1892. 'The Garden of Japan,'by F. T. Piggott. A charming little book, the fascinating subject of which is described by the title. The illustrations are very nicely drawn; among them are two or three interesting Japanese flower arrangements. In March Mr. Piggott, writing from Japan, says: 'Every garden is full of the small shrubs [Daphnes], and every shrub is full of flowers.'

1893. 'A Book about the Garden and the Gardener,' by S. Reynolds Hole. This book is well worth having for a modern gardener. It gives a lot of instruction, and is written in a cheerful, parochial, kindly tone, most helpful to those who live rural lives in and near villages. He rejoices, as one would think everyone must, in the allotment system. He suggests in his preface that politicians should send horticultural teachers into our villages. This has now been done, and I am told the lectures given this winter in our own village at home have been most helpful and instructive. I myself should much like to see flower and vegetable shows managed on some other system. I think that prizes should be given for healthy quantity grown in a small space, and for the general clean and healthy appearance of well-stocked gardens. Such things are a great deal more important, for food-producing purposes, than that there should be a few giant Onions, Carrots, or Cabbages; for size rarely adds to the excellence of vegetables. Mr. Hole truly remarks that the allotment system will always have two opponents: there will always be idle men who will not have gardens, and ignorant men who will not know how to use them.

1894. 'Italian Gardens,' by Charles A. Platt. This is a book published in New York; it is very pretty, and full of excellent reproductions of artistically taken photographs. The letterpress describes the gardens. Of Villa Lante, at Bagni near Viterbo, there are four illustrations. The book was given to me by two kind American ladies, a mother and daughter, who came to spend a summer's day with me in my garden. They had been all round Europe, studying gardens large and small, and the daughter hoped to lay out some original and typical gardens in America that would be suitable to the soil and the climate; also to try and preserve the beautiful flora of that country, which is in danger of dying away. I thought the idea interesting. In their time and way, under their blue skies and in their lovely situations, nothing, I imagine, will ever come near the beautiful Medician gardens of Italy, which, even in their decay, are never forgotten by those who once have had the joy of wandering in them.

1894. 'The Natural History of Plants,'from the German of Anton Kerner von Marilaun, Professor of Botany in the University of Vienna, by F. W. Oliver Quain, Professor of Botany in University College, London. For the modern botanist this book is deeply interesting. I am, alas ! no botanist, and have no scientific knowledge; but to take up the book, and to read a page or two anywhere, opens one's eyes wide with wonder. It refers principally to microscopic botany. The coloured plates are saddening to a degree; they seem to me all that botanical plates ought not to be, and somehow appear to have been affected by Miss North's system of flower-painting. How valuable would have been her untiring energy, if the drawings so generously given to Kew had been either artistic, like Mr. Parsons', or, still better, from the scientific point of view, botanical and delicately true, like Jacquin's or Bedoute's, or the drawings in Curtis's books ! In the chromo-lithographs of these four volumes we have attempts at the impossible-large plants in the foreground, with skies, distances, and middle-distance all out of tone. The wood-cuts are much better; some are very good and delicate, especially the representations of strongly magnified subjects. I bought the book as bringing illustrated plant-lore down to the latest date. The account, in the third volume, of the distribution of pollen is thrillingly interesting, and is within the comprehension of the aforenamed 'village idiot'; many of our ordinary garden flowers are figured as examples. The saddest attempt at a picture is a Brobding-nagian representation of an Alpine Rhododendron, with pines and snow-clad mountains in the distance. I may be wrong, but to me it seems waste of talent and time and money to illustrate books in this way. These illustrations are printed in Germany; let us hope that the artists were also Germans.

1895. 'In a Gloucestershire Garden,'by Henry Ellacombe. I think most people who are personally interested in their gardens will enjoy this book; there is much to be learnt from it, and the second part is especially instructive. It breathes the true spirit of a garden, independently of the human element or of book-making. Canon Ellacombe names many of the old Roses, now gone out of fashion, but I rather doubt if he has ever seen Redoute's wonderful Rose book. He ends his book with a warning to the clergy against gardening, as being too interesting and too absorbing an occupation for them. I can thoroughly echo this sentiment as a warning to all young people. It can only be perfectly indulged in by the lonely or the old, and by those who do not mind neglecting their other duties, and who say, bravely and honestly, 'I am quite selfish and quite happy.' But of course this is the danger of all absorbing pursuits. I agree with many of Canon Ellacombe's remarks; one especially can never be too often repeated:-'In nothing is the gardener's skill more shown than in the judicious use of the pruning-knife.' His experience of the American Bramble is exactly mine-as far as the fruit goes; it is not worth growing, as the fruit is less in quantity and inferior in quality to our own wild Brambles. But the cut leaf is prettier, and at any rate makes a variety.

1895. 'The Story of the Plants,'by Grant Allen, is a humble, little popular book; but I am sure its perusal will bring pleasure and increased understanding to many who read it. One of his sayings is 'that plants are the only things that know how to manufacture living material. Roughly speaking, plants are the producers and animals the consumers.'