I do not pledge myself to any particular
line of observation in the selection I shall
make from my accumulated and ever accumulating
papers, but I modestly hope to offer
something which shall gratify every taste.

THE RHODODENDRON GARDEN.

THE inhabitants of London were indulged,
during the past month of June, with one of
the daintiest sights ever numbered among
the pleasures of a capital. It was an At
Home to morning callers on the part of
certain members of the great Heath family,
chiefly the Rhododendrons and Azaleas. The
members of this widely-scattered family;
who, having taken up their temporary
lodging at Ashburnham Park, appeared in
a spacious reception-room abutting on Cremorne
Gardens, Chelsea, and looked their
best to charm all visitors. They were all born
at Knaphill. in the neighbourhood of Woking,
where they have nearly a hundred acres of
their own, and are waited upon by a large
retinue of attendants, under the command of
their two faithful servants, Messrs. Waterer
and Godfrey. All these distinguished branches
of a noble family entertained the Queen Victoria
and all her court; and there was no
court lady better dressed than they were on
that great occasion.

The roots of all plants of the Heath family
run out into fibrils of a hair-like fineness;
that is the reason why the soil applied to
them must be of a light sort, and moist
enough. They like best rotted peat, or leaf-
mould, or loamy sand. To a net-work of
light filaments this kind of soil clings well—
so well, that although exposure to the air
soon injures them, there is not much reason
to dread exposure if the plant be dug up
with its roots still in the ball of earth that
surrounds them. They can be so dug up and
conveyed from place to place without the use
of pots; and for this reason it has been possible
for Messrs. Waterer and Godfrey to do
what they have been lately doing (and will
do again, no doubt, in future years) in Ashburnham
Park, King's Road, Chelsea, with
the assistance of Mr. Simpson, who is the
active and sensible proprietor of that property.

Under a huge tent they made a garden:
not of flower-stands, but an actual garden,
and no small one, with gravel walks, and
beds planned by the skill of practised gardeners.
Into the garden they then brought
by thousands, from their nursery- grounds
at Knaphill, choice rhododendrons, azaleas,
kalmias, and other allied plants; all chosen
from those that were on the point of
bursting into fullest blossom; but with the
buds yet solid enough to bear the jolts of
travel. The trees were then carefully assorted
as to size and colour, and transplanted into
the beds prepared for them. A few days
having then been suffered to elapse, the blossoms
opened, and the whole garden became
an expanse of flower in which not a break
was to be seen. Cushioned seats were placed
here and there under the blossoming trees; an
elegant little stage erected at one end, from
which visitors might look abroad on the whole
fairy spectacle; and then the doors were opened.
The tie of kindred among the plants
by confining all varieties of form and tint
within certain strict limits, ensured a complete
absence of harsh contrasts. The charm was
everywhere perfect, and its delicacy became
more apparent as, with little impairment of
the general effect, the tender blossom leaves
began, as their last days drew near, to
wrinkle and to fall. Before the beauty of
the whole display had vanished, the doors of
the garden closed. The plants are now being
dug up again (we assume that the garden
will be shut ere this reaches the reader), and
carried back to Knaphill with the soil about
their roots.

The great mass of colour in this garden
of flowers, having settled like a flight of
birds upon a patch of London ground takes
flight again as quickly; and, as the great mass of
colour was produced by the rhododendrons,
we shall speak of them as types of the whole
show. Much time and knowledge, many
successive discoveries—some of them very
recent—have gone to that extension of the
range of colour in the rhododendrons which
made it possible for the massing of their
blossoms to produce effects so exquisite. The
common purple or Pontic Rhododendron
itself is an old friend in Europe. It abounds
in the Levant, and was named as we now
name it by the ancient Greeks, the word
meaning rose-tree. It was called also rhodo-
daphne, rose-laurel, though that name
more strictly belonged to the oleander; but
of old, and till within the last two hundred
years, rhododendrons and oleanders were not
carefully distinguished from each other. The
Pontic Rhododendron is, of course, to be
found growing wild in the land once called
Pontus, and now called Armenia. Although
fair to the eye,—second only to the roses—the
rhododendrons and azaleas are poisonous
plants, and the abundance of their flowers was
relieved to have so great an influence over the
honey of the country, that the Romans
would not receive honey in tribute from the
men of Pontus; but took from them instead
of it a double quantity of wax. It was to the
Pontic honey, gathered chiefly by the bees
from rhododendrons and azaleas, that the
dreadful sufferings of the Greeks near Trebizond
described by Xenophon in his account
of the Retreat of the Ten Thousand, were
ascribed. They vomited, and became delirious.
The ground was covered with the bodies of the
soldiers as it is after a battle; but, in twenty-
four hours, except that they were weakened,
all were well again. The rhododendron,
says an old herbalist, is "in all poyntes like a
Pharesy; that is, beauteus without, and