provements on an extensive scale, or where success depends upon any degree of accuracy in their application, to be carried into effect; and it is more than reasonable to expect that gardeners not feeling an interest in their situation, will enter warmly into any thing tending to the permanent benefit of the place; they will take advantage of such crops as may be produced, without any regard to the ultimate consequences.

While on this subject, it is but fair to state that the gentry of Ireland have evinced an extraordinary degree of luke-warmness, in not coming forward to establish a horticultural society, after the noble practical examples set before them in the sister kingdoms. The society bearing the name of the horticultural society of Ireland, under the management of nurserymen and practical gardeners in the neighbourhood of Dublin, is too local in its influence to advance the art in a national point of

view.

These strictures, as regard the relative situations of gardeners, and the taste of their employers, we are happy to say, are only applicable in a very general sense. There are many honorable exceptions. In the course of our observations, we shall feel great pleasure in showing that, where the proprietors have given proper encouragement, their gardens vie, in point of extent, design, and management, and their gardeners in point of respectability and intelligence in their profession, with any in the empire.

There are three botanic gardens in this country; two in Dublin, the other in Cork. The last mentioned is small in extent, and the collection of plants few, comparatively speaking. Of the two in Dublin, one belongs to the Dublin Society, the other to Trinity College. The former is the largest in the mpire, and in point of picturesque beauty is wholly unequalled. The botanic gardens in Dublin possess this advantage over those in Britain, namely, a classical arrangement of trees and shrubs. It has often occurred to us, as an extraordinary circumstance, the great attention paid in the British botanic gardens to the collecting and arranging of herbaceous plants, while the greater part of trees and shrubs have been, till of late, neglected. The Dublin Society's garden is open to the public. A course of lectures is delivered annually, which is also free, and even the young men employed in the garden are obliged to attend. This garden was not laid out and managed by the late Dr. Wade, the professor of Botany, as was generally supposed, but by the present calented superintendant, Mr. W. Underwood. Mr. Mackay, the curator of the College garden, is so well known as an indefatigable botanist, that any observation here regarding him would

be quite superfluous. All these botanic gardens are ably described in the Edinburgh and Gardening Encyclopedias.

The only public grounds about Dublin are contained in the Phoenix Park, in which are also the country residences of the Lord Lieutenant, Chief and Under Secretaries, &c. This Park is very extensive, and the grounds are more elevated and contain a greater variety of surface than any of the Royal Parks in the vicinity of London. There appears to have been no general design in the disposition of the trees, if we except the alternate groups of English elr, on each side of the public road, and the trees around the residences we have just mentioned. A great many hawthorns have been irregularly scattered throughout the grounds, and during the administration of Earl Talbot several very formal groups and clumps were made without the least regard to the general ornament of the place. It is to be regretted that some professional landscape gardener was not employed in the ornamenting of this Park, for if it was judiciously planv.d, due advantage being taken of the numerous objects within itself, and of the endless variety of delightful scenery which surround it, assuredly there would be nothing like it in the empire.

The enclosure around the Lord Lieutenant's house is of itself a very charming little demesne, and contains several fine ornamental trees. We observed some large well formed trees of the Ulmus parvifolia, generally confounded with the common English elm, which, from the different mode of growth, form a fine contrast with the nemoralis. There are several very fine oaks to the westward of the house, where the woody character has been properly preserved. The gardens are extensive in every department, and are admirably kept by the present superintendant, Mr. Robson. There is nothing very interesting or grand about them; on the contrary, all is plain, neat, and economical. The fruit trees on the walls are well managed. We observed a beautiful variety of pyracantha against the walls of one of the little enclosures near the gardener's house, with deep scarlet haws. Mr. Robson has been in the habit of propagating in autumn, by cuttings, large quantities of the different free growing sorts of pelargoniums, hemmemerises, and heliotropes, &c. which he keeps over the winter in frames, and in spring plants out distinctly in separate beds throughout the flower garden, where they blow during the summer and autumn in great luxuriance. Having had a number of plants this year of the Cobœa scandens, he planted several of them against walls, palings, &c. and their growth was really amazing. They all fruited, and many of them are likely to ripen seed. We mention this circum

stance simply to show that this plant might be used with great success in covering bowers and other rustic buildings during the summer and autumn, even should it not resist the winter months.

The gardens and demesnes of the Chief and Under Secretaries are also well worth notice. The gardens are extensive, and have been long celebrated for their excellent productions. The demesnes are neat and well wooded. Mr. Forsyth, gardener to the Chief Secretary, is well known as an excellent general horticulturist; and Mr. Wilkie, gardener to Mr. Gregory, is a highly respectable man in his profession, and a zealous amateur in every thing tending to its improvement.

In observing generally on the present state of gardening here, we have to remark that the same indifference to every improvement in horticultural buildings prevails, as in the royal gardens around London. Every new method runs its round, before it passes the centinel at the gate, and in ninetynine cases out of a hundred it is refused admittance. The dressed grounds are upon an extensive scale, very formal, and as yet no variety of ornamental trees or shrubs have been introduced.

Not many years ago the neighbourhood of Dublin could boast of some as splendid gardens as any around London. But, alas! how are things changed. Look at Rathfarnham Castle, not a solitary instance, but one out of many, where a magnificent green house, on the same plan as those at Hampton Court and Kew, has been turned into a cow-shed, and the fine old Dutch garden is now a total ruin. In this country, whenever a gentleman's affairs render it necessary to reduce his expenditure, or his health or business calls him abroad, the first step of his agent, who is generally an attorney, or some person equally regardless of every thing but making money, is to recommend the gardener's discharge, and that the garden be either let or left to the care of some old follower; that is, one who has worked for many year's about the place. This is no imaginary view; in nineteen cases out of twenty such advice is given, and as often followed. But mark the consequences:-the labourer undertakes the business, and for which he is paid the sum of ten pence per day. If, in the course of a few years, the proprietor returns home, or finds it convenient to keep his place in its former style, where are his fruit and ornamental trees, &c., the labor of a hundred years?-gone! for what? the mighty saving of a few pounds. The painter and gilder may repair any dilapidations that time may have made in the house; should even the fabrick itself have tumbled down, it can be rebuilt,

but in the ordinary life of man what could reproduce the others? Every one conversant in the localities of Ireland knows well the truth of what we have here stated.

In order to obviate such irreparable consequences, we would warmly recommend to such gentlemen as from necessity or choice wish to curtail their expenditures in this department, to lay down as much of the garden and pleasuregrounds as are possible in grass, and to retain the gardener, with as much assistance as may be necessary, to keep the trees and other ornamental plants in due order. The expence in this case is ultimately a mere trifle compared to the line of proceeding we have just condemned.

Merville, the delightful villa of Lord Downes, is situated about two miles south of Dublin, and is unquestionably one of the best kept places in the empire. The garden is not of great extent, but it contains an excellent collection of fruit trees, which are kept in perfect order. The forcing houses are very complete: there is nothing particular in their formation; like the greater part of the hot-houses in this country, they are nearly the same as those delineated by Nicol in his earlier editions of the "Scotch Forcing Gardener." A range of pits for the growth of pine apples, on the plan of those so common about London and Liverpool, have been lately built, and answer well. It is to be hoped that the recent improvements effected throughout England in the growth of this incomparable fruit, by which so much time and expence are saved, will, ere long, render every gardener familiar with its culture. In the flower-garden there are two remarkably neat houses, with coppet sashes and metallic rafters; one

as a green house, the other as a stove for plants, and they both contain an excellent collection. The parterre in front of these houses is remarkably pretty, and here, in the proper season, may be seen the best collection of spring-flowers in the kingdom. The figures in the parterre are, in our opinion, rather formal. We hope ere long to see the stiff geometrical figures which have so long held a place in the flower garden entirely exploded, and fancy, aided by correct taste, have its flight in this department of gardening. The kaleidoscope exhibits many figures which will greatly assist the imagination in matters of this kind. Detached from the garden, there is a small American ground, where are the best private collection of bog plants we know of in the vicinity of Dublin. They are judiciously planted and in great health. Dublin, 28th October, 1825.

(To be continued.)

15

ART. II. Upon the Method of setting the Fruit of the Granadilla. By an AMATEUR.

THE granadilla, or, as it is called by the South American Spaniards, Purchas, is a well known West Indian fruit, pro duced by various kinds of passiflora, especially by P. quadrangularis, maliformis, and laurifolia, and also by a species now common in our stoves, called Passiflora edulis. It varies in size and external appearance according to the particular species by which it is borne, but is in all cases a sort of gourdlike apple, filled with seeds enveloped in a copious pulp, of a most agreeable, subacid flavour. The great merit of this latter substance, as a luxury for the dessert, has induced many individuals to attempt the cultivation of the plants in their stoves; and not without success. The fruit of the P. edulis is produced in abundance, without any particular treatment of the blossoms, but it is inferior to that of either of the three other kinds. These, however, do not bear produce in sufficient abundance to make their cultivation worth attention, except under a particular management of their flowers, which, as it is, I believe, very little known, I will endeavour to explain, as it is practised in the stove of a gentleman in this neighbourhood.

It is well known that the beauty of the flower of the common passion-flower depends upon the variously-coloured little threads which are symmetrically arranged around its centre, so as to exhibit the appearance of rays; these rays proceed from a fleshy cup, inside of which are also some other processes which project from the side of the cup towards the centre, and from a cavity capable of holding a considerable quantity of moisture. From the base of this cavity rises up an erect solid stalk, upon the top of which, above the stamens, is placed a little green ball, surmounted by three styles, which ball afterwards becomes the fruit. Now, in a hot climate, when the breezes are constantly playing among the foliage, and when the necessary moisture for the subsistence of the plant is supplied by the dews and a humid atmosphere only, no inconvenience arises from the complicated arrangement by which nature has distinguished the flower of the granadilla genus from that of all others. But in a stove, in an artificial state, where ventilation is necessarily very imperfect, and where the flowers are subject to be dashed with the spray or the direct effusion of the water-engine, a different event takes place. The fleshy filamentous rays, which, in the tropics become withered up, and quickly perish, are kept, by the circumstances just alluded to, in an unnaturally damp state, and, becoming.