Pot-pourri from a Surrey garden

E'en round the Pole the flames of love aspire, And icy bosoms feel the sacred fire. Cradled in snow and fanned by Arctic air, Shines, gentle Borametz, thy golden hair ; Booted in earth, each cloven foot descends, And round and round her flexile neck she bends, Crops the grey coral moss and hoary thyme Or laps with rosy tongue the melting rime ; Eyes with mute tenderness her distant dam, And seems to bleat — a ' vegetable lamb.' Curiously enough, when in Norway last year, I came across an old wooden chair, and the back was carved in a way that seems to me conclusively to represent this old tradition. The design is a lamb enclosed in a circular cocoon, surrounded by branches and leaves. This chair I have now. In the ' Nineteenth Century ' of January 1880, there appeared a very interesting article on Parkinson's ' Paradisi in Sole,' called ' Old-fashioned Gardening,' by Mrs. Kegan Paul. She describes the title-page, and says, 1 The tree of knowledge, its fruit still unplucked by Adam, appears in the centre of the plate.' I thought we were 54 POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN told that Adam never did pick it, but received it from the hand of Eve ? But this is a trifling criticism on a useful and original article. Mrs. Paul makes a great many delightful quotations from Parkinson, and says that he is ' not content to deny that single flowers can be trans- formed into double " by the observation of the change of the Moone, the constellations or conjunctions of Planets or some other Starres or celestial bodies." Parkinson holds that such transformation could not be effected by the art of man.' In her condemnation of bedding-out and in her admiration of the old-fashioned English garden, read by the light of these sixteen years, Mrs. Paul's article is almost prophetic. The ' Paradisi in Sole ' is essentially a book describing a garden of ' pleasant flowers ' and with many interesting details about their cultivation. There is no allusion to medical matter at all, though, as usual, the botanist was a doctor. The woodcuts are rather coarser and rougher than in the Dutch book before described, but they are fairly drawn and generally like N ature. In a little book by Mrs. Ewing, called ' Mary's Meadow,' the author speaks a good deal of this book of Parkinson's, and in a footnote she alludes to the fact that the title is an absurd play upon words, after the fashion of Parkinson's day. Paradise is originally an Eastern word, meaning a park or pleasure ground. Paradisi in sole Paradisus terrestris means Park-in-son's Earthly Paradise ! 1640. We now come to Parkinson's second book, ' The Theatre of Plants, or an Universal and Complete Herbal. Composed by John Parkinson, Apothecary of London and the King's Herbarist ' — (' the King ' being Charles I., at the time just preceding his execution). The frontispiece is quite as curious in its way as the one in the ' Paradisi in Sole.' It has a portrait of old Parkinson in a skull-cap, looking very wise and holding MARCH 55