Pot-pourri from a Surrey garden

There is an illustrated page of ornamental flower-stands, which, ugly as they are, I think might be improved and adapted so as to be rather pretty and useful in some greenhouses and windows. The lists of plants, bulbs, and seeds are useful even now, and would have been exceedingly so to me some years ago. The way these books fell out of knowledge and fashion is quite extraordinary. The botany they 7i 6 POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN contain was constantly superseded by newer books ; faith in herbalism died out ; and the beautiful herbaceous plants were swept away from our gardens. I suppose I did not look out for these books, knowing nothing of them ; but I never saw one of them till I began to be interested in them and to collect them five or six years ago. 1825. ' The Manse Garden/ which has long been out of print, I have. Canon Ellacombe praises it most warmly and justly at the end of his ' Gloucestershire Garden,' published last year. It has no name and no date, but he says it was written by the Rev. N. Patter- son, at that time — nearly seventy years ago — Minister of Galashiels and afterwards a leading member of the Scotch Free Kirk. ' It is altogether,' Canon Ellacombe adds, ' a delightful book, full of quaint sentences, shrewd good-sense, and quiet humour ; and the cultural directions are admirable.' This praise I entirely endorse. The chapter at the end, called ' The Minister's Boy/ is especially human, in the modern sense of the word. It is a modest, non-old-fashioned-looking little book, and is, I expect, to be found hidden away in many an old Scotch house. 1825-1830. 'Cistinese: the Natural Order of Eock Eose/ by Eobert Sweet. This, once more, is a book entirely confined to one family, the extent of which is such a surprise to most of us. Who would have expected that there are thirty-five Cistuses, seventy-eight Heli- anthemums, and about a hundred Eock Eoses? The drawings are good ; but the colouring, though still by hand, compares very badly with Eedoute's lovely Eose book. Cistuses are such charming plants, opening their papery blooms in the sunlight ; they do very well in the light Surrey soil, but very few of them are really hardy. Cistus laurifolius is hardy with me, and C. NOVEMBER 217 tforentinus only dies in very severe winters. Mr. Eobinson gives a list of them, and they are such pretty little shrubs that they are well worth any trouble. The mixed Helianthemums (Sun Eoses) are best raised from seed, and it is very easy to keep any specially good ones from cuttings made in the summer, when they strike freely. I take potfuls of cuttings of the shrubby kinds every year as well, in case of accidents. There are several other books by Mr. Sweet, all of which must be well worth having.