Pot-pourri from a Surrey garden

1826. ' The Gardener's Magazine,' conducted by J. C. Loudon. This publication, of which I have seventeen volumes, was, according to his biographer, Mr. London's own favourite, into which he put the best of his ideas and work. It is only illustrated with small wood-cuts in order to explain the text, but is crammed with interesting information, well-arranged lists of plants, and descrip- tions of country houses, the culture of fruit and flowers, green-houses, and stoves. I repeat, the especial use of these older books is to help us to the knowledge and cultivation of non-hardy exotics — a subject which the great authority of the day, Mr. Eobinson, does not touch upon. They, however, require to be read with under- standing, as in Mr. Loudon's day gardeners were much more afraid than they are now of treating plants as hardy — the risk of losing them being then too great, whereas now it is only considered as being good for trade. In nearly all private gardens of the present day it is almost forgotten that plants can be easily repro- duced by layers, cuttings, and seeds. Modern gardening shares in the common fault of our generation, which is so prone to waste and to buy, rather than to produce. Mr. Loudon seems to have been an upright, hard- working and educated man, who was rather forced by ill-health into the life which he took up. There is an 2i8 POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN interesting portrait and biography of him in a little book of his, published after his death, called ' Self-Instruction for Young Gardeners.' As is frequently the case with men whose whole mind is taken up with some absorbing intellectual occupation, he neglected his own money affairs, and at the time of his last illness he had to make an appeal to his many friends and admirers for funds to enable him to publish his great work, which has not yet been superseded, though it calls for re-editingr the ' Arboretum Botanicum,' of which more hereafter. Mr. Loudon died on December 14, 1843, before he heard of the kind way in which his friends had come forward and responded to the appeal. His wife states that he died on the anniversary of the death of Washington, thus linking us on by an allusion to older times, which seem to us so very long ago. The story of Mrs. London's marriage is rather interest- ing. As a girl (1825) she wrote what she herself describes as ' a strange, weird novel,' called ' The Mummy '- perhaps the first of the prophetic stories that have been so common in my time, the scene being laid in the twenty- second century. Mr. Loudon was struck by a review of this book, and read it. It made so deep an impression on him that two or three years afterwards he expressed to a friend his great wish to know the author, whom he believed to be a man. An introduction was brought about, which in a short time resulted in their marriage. They lived in a charming house at Bayswater, which was then quite in the country, and ' The Gardener's Magazine ' alone brought him in 7501. a year. Soon after their marriage they saw at Chester, in 1831, the first number of Paxton's ' Horticultural Eegister,' the earliest rival to * The Gardener's Magazine,' which gradually declined from that time, and was given up immediately after Mr. Loudon's death. The impetus given by Mr. Loudon's NOVEMBER 219-