1824. 'The Universal Herbal,'by Thomas Greene. This is an ambitious book in two large fat volumes. It professes to contain an account of all the known plants in the world, adapted to the use of the farmer, the gardener, the husbandman, the botanist, the florist, and country housekeepers in general. Mine is the second edition, revised and improved. The frontispiece is coloured and very funny; it is called 'Wisdom and Activity collecting the various treasures of the Vegetable Kingdom.'Wisdom is represented by an old woman in the background under a hedge. In the foreground on the left is a youthful Flora, and on the right Activity is represented by a middle-aged husbandman, who does not look active at all. On the title-page is an extraordinary collection of young women without too many clothes, which I should have thought represented the elements or the seasons, only there are five of them. Surrounding these is a wreath of vegetation and flowers, held up at the top by fat winged Loves. The book is alphabetically arranged, and every now and then there is a page with four coloured flowers on it, only moderately executed. Compared to those gone before, these are not worth noticing, but they are not so bad as those about to come. This book certainly contains an extraordinary amount of detailed information and instruction; its comprehensiveness may be imagined when I note that sixty-seven Oxalises are described in separate paragraphs. It is exceptionally interesting for the botanical account it gives of garden plants and flowers. The medical properties of many plants which hitherto have been spoken of as certain panaceas are here alluded to in a comparatively doubtful tone. The treatise on gardening, at the end of the second volume, is very amusing; and the prints enable me to realise the date and origin of our characteristic villa plantations, approaches, drives, etc. 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 The botany they contain was constantly superseded by newer books; faith in herbalism died out; and the beautiful herbaceous plants were swept away from our gardens.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. Patterson, 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. 'Cistineae: the Natural Order of Rock Eose,'by Robert 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 Rock Roses ? The drawings are good; but the colouring, though still by hand, compares very badly with Redoute's lovely Hose 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 G. florentinus only dies in very severe winters. Mr. Robinson gives a list of them, and they are such pretty little shrubs that they are well worth any trouble. The mixed Helianthemums (Sun Roses) 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.

1826. 'The Gardener's Magazine,' conducted by J. C. Loudon. This publication, of which I have seventeen volumes, was, according to his biographer, Mr. Loudon'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 descriptions 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. Robinson, does not touch upon. They, however, require to be read with understanding, 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 reproduced 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, hardworking and educated man, who was rather forced by ill-health into the life which he took up. There is an 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-editing, 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.