Tuscan villa, and the pointed or Gothic 
villa. But—with the exception of the ornamen- 
tal farm-house, which may be noticed in our 
article on Farm-Buinpines — these structures 
are scarcely proper subjects of discussion for 
our work ; and besides they are discussed at full 
length, professionally, and in the order in which 
we have grouped them, in a recent publication 
of no great size and of easy access, ‘ Downing’s | 
Cottage Residences.’ 
Cottages for town and country operatives, and 
particularly for farm labourers and small agri- 
cultural tenants, have, within the last twenty 
years, been very greatly improved in many parts 
of Great Britain, and particularly throughout | 
the lowlands of Scotland. Almost all cottages of 
this exceedingly numerous and important class, 
were at one time constructed on principles of 
sheer sordid economy, with very little regard to | 
the health or comfort of their occupants, and 
with no regard whatever to their self-respect and 
to the proper tone of their moral feelings. But 
a great and happy change has taken place. Mul- 
_titudes of landlords and farmers have become 
enlightened and patriotic enough to identify 
their own interests, with the domestic enjoy- 
ments, the former of their tenantry and the lat- 
ter of their labourers; and they have concurred 
in exertion to elevate the character of the peo- 
ple’s homes, and, through this, to improve the 
character of the people’s principles. The High- 
land Society, too, has strenuously exerted the 
whole of its powerful influence to produce a 
general, skilful, and rapid improvement, and, in 
particular, they appointed committees of inquiry, 
diffused the best information, gave publicity to 
some fine examples of cottage-building by land- 
lords, offered many premiums throughout small 
districts of the country, and procured and pub- 
lished the best professional specifications for 
a 
