Pot-pourri from a Surrey garden

I wonder if it will strike anyone on reading this that the sins of the botanist have been inherited in some degree by the modern gardener ? The book is dedicated to William Roscoe of Liver- pool. Rare and interesting plants from all parts of the world are figured here, and many of them are uncommon to this day. Some are familiar garden plants, such as Rosemary-leaved Lavender Cotton, which, the author tells us, ' Clusius says he met with on the sloping sides NOVEMBER 211 of some hills near Narbonne, in the year 1552, when travelling with his friend, the celebrated Bondeletius, from Carcassonne to Montpellier. It is said to grow in other parts of the South of France, as well as in Spain, chiefly on open hills near the coast. It bears our -climate in the open border, flowering, though very rarely, in August. We receive it from the Botanic Garden of Liverpool by favour of Mr. John Shepherd.' Such a passage, one of many, seems to stretch a hand across the centuries, and explains the kind of charm these old books have for those who like them. The plates are carefully drawn and well coloured. This book contains many plants from New Holland which must then have been rare ; some are noted as grown in gardens at Paddington, some as never having flowered in Europe at all. It is certainly an interesting book. 1810. ' The Gardener's Kalendar,' by Walter Nicol. This is the earliest of my gardening directories, and it is not illustrated. It is an excellent little book, but one learns nothing from it except that nearly all we know now was known then. 1810. 'A Small Family Herbal,' by E. J. Thornton, M.D., interesting as it claims to be illustrated by Thomas Bewick. The little woodcuts of plants and flowers are charming. The arrangement of the book is sensible and clear, and has, at the end of the medical part, some receipts for currant wine, elder wine, &c. 1812. 'A Family Herbal,' by Sir John Hill, M.D. The illustrations are coarse, and not well drawn, though hand-painted. It is a typical book of the day, when there were so many of the same kind. 1812. 'The New Botanic Garden. Illustrated with 133 plants, engraved by Sansom from the original pictures, and coloured with the greatest exactness from drawings by Sydenham Edwards.' There is considerable p2 212 POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN boldness and character about these drawings of ordinary garden plants and flowers, but the colour has changed on several of them. Like other books of the period, the flowers are illustrated and described in an absolutely chance and desultory way ; the only exception is when the authors confine themselves to one family, like Andrews' ' Heathery/ or Jacquin's ' Oxalises.' What is striking in all these books is the beautiful paper and printing. The drawing and painting are just beginning to decline.