There are some kinds of gravel that recommend themselves to our notice on account of certain inherent qualities which they possess, among which we reckon that of strength to stand the wear of traffic; that of binding, to carry a good face after the roller; and last, but not least, to be of an agreeable color, so as to harmonize with the green of the lawn and the foliage of the flower-beds. The celebrated Kensington gravel was always considered the very perfection of gravel, and other kinds were valued according to their resemblance to Kensington gravel. Now, as I lived in the parish of Kensington, and trod the walks of Kensington Gardens, I may be allowed to speak of the article with some kind of authority, for the trade in gravel in my time was great, and we can form some idea of the statistics of the trade when a ton of coals and a ton of gravel from Kensington gravel pits were the same price in Edinburgh, whither the gravel was conveyed for important purposes.

When the elder Nesfield designed a monogram to be worked in Box embroidery and yellow gravel at Alton Towers, we had recourse to baked fireclay of a light yellow color, got from the Staffordshire potteries, called by the workmen "grog,"being " saggers " pounded and riddled, these saggers being the outer cases containing the ware when in the oven, and this grog is a regular article in the business of the potter.

I have mentioned these two kinds of road-stuff in order to contrast them with an article very superior to either, the price of which, including cartage five or six miles, is 10s. per ton. I have used several tons of it, and find that it binds firmly, is clean from sand or small particles, and is of a rich yellow color, with a dash of brown, perhaps from iron ore; it was obtained for me by the good offices of a jobbing gardener, and comes from a place called " Fool's Neuk," near Macclesfield, Cheshire. I have often been astonished to see asphalted paths in front of the principal windows of gentlemen's villas done up in true coffin colors - white tears upon a black ground. In the North we frequently see a black coffin studded with white commas, called there tears, and it is very becoming in that case to give a place for tears for those who have died young; but the taste is very doubtful to put gas-tar and Derbyshire spar side by side on a walk or terrace in front of a gentleman's house, for as long as blue and yellow colors when mixed make green, so long will yellow gravel harmonize with green grass; and this rule is not subject to caprice, for it "altereth not".

Mr. Nesfield was a landscape painter of the the highest order, and designed many beautiful gardens, but he confessed that he was neither botanist nor gardener, but, relying on the "brush," he doled out in his parterres, panels, etc., many strange colors, for if I recollect aright, colored glass broken fine made up part of the patterns in the garden of the Horticultural Society at Kensington, and in the garden designed by Nesfield at Alton Towers some twenty or thirty circular beds were paved with white pebbles, which could not be endured, and were planted with exotics warm and bright. Neither white pebbles nor white spar are ever likely to give any good effect in a flower garden, and the same may be said of red brick pounded. Cracked limestone, when of a bluish tint, makes the carriage.way as good as it can be; and, for the reasons given above, the blue tinge harmonizes with the greensward just as the yellow does. I have no interest whatever in praising the gravel from Macclesfield. I was agreeably surprised to see its fine color and other fine qualities, and therefore resolved to send a paragraph to the Gardener s Chronicle, in order that those who do the asphalting on the coffin pattern may have no excuse if they do not finish with yellow; for, be it observed, that this fine gravel is not in egg-sized pebbles and made up with foreign matter, as clay and sand, such as we see everywhere, but confined to the size of one-inch pieces and down to that of kidney beans, so that a ton would coat a large surface of asphalted walk, and it is equally available for any ordinary gravel walk, especially where clay predominates.

For asphalt the gravel should be thoroughly dry, for one of the many odd properties of gas tar is that it is not soluble in water and does not take kindly to wet substances. For facing ordinary gravel walks the gravel should be put on wet, and treated as if it were puddle, for you may water ordinary garden earth to any extent so long as you do not tread upon it, but if you poach it you make puddle of it, and although a headland in a cornfield may be poached and yet recover itself and bring a good crop, it is not so in gardening operations, and soil that has been puddled will take a long time to recover a healthy open texture. Let no one despise these practical hints, for the loss of one spoke in the wheel ruins the " turn." I recollect setting a gentleman right as to how he was to roof a building with paper and gas-tar and lime, and when I met him after, he said he had tried it and it was a failure, but when he detailed the process he said, " I slaked the lime." That was sufficient; he had added water, which he should not have done, and the lime should have been fresh and pounded to powder.

He thanked me, and we parted; but the next time I saw him he pointed out a building nicely roofed in this way, and laughed heartily at his blunder in not knowing water when it was apparently dry in powder lime; but all doubt on that score is removed when you see a man put a hogshead of water to a cartload of lime, and though the mixture is dry as dust it is useless to say there is no water there when you have just added twice the bulk of the lime in water.

The prevalence of weeds on walks is frequently owing to the prevalence of dirt in the gravel, which acts as a seedbed for grass, and this gravel, being clean and very likely highly charged with iron, from its appearance, is not likely to feed weeds of any kind. If used with judgment and discrimination it will brighten many a dull walk and terrace at little cost, and its brightness will remain after the flowers have faded, for it will exhibit itself all the year round "a thing of beauty," which, if not "a joy forever," will, with its face of iron and its heart of stone, have a long lease. - Alex. Forsyth, in Gardeners' Chronicle.