each column, or between them when not
stopping the way, imagine a gigantic taper
lily, grown singly in a sculptured vase, shooting
upwards as if endeavouring to help to
prop the architrave! Ladies in deep mourning
might wear a bouquet of Gommersonia
ferruginea, a sad-looking plant with dull
black-and-white flowers. The Patagonian
beech, a natural dwarf, and one of the most
southern trees in the world, makes a pretty
pot-plant, with its small, shining, box-like
leaves. Who would look out for an evergreen
cherry-tree? And yet there is a
holly-leaved cherry, Cerasus ilicifolia, an
English plant, from California. A consignment
of plants of the Winter's bark, a valuable
febrifuge, from the north of Chili, with
its handsome laurel-like leaves, purple where
they are not green, would be an acceptable
present to our mild-climated colonies. From
New Caledonia V. H. has introduced the
Clianthus magnificus, still more brilliant in
flower, and less straggling in growth than the
puniceus, or glory pea. There is a house full
of pitcher-plants, of all sizes and shapes.
Perhaps the drollest species of this eccentric
family is a tiny one, Cephalotus follicularis
from New Holland, which has little mugs,
about the size of an infant's thimble, whose
aperture is surrounded with minute hooks
curved inside, rendering egress impossible to
any fly that has crept within. The young
leaves of Rhododendron Edgeworthii are
covered with a comfortable great-coat of
wool; the flowers are four inches in diameter,
scented with heliotrope and vanilla
combined. There is a perverse-minded fern,
which insists upon growing, like a green
bracket, against a perpendicular surface, well
worth the attention of decorative artists.
English modellers may see it at Kew, at
Veitch's, and elsewhere. In the mountains
of Brazil there grows a set of very beautiful
plants called Rhopalas; they are covered
with velvet, especially on the young leaves,
which are brown. We have four or five
species here. There is a hothouse plant,
Pilea callitrichoïdes, of tender, brittle, and
juicy aspect, which looks as if it would be
good to eat in a cooling salad, but which is
really of so explosive a temperament that it
might fairly be called the pistol-plant. When
near flowering, and with its tiny buds ready
to open, if the plant is either dipped in water
or abundantly watered, each bud will explode
successively, keeping up a mimic Sebastopolitan
bombardment, sending forth a puff of
gunpowder smoke,—or a little cloud of dusty
pollen,—as its stamens suddenly start forth
to take their place and form a cross. It is
no novelty; but is still an amusing toy,
which produces a plentiful crop of pop-guns.
An ugly flower,—and not many such exist,—
serves as a foil to acknowledged beauties.
It must be the only motive for cultivating
the Brexia Madagascariensis, an unpleasing
plant from an unpleasing place, with
dirty greenish-yellow blossoms, with no
scent, with no anything. I should look a
long time at a couple of francs before I paid
them for such a fright of a thing as that.
Plectranthus laciniatus, var. Blume, looks as
if every one of its leaves had been bitten and
torn by a savage dog.

Some of the shelves on which the plants
are ranged are fringed with the bright-green
worsted-work of Lycopodium denticulatum.
An upright edge of sheet-lead retains sufficient
earth for the moss to grow in. Another
pretty greenhouse edging is furnished by the
twin lilac flowers of Streptocarpus biflorus,
similarly planted, on a level with the eye.
A style of vegetation which pleases on close
inspection is seen in the specimens of speckled,
striped, and coloured-clouded foliage. In
masses in the open air they do not tell—their
effect is lost; but, immediately beneath the
eye of the observer, they reveal a curious and
beautiful organisation. The Sonerila
margaritacea has dark-green heart-shaped leaves,
sprinkled with pearls, and bears a profusion
of crimson flowers with yellow stamens. The
Maranta regalis (flower unknown) has stripes
of red, as if its leaves had been slashed with
a bloody knife. The Aphelandra Leopoldi,
bold and vigorous, has a milky streak along
each principal vein. Bilbergia Carolina
grows like a pineapple, but the central leaves
are bright crimson. Echytis nutans has an
oval red-veined leaf; Cissus marmorea, green
velvet leaves shaded with white and purple.
There is another very pretty genus, grown
under bell-glasses, whose leaves are mostly
void of every shade of green, but are tinged
with yellow, brown, black, and bronze, as if
they had been electro-plated and covered
with a thin metallic coat having a dull and
non-reflective surface. Let me add to this
list of singularities, Dracæna terminalis and
Bartolonia marmorea. In sooth, nurserymen
had need be born with an Adamite propensity
for giving and remembering names.
Only peruse, and study too, as it well deserves,
V. H.'s Prix Courant, or catalogues.

All these collected treasures require the
utmost care to keep them thriving. It is
hard that, whatever pains are taken to secure
valuable exotics from injury—and some ivy-
like climbers are indulged with a piece of
cork-bark, instead of a cold wall, to mount—
unexpected accidents will happen, and interfere
with the trader's profits. Most people
would say that, to fatten snails on orchids, is
what they would no more think about doing,
than to pamper donkeys on pine-apples. And
yet an epicurean slug will destroy the buds
of a lovely Phalænopsis aimabilis worth five
guineas; and then, after the mischief is done,
the horticulturist, to save other victims, must
paint his woodwork with saltpetre and water,
and must place his plants on shelves covered
with rough coal-cinders saturated with
moisture, to prevent injury to the plants from
other causes. For slugs entertain a serious