Chapter V: The Christmas Rose 92 (2)

But of course there should always be a bank of violets, over which the soft winds will play, stealing and giving odour; and no less, of course, a bed of lilies of the valley—planted alone, so that their roots may spread to any distance—with their sweet white bells peering here and there from “their pavilion of tender green.”

The herbaceous borders of early summer become gayer still, though the individual plants are perhaps less interesting. We have now, with numberless others, the snowflake, the hairy red poppy, the valerian, mulleins of various sorts, the early gladiolus, the large flowering lupin, and above all, lilies. The variety of lilies, all beautiful, and nearly all easily grown, is quite remarkable, and we doubt whether (comparatively at least) any flower is more neglected.

Then come roses, and we would strongly recommend that, in addition to the newer “remontant” roses, the old roses and the old way of growing them should not be quite forgotten. Standard roses are all very well, but a rosebush covered over with blossom is very often much better. “Madame Rothschild” is pre-eminent in beauty, but (if she will tolerate the “odorous” comparison) the old cabbage rose or moss rose has a charm of scent and of association of which their fashionable rival is entirely devoid. The old pink china or monthly rose, which flowers on from early summer to latest autumn, deserves a bed to itself. It should be trained and pegged down, as is so constantly done in Belgium and Holland, and the blue lobelia should be planted in between. A bed of the yellow briar-rose is still more beautiful, but it lasts for weeks only instead of months. Other beautiful old summer roses are the maiden’s blush, the Portland rose, the rose unique, and the rose Celeste. But no rose, taking all the good qualities of a rose together, its hardiness, free blooming, beauty, and scent, will surpass the Gloire de Dijon, though the golden cups of Marshal Niel may be richer in colour, and the fragrance of La France recalls, as no other rose does, the luscious fragrance of Oriental otto of roses.

And now, instead of ordinary bedding-out, let me suggest some garden-beds which are far more effective. One is a bed of _Lilium auratum_, with heliotrope to fill up the spaces. Another is _Agapanthus umbellatus_, surrounded by _Lobelia cardinalis_. Then there should be beds of cannas, of gladiolus, of _Clematis Jackmanni_ trained over withies, of zinnias, of the new hybrid begonias, and of asters. Somewhere room should be found for a border of everlastings, and somewhere for a row of the large red linum. One border may be given up to annuals, and it is no bad plan to mix the seeds of some twenty varieties, and let them grow up together as they will. The blue cornflower should have a piece of ground to itself, and so of course should the carnations. The white pinks will already have perfumed the herbaceous border with their aromatic scent, and the sweet-william and antirrhinum will also have claimed a place. The convolvulus major should have a chance of climbing upon a trellis, and the large nasturtium of trailing over a bank; and where the _Tropæolum speciosum_, which is one of the great ornaments of the gardens at Minto and elsewhere in Scotland, can be made to flourish in our English garden, it will be found as beautiful as either.

Above all, no garden should be without its hedge of sweet peas. If the pods are diligently pulled off, new flowers will be as constantly thrown out, and the “purfled scarf” of blossoms will remain in beauty till the first killing frost. It is easy to get a dozen different shades of colour, and nothing can look gayer, or give a more delicious scent. Keats—than whom no poet ever described flowers more accurately—speaks of the sweet pea’s “wings of gentle flush o’er delicate white,” and of its “taper fingers catching at all things.”

Clumps of hollyhock, crusted over with bloom, should be planted near a sundial, or (as says the author of the well-known essay on “The Poetry of Gardening”), “in a long avenue, the double and the single, not too straitly tied, backed by a dark thick hedge of old-fashioned yew.”

Sunflowers, also in clumps, should stand out here and there, and though the modern sceptics may tell us that this American plant cannot be the Clytie of Grecian story, it amply vindicates its name by its large discs, surrounded by golden rays. Tritomas should hold up their scarlet maces to the sun, among tufts of the _Arundo conspicua_, or (better still, if possible) of Pampas grass. Lastly, we must not forget to plant, for the sake of their delicious scent, as the summer evening falls, the curious Schizopetalon, and the better known Mathiola, or night-scented stock.

But, besides its flowers, the garden is alive with other happy forms of life. The blackbird, as the Laureate tells us, will “warble, eat, and dwell” among the espaliers; and the thrush, as Mr. Browning reminds us, “sings each song twice over” from some blossoming pear-tree. Then the bees are busy all summer long, rifling for themselves the flowers, and setting for us the fruit. “The butterflies flutter from bush to bush, and open their wings to the warm sun,” and a peacock or red admiral, or better still, a humming-bird moth, is always a welcome guest. Only the other day I heard a delightful story (I wish I were satisfied that it was a fact) of a lady who got some chrysalises of butterflies from Italy and elsewhere, and, planting in a corner of her garden the herbs and flowers in which they most delighted, had hovering around, for many weeks of summer, these beautiful strange visitors from the south.

One great charm of a garden lies in the certainty that it will never be the same two years running. If we were only confident that each year was to be precisely like the last, it may fairly be doubted whether we could feel the same interest in our task. It is really no paradox to say, that it is fortunate that gardening should be always more or less of a struggle, for the very struggle, as should always happen, has the element of pleasure about it. Each year there will be success on one side, if something of failure on another. And there are always difficulties enough. There are difficulties arising from bad seasons, from climate, or from soil. There are weeds that worry, and seeds that fail. There are garden pests of every variety. The mice nibble away the tulip-bulbs: the canker gets into the rosebud, and the green fly infests the rose. Wire-worms destroy the roots of tender annuals, and slugs breakfast upon their sprouting leaves. Moles and birds and caterpillars have each and all their peculiar plans for vexing the gardener’s heart. Then again certain plants are attacked by special diseases of their own. The gladiolus turns yellow and comes to nothing, and a parasitic fungus destroys the hollyhock. And yet, if there were no difficulties to contend against, no forethought to be exercised, no ingenuity to be displayed, no enemies to conquer, it is surely impossible that we could feel the same pleasure and personal triumph in our success. Then, too, each year the intelligent gardener will arrange new combinations, grow new varieties of plants, and aim after a perfection which he can never hope to reach.

But the garden has no less also a scientific interest. Fresh species of plants are continually enriching our flower-beds, and botanists are constantly searching the wildest and most remote corners of the world on behalf of the English stove-house, conservatory, and garden. They endure untold hardships, and risk many dangers, if only they may secure some new treasure. Often they have caught deadly fever or met with fatal accidents in their search, and, true martyrs of science as they are, they pass away forgotten, except perchance when some unwonted designation of a plant may recall, not their memory indeed, but their name. But as one drops off, another will succeed; and so, among far coral islands of the Pacific, in the tropical recesses of a South American forest, in the heart of Asiatic mountains, or the unexplored mysteries of New Guinea, these lovers of nature are at work, labouring for our pleasure and instruction, and procuring for us new forms of vegetable life and beauty. And meanwhile science is working at home in another and a happier way. Not content with finding new species of plants, she is for ever developing fresh varieties. The art is no new one, and in old days the simpler minds of men were not quite sure of its propriety. It was unnatural, they used to say. It is in vain that Polixenes tells Perdita that there is an art that does mend nature, and, therefore, is nature. She evidently thinks it all sophistry, and not a gillyflower will she have.

“I’ll not put
The dibble in the earth to set one slip of them.”

And so, too, Andrew Marvell’s mower complains of the gardener that

“The pink grew then as double as his mind;
The nutriment did change the kind;
With strange perfumes he did the roses taint,
And flowers themselves were taught to paint.”

He thinks it a wicked extravagance, as it certainly was, to sell a meadow for the sake of a tulip root, and he thinks it an absurdity, as it certainly was not, that we should have brought the “Marvel of Peru” over so many miles of ocean; but all this might be forgiven, but not the “forbidden mixtures” which grafting and hybridizing have brought about. Meanwhile, as we are now untroubled by such scruples, we may not only enjoy the results of the art of the skilful florist, but may even take an intelligent interest in the art itself. It lets us into many secrets of nature. It helps to explain problems of much higher significance than the brief existence of a garden flower. It makes us understand, in some small degree, how, in every form of life, a higher type may be produced from one of inferior order.

And the results are really wonderful. It is difficult to know what class of plants has in late years most profited by the artful nature, or unnatural art, of the skilful gardener; but certainly, some of the most striking successes have been among roses, clematis, begonias, and rhododendrons.

But it is not the florist only who has been helping on the cause of botanical science at home. Within the last few years the botanists, or rather perhaps the naturalists, have been increasingly busy among both the English field and garden flowers. The old botanists indeed had examined with every minuteness the structure and economy of the blossoms, had counted the stamens and the pistils, and known the origin of the swelling of the seed-vessel. And what Linnæus had systematized, Erasmus Darwin endeavoured to turn into a romance. Science was to be made popular in a long didactic poem, and _The Loves of the Plants_ was the curious result. But to treat the various organs of a plant as if they were human beings and endowed with human passions, was obviously too far-fetched a conceit to give real pleasure, and it was not wonderful that Mathias, and many others, should have laughed at those, who

“In sweet tetrandrian monogynian strains
Pant for a pistil in botanic pains.”

And then the illustrators took the matter up, and in Thornton’s _New Illustrations of the Sexual System of Linnæus_, which is perhaps one of the most beautiful botanical works ever published, we have pictures of plants with Cupid aiming a shaft at them, and with a letterpress of love-verses. Into the new system introduced by Jussieu, and now generally adopted for purposes of classification, we need not enter. The Natural system, as it is called, which is certainly the sensible system, has now held its own for many years, though the more artificial system of Linnæus has still its use and votaries.

The most recent investigators into botanical science are not classifying plants, but they are examining into the meaning of their structure. The mere task of description and enumeration has been done, and so they have set themselves to find out why certain structures exist, and why certain habits (if we may use the word) have been formed. Why do the climbing plants climb at all? and why do some twine, and others cling? Why do the fly-catching plants cause the death of numbers of unlucky insects? Why are the stamens and pistils in plants of such various lengths and sizes? Why have some flowers a hairy fringe, and others drops of nectar in their calyces? What is the meaning of the scent of flowers, and what is the object of the night-opening flowers? The key to many of these questions is in the relationship of flowers to insects; and Charles Darwin, Sir John Lubbock, and others, have done very much to explore and then to popularize the subject. Much that is most important has thus been made known to us, but these eminent naturalists would be the first to own that there is much more still to do. The secrets of nature open out but slowly, and after long and patient wooing. It would sometimes appear too as if there might be danger, not indeed of adapting facts to theory, but of taking it too readily for granted that all facts must eventually fit into some favourite theory. This tendency may not be so apparent in the leaders as in their less cautious disciples in these scientific researches. From some of their expressions they would almost seem to imply that insects were made for the sake of fertilizing flowers. They attribute the bright colour and beauty of flowers not to the same good purpose that gives beauty elsewhere, but as if it were merely that insects may be attracted, and do their duty among the ripening pollen. They are contemptuous at the idea of a flower being intended for the selfish pleasure of man and not for its own purposes, and they point to plants of beauty that “blush unseen” where man cannot admire them, forgetting, however, that man _has_ seen them, or he would not know of their existence. They will learn nothing of the affluence of nature, and nothing is quite accepted unless its use can be established, though on this principle it is hard to explain why, as Bishop Hall pointed out long ago, “there is many a rich stone laid up in the bowels of the earth, many a faire pearle laid up in the bosome of the sea, that never was seen, nor never shall be.”

It is curious how apparent extremes will meet. The very men who would most readily throw over the old theological argument of “design,” which believed that everything was done in the most perfect way for the most perfect ends, will now in the interests of evolution show the necessity for each curve of a flower-cup and for each marking on a petal. We cannot be too thankful to them, if only they will make their ground sure at every step; but it will not do to generalize too rapidly. For instance, it has been stated that veins on a flower are probably guides to lead insects down into the honey-cup below, and that night-blowing flowers are without them because at night they would be invisible and useless. Unfortunately, it has since been shown that the _Œnothera taraxicifolia_, and probably other night-flowers, are deeply marked with veins. Again, why in some cherry-blossoms is the pistil longer than the stamens, so that the fertilization must be effected differently to what it is in the more ordinary varieties, where the stamens and pistil are of equal length? Why have blossoms gradually developed properties to attract insects, when it is obvious that those properties were not originally required for the perpetuation of the species? Why should some flowers of magnificent size, like the magnolia, require scent to attract insects, if we must indeed admit that use and not pleasure is the end and aim of every attraction of the garden? And if scent is necessary in this case, why is it not so where the flower is small and insignificant? Why among roses has La France a delicious perfume, and Baroness Rothschild none?

But such questionings are inevitable as yet: meanwhile facts are accumulating, and the whole truth, thanks to the patient and laborious workers of our time, may one day be known.

But quite apart from scientific interests, a real old garden, unaltered and unspoiled, has a peculiar interest of its own. It is sure to be haunted by associations, and nothing calls up associations so quickly and certainly as a sudden scent of flowers coming and going upon the summer air. Time and change may have been busy since some long-absent member of the family has revisited his old home, but the flowers and their fragrance, still the same as ever, will call up all the past. There is the corner where the first violets were always found; there is the rosebush from which a flower may once have been gathered of which the poor faded petals still remain; there is the lavender, which supplied the oaken presses where the house-linen was always kept. And, apart from all such fond and foolish private memories, there are all the associations with which literature has consecrated the old garden-flowers. Pelargoniums, calceolarias, verbenas, and the rest of the new-comers have but few friends, but not an old flower but is “loaded with a thought,” as Emerson says of the asters on the slopes at Concord. Roses, lilies, violets, primroses, and daffodils, have been written about over and over again, and the words of great poets rise unbidden to the memory at sight of them. And then certain flowers will recall an entire scene, and Marguerite asks her fate from the large white daisy whose name she bears, or Corisande, in her garden of every perfume, gathers—but not for herself—her choicest rose.

While a garden owes so much to the poet’s pen, it is strange that it should owe comparatively little to the artist’s brush. Who can recall a single picture of gardens or of flowers that ever gave him any great amount of pleasure! Is Watteau an exception? But it is the figures in the foreground, not the garden, for which one really cares. And of flower-painters, there are Van Huysum and the Dutchmen, with their piles and masses of blossom, of large size, but generally of dull colour, and without light or warmth about them. Then there are our English flower-painters; with some the flowers are only subsidiary to the picture, and they seem to have adopted Gilpin’s advice that

“By a nice representation of such trifles, he [the painter] would be esteemed puerile and pedantic. Fern-leaves perhaps, or dock, if his piece be large, he might condescend to imitate; but if he wanted a few touches of red or blue or yellow, to enliven and enrich any particular spot on his foreground, instead of aiming at the exact representation of any natural plant, he will more judiciously give the tint he wants in a few random general touches of something like nature, and leave the spectator, if he please, to find out a resemblance. Botanical precision may please us in the flowerpieces of Van Huysum, but it would be paltry and affected in the landscapes of Claude or Salvator.”

But even when the flower or plant is something better than a “touch” of colour, there is often some gross carelessness, or ignorance, which gives a sense of annoyance rather than of pleasure. Each returning year, the _Gardeners’ Chronicle_ reviews the Royal Academy from a botanical point of view, and nothing can be droller than the blunders it points out. Sometimes all sorts of flowers of various seasons are growing together, or a wood, through which a knight is riding, is adorned with agarics and fungi that belong to different periods of the year. Sometimes places, no less than times, are set at nought, as in an instance quoted by Mr. Rossetti from the Exhibition of 1868, where a Greek maiden is gathering blossoms from a pot of (American) azaleas. But, indeed, such instances are only too common. In how many modern classical pictures, for example, has not the large sunflower of America been introduced? But when the flower itself is one important part of the picture, how curiously unsatisfactory is too often the result! No one has tried more earnestly to set our painters right in these matters than Mr. Ruskin, and how little even now have they profited by his teaching! They catch hold of a suggestion, as when he once told them (_showed_ them, we might say) that a spray of pink apple-blossom against a blue sky was beautiful, and the next exhibition or two abounded in blossoming apple-boughs: but they seem unable to grasp a principle. It was in 1851, in his tract on “Pre-Raphaelitism,” that he urged the painting of “the heather as it grows, and the foxglove and the harebell as they nestle in the clefts of the rocks;” and this last year, while speaking of the same artist, Mr. Hunt, he has had to repeat the same lesson, that plants that grow are pleasanter objects than flowers that are gathered. And, indeed, the reason is not far to seek. A bunch of garden-roses thrown carelessly down upon a mossy bank—and there is scarcely an exhibition without one—not only gives one a feeling of incongruity (as though the fashionable flowers were out at a picnic), but a stronger feeling still of coming death. We know those roses must wither and die, almost, we fancy, as we look upon them. No dew that falls can now keep them alive, as it will the humble moss—so much better than they—on which they rest. And it is almost worse when the poor gathered flowers are brought indoors and placed in some blue jar or Salviati vase, and the artist shows how carefully he can draw, not so much the petals of the flowers as the texture of the porcelain or the iridescence of the glass. It is difficult enough worthily to paint the light and glow of colour in any beautiful flower, but, if it is to be painted, let it be when the plant is still growing, and as it grows. Any garden will give subjects enough, if they are only sought for. Here is a bank of daffodils; here the white narcissus and the red anemone have formed a group; here a blue forget-me-not looks up into the bell of the snake’s-head fritillary; here is a great peony bowed down with its crimson globes; here a nasturtium trails its bright yellow blossoms along a bit of grey old rock; here a cluster of hollyhocks keep watch by a garden walk; here the purple clematis clings to the orchard hedge. Pictures of flowers such as these, if only the artist have some sense of colour and some refinement of taste, would give a real and almost a new pleasure to us all.

But there must be no artistic grouping, or representing of things as they should be rather than as they are. The work must be conscientious, as in the case of a great living sculptor who, having to carve an ivy plant upon a tablet, went himself to study the form of growing ivy, and found how entirely different it is from the conventional wreaths of the ordinary marble-mason.

There is one question in connection with English horticulture to which at first sight it does not seem quite easy to give a satisfactory answer. Are the flower-shows, the number of which is constantly increasing, an advantage or not? They certainly stimulate the production of magnificent fruit, of beautiful florist-flowers, and of handsome stove and greenhouse plants. But how do they affect the gardens in which these prize specimens are grown? It is mere matter of fact that, when a gardener begins to think of exhibiting, he is very apt to pay undue attention to the plants which will secure him prizes and reputation. If his master is satisfied with the usual monotony of garden-beds, why should the gardener give special attention to what can be of no service to himself? So he throws his whole strength into some bunches of grapes, some dozen roses, some trained chrysanthemums. And this is not the worst of it. The “dressing” of particular blooms has recently become an art, and little curling-irons are employed to get petals into their proper shape, and other various devices are used for various flowers. But there is after all a morality in these things. It is allowable to cut away superfluous petals, but it is not allowable to insert fragments of another blossom. This seems to be the limit. Now we confess the whole system seems to us thoroughly bad, and we recommend the managers of flower-shows to forbid “dressing” of every kind. If not exactly dishonest in itself, it leads on, and very easily, to the worst forms of dishonesty. But indeed, in almost every aspect, nothing can be more spoiling to the gardener than these flower-shows so constantly are. In the first place, the prize-ticket generally asserts that the prize is adjudged to “Mr.——, gardener to——.” The owner of the garden is nobody, and the gardener is everything. The prize is in almost every case regarded as the unchallenged property of the gardener, who has, nevertheless, won the prize by his master’s plant, reared at his master’s expense, and at the cost of time which has made him too frequently neglect much more important matters.

Is it any wonder if horticulture in its best sense—that is, the culture of the garden as a whole—is not what it should be? No gardener can get prizes for well-kept beds, for effects of harmonious colouring, for arrangement of shrubberies, for the grouping of herbaceous plants. He is tempted for the sake of a single specimen to sacrifice the beauty of a whole plant, or the clusters of an entire fruit-tree. That it is most important for nurserymen to be able to compare new species, or new varieties of old species, is of course undeniable. That our ordinary flower-show is for the ordinary spectator an extremely pretty sight is no less certain. But we are satisfied that in the majority of cases it is the wiser course for any one who really cares about his garden, and would rather have a succession of well-cultured flowers than some merely exceptional success, to discourage his gardener from exhibiting.

In conclusion, I can only repeat that “the English flower-garden” may afford far greater pleasure than it does at present. We must learn to look on plants, not as mere points of colour, but as old friends on whose coming we can rely, and who, returning with the recurring seasons, bring back with them pleasant memories of past years. And if, as often happens, they are plants consecrated by song or legend, the imagination is quickened as surely as the heart is stirred. We must remember, too, that our personal delight in a garden is entirely independent of its size or the perfection of its appliances. A child’s garden, such as Mary Howitt once described, a few pots of musk or mignonette on the window-ledge of a schoolboy’s study, will afford a pleasure which acres of garden, left only to the gardener’s care, can never give. “How _can_ I care for this garden? It is so much too large to care about”—a lady, who owns one of the famous gardens in the north of England, once said to me; and it was impossible not to appreciate the difficulty.

Indeed, as with everything else, the garden will soon grow dull, and the flowers lose their attraction, unless we take the management, partly at least, into our own hands, and be masters not in name but in reality. It is not necessary to understand every matter of detail, though our interest will strengthen as our practical knowledge grows; but at least we may make up our minds as to what we want to have done, and then take care that the gardener carries out our orders. We are too often the absolute slaves of our gardeners, and they in turn (of course I am not speaking of exceptions) are too often the slaves of an unintelligent routine. We have learnt, as Bacon said, “to _build stately_ sooner than to _garden finely_, as if gardening were the greater perfection.” It is really about time that we learnt the more difficult lesson.

NOTES.

NOTE I.

THE GARDENER BOWER-BIRD.

THIS curious bird was first described by Schlegel, and a coloured illustration of its garden and bower will be found in Gould’s _Birds of New Guinea_. The fullest account, however, seems to be that of Signor Beccari, which first appeared in a scientific periodical of Genoa. It was translated for the _Gardeners’ Chronicle_ of March 11, 1878, and I am permitted to make use of the very interesting narrative:

“The _Amblyornis inornata_—or, as I propose to name it, the Bird-gardener—is a Bird of Paradise of the dimensions of a turtle-dove. The specific name ‘inornata’ well suggests its very simple dress. It has none of the ornaments common to the members of its family, its feathers being of several shades of brown, and showing no sexual differences.

“It was shot some years ago by the hunters of Mynheer von Rosenberg. The first descriptions of its powers of building (the constructions were called ‘nests’) were given by the hunters of Mynheer Bruijn. They endeavoured to bring one of the nests to Ternate, but it was found impossible to do this, both by reason of its great size and the difficulty of transporting it.

“I have fortunately been able to examine these constructions at remote places where they are erected. On June 20, 1875, I left Andai for Hatam, on Mount Arfak. I had been forced to stay a day at Warmendi to give rest to my porters. At this time only five men were with me; some were suffering from fever, and the remaining porters declined to proceed. We had been on our way since early morning, and at one o’clock we intended to proceed to the village of Hatam, the end of our journey.

“We were on a projecting spur of Mount Arfak. The virgin forest was very beautiful. Scarcely a ray of sunshine penetrated the branches. The ground was almost destitute of vegetation. A little trackway proved that the inhabitants were at no great distance. A limpid fountain had evidently been frequented. I found here a new Balanophora, like a small orange or a small fungus. I was distracted by the songs and the screams of new birds, and every turn in the path showed me something new and surprising. I had just killed a small new marsupial (_Phascelogale dorsalis_, Pet, and Doria), that balanced itself on the stem of a great tree like a squirrel, and turning round, I suddenly stood before the most remarkable specimen of the industry of an animal. It was a hut or bower close to a small meadow enamelled with flowers. The whole was on a diminutive scale. I immediately recognised the famous nests described by the hunters of Bruijn. I did not suspect, however, then, that they had anything to do with the constructions of the Chlamydodeæ. After well observing the whole, I gave strict orders to my hunters not to destroy the little building. That, however, was an unnecessary caution, since the Papuans take great care never to disturb these nests or bowers, even if they are in their way. The birds had evidently enjoyed the greatest quiet until we happened, unfortunately for them, to come near them. We had reached the height of about 4,800 feet, and after half an hour’s walk we were at our journey’s end.”

THE NEST.

“I had now full employment in the preparation of my treasure, and I gave orders to my people not to shoot many of the birds. The nest I had seen first was the nearest one to my halting-place. One morning I took colours, brushes, pencils, and gun, and went to the spot. While I was there neither host nor hostess were at home. I could not wait for them. My hunters saw them entering and going out, when they watched their movements to shoot them. I could not ascertain whether this bower was occupied by one pair or by several pairs of birds, or whether the sexes were in equal or unequal numbers—whether the male alone was the builder, or whether the wife assisted in the construction. I believe, however, that such a nest lasts for several seasons.

“The Amblyornis selects a flat even place around the trunk of a small tree, that is as thick and as high as a walking-stick of middle size. It begins by constructing at the base of the tree a kind of a cone, chiefly of moss, of the size of a man’s hand. The trunk of the tree becomes the central pillar, and the whole building is supported by it. The height of the pillar is a little less than that of the whole of the hut, not quite reaching two feet. On the top of the central pillar twigs are then methodically placed in a radiating manner, resting on the ground, leaving an aperture for the entrance. Thus is obtained a conical and very regular hut. When the work is complete many other branches are placed transversely in various ways, to make the whole quite firm and impermeable. A circular gallery is left between the walls and the central cone. The whole is nearly three feet in diameter. All the stems used by the Amblyornis are the thin stems of an orchid (Dendrobium), an epiphyte forming large tufts on the mossy branches of great trees, easily bent like straw, and generally about twenty inches long. The stalks had the leaves, which are small and straight, still fresh and living on them; which leads me to conclude that this plant was selected by the bird to prevent rotting and mould in the building, since it keeps alive for a long time, as is so often the case with epiphytical Orchids.

“The refined sense of the bird is not satisfied with building a hut. It is wonderful to find that the bird has the same ideas as a man, that is to say, what pleases the one gratifies the other. The passion for flowers and gardens is a sign of good taste and refinement. I discovered that the inhabitants of Arfak, however, did not follow the example of the Amblyornis. Their houses are quite inaccessible from dirt.”

THE GARDEN.

“Now let me describe the garden of the Amblyornis. Before the cottage there is a meadow of moss. This is brought to the spot and kept free from grass, stones, or anything which would offend the eye. On this green turf, flowers and fruits of pretty colour are placed so as to form an elegant little garden.

“The greater part of the decoration is collected round the entrance to the nest, and it would appear that the husband offers there his daily gifts to his wife. The objects are very various, but always of vivid colour. There were some fruits of a Garcinia like a small-sized apple. Others were the fruits of Gardenias of a deep yellow colour in the interior. I saw also small rosy fruits, probably of a Scitaminaceous plant, and beautiful rosy flowers of a splendid new Vaccinium (_Agapetes Amblyorninis_). There were also fungi and mottled insects placed on the turf. As soon as the objects are faded they are moved to the back of the hut.

“The good taste of the Amblyornis is not only proved by the nice home it builds. It is a clever bird, called by the inhabitants Buruk Gurea—(master bird),—since it imitates the songs and screamings of numerous birds so well that it brought my hunters to despair, who were but too often misled by the bird. Another name of the bird is Tukan Robon, which means a gardener.”

NOTE II.

ARS TOPIARIA.

THE Romans used the word _Topiarius_ for their ornamental gardener, and one of his chief duties—the _Ars topiaria_ in fact—was to cut the shrubs, and especially box-trees, into figures of ships, animals, and names. There is a well-known passage in one of the letters of the younger Pliny, in which, while speaking of his garden, he describes “a sort of terrace, embellished with various figures, and bounded with a box-hedge, from which you descend by an easy slope, adorned with the representation of divers animals in box answering alternately to each other, into a lawn overspread with the soft, I had almost said the liquid, acanthus: this is surrounded by a walk, enclosed with tonsile evergreens, shaped into a variety of forms. Beyond it is the _gestatio_ [a sort of avenue in which to take exercise] laid out in the form of a circus, ornamented in the middle with box cut in numberless different figures, together with a plantation of shrubs prevented by the shears from running up too high; the whole is fenced in with a wall, covered by box, rising by different ranges to the top.” Further on he says, “Having passed through these several winding alleys, you enter a straight walk, which breaks out into a variety of others, divided off by box-hedges. In one place you have a little meadow; in another the box is cut into a thousand different forms, sometimes into letters expressing the name of the master, sometimes that of the artificer, whilst here and there little obelisks rise intermixed alternately with fruit-trees.”[9] Martial too gives a curious illustration of the _Ars topiaria_. A grove of Plane trees was adorned with _topiarian_ wild beasts,—among them a bear; a young boy thrust his hand into the bear’s wide mouth, and a viper hiding there stung him to death. What a misfortune, adds Martial, that the bear had not been a real one. This _Ars topiaria_ had been for some time in fashion in England when Addison first attacked it in the _Spectator_ of June 25th, 1712: “Our British gardeners, on the contrary, instead of humouring nature, love to deviate from it as much as possible. Our trees rise in cones, globes, and pyramids. We see the marks of the scissors upon every plant and bush. I do not know whether I am singular in my opinion, but, for my own part, I would rather look upon a tree in all its luxuriancy and diffusion of boughs and branches than when it is thus cut and trimmed into a mathematical figure.”

But this is nothing to the denunciation by Pope, which may be found in the _Guardian_ of September 29th, 1713. It is extremely humorous. He declares that

“A citizen is no sooner proprietor of a couple of yews, but he entertains the thought of erecting them into giants, like those of Guildhall. I know an eminent cook, who beautified his country-seat with a coronation dinner in greens, where you see the champion flourishing on horseback at one end of the table, and the queen in perpetual youth at the other. For the benefit of all my loving countrymen of this curious taste, I shall here publish a catalogue of greens to be disposed of by an eminent town gardener, who has lately applied to me on this head. He represents, that for the advancement of a politer sort of ornament in the villas and gardens adjacent to this great city, and in order to distinguish those places from the more barbarous countries of gross nature, the world stands much in need of a virtuoso gardener, who has a turn for sculpture, and is thereby capable of improving upon the ancients in his imagery of evergreens. I proceed to his catalogue:

“Adam and Eve in Yew; Adam a little shattered by the fall of the Tree of Knowledge in the great storm; Eve and the Serpent very flourishing.

“Noah’s Ark in Holly, the ribs a little damaged for want of water.

“The Tower of Babel, not yet finished.

“St. George in Box, his arm scarce long enough, but will be in a condition to stick the Dragon by next April.

“A green Dragon of the same, with a tail of ground-ivy for the present. N.B. These two not to be sold separately.

“Edward the Black Prince in Cypress.

“A Laurustine Bear in blossom, with a Juniper Hunter in berrie.

“A pair of Giants stunted; to be sold cheap.”

And there are various other lots equally remarkable and interesting.

But the _topiarian_ art has never been either scolded or laughed entirely out of existence, and we all remember how many years later when Lovel first visits “The Antiquary” he found the house of Monkbarns “surrounded by tall clipped hedges of yew and holly, some of which still exhibited the skill of the _topiarian_ artist, and presented curious arm-chairs, towers, and the figures of St. George and the Dragon. The taste of Mr. Oldbuck did not disturb these monuments of an art now unknown, and he was the less tempted so to do, as it must necessarily have broken the heart of his old gardener.”

NOTE III.

A POET’S FLOWER-BED.

THE quaintest of all devices in flower-beds was the one which Mrs. Browning—then Elizabeth Barrett—made for herself when a child. In after years she told the story of it in a poem, and I venture to extract some stanzas, as they may not be known to all my readers, and as they illustrate my subject rather curiously. Hope End, where Miss Barrett lived, and where this “Hector” flowered, was once well known to me. Crossing the Malvern Hills on the Herefordshire side, and passing the Colwall valley, you find the ground sloping up again into a little ridge. Here, hidden away in a side valley, was the strange-looking house, with Moorish pinnacles. Here was the pond where “little Ellie” found the “swan’s nest among the reeds.” And here the young girl of nine years old, who had already drunken so deeply of “the wine of Cyprus” formed her garden-bed in the shape of her hero Hector, while a laurel stood on a mound close by, and the birds sung in an old pear-tree which cast soft shadows on the ground:

“In the garden, lay supinely
A huge giant, wrought of spade!
Arms and legs were stretched at length,
In a passive giant strength,—
And the meadow turf, cut finely,
Round them laid and interlaid.

“Call him Hector, son of Priam!
Such his title and degree.
With my rake I smoothed his brow;
Both his cheeks I weeded through:
But a rhymer such as I am
Scarce can sing his dignity.

“Eyes of gentianellas azure,
Staring, winking at the skies;
Nose of gillyflowers and box;
Scented grasses, put for locks—
Which a little breeze, at pleasure,
Set a-waving round his eyes.

“Brazen helm of daffodillies,
With a glitter toward the light;
Purple violets, for the mouth,
Breathing perfumes west and south;
And a sword of flashing lilies,
Holden ready for the fight.

“And a breastplate, made of daisies,
Closely fitting, leaf by leaf;
Periwinkles interlaced,
Drawn for belt about the waist;
While the brown bees, humming praises,
Shot their arrows round the chief.”

NOTE IV.

THE EVENING PRIMROSE.