rockery may even be placed fronting the chief line of walk, at some distance from the house, where a good dense screen of planting can be interposed between them and the lawn, or where they can be made to look as if they were naturally cropping out of a bank. Or they can be employed as a sort of rustic basement to a building. To grow ferns upon them, the shade of trees, or some other objects, will be indispensable; but many rock plants prefer an open sunny situation, so that rockeries should not be entirely shaded. If accompanied with a small pool of water, having a broken rocky margin, a few of the rarer aquatics and sedgy plants may be grown, and gold fish can be cherished. The moisture exhaled from such a piece of water would be very beneficial to many rock plants; and the jutting pieces of stone, or overhanging shrubs, would afford shelter, and privacy, and shade, to the fish. Where a clear running stream can be turned through a rockery, and be expanded into a pool, trout may also be preserved in the latter; and if there be water enough to dash down a miniature rocky ravine in the shape of a cascade, another characteristic accessory will be added.

Rockeries should be formed as much as possible of natural materials. All the products of art, such as fused bricks, scoriæ, and the far more vulgar constituents with which such ornaments are often constructed about towns, are nearly if not quite incompatible with any amount of rusticity. And this last should be the distinguishing element of all rockeries.

As in the material employed, so also in the mode of construction followed, rockeries should be conspicuous for a natural character. No appearance of art, and no approach to the regularity or smoothness proper to works of art, will be at all in place here. On the contrary, the surface of the whole cannot be too irregular, or too variedly indented or prominent. additional projection must be given to some of the parts by moderate-sized bushes, or short-stemmed weeping trees. Evergreen shrubs or low trees will be particularly useful. Provision will therefore have to be made, in the placing of the stones, for planting a few shrubs, and a greater number of herbaceous rock plants in their interstices, which should be left broader or smaller according to the size of the plant that may be required in them. No rockery will ever be interesting unless well supplied with all such fittings.

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For ordinary practice, the materials of which a rockery, however small, is formed, should lie on their broadest or flat sides, and not be set on edge, much less be placed with their points upwards. Little deviations may occasionally be allowed for variety; but the mass will have more appearance of solidity and strength, and be more accordant with Nature's teachings, if each piece be laid flat, with the outer edge inclining a little downwards rather than upwards.

A rock garden may, if its size demands it, be traversed or made more generally accessible by very narrow walks, just capable of admitting one person. These need not be of any uniform width, and should have no regular margin. They may be made of some quiet-coloured material, and not covered with dressed gravel; the mere stones of which the rockery is composed forming the best possible paths, if they are tolerably flat.

Any great elevation should never be sought in small rockeries. This would both be inconsistent with their breadth, and would render them too prominent and artificial. They should not be carried higher than the point at which they can be well supported and backed with a broad mass of earth and vegetation. Additional height may sometimes be given, if desired, by excavating into a hollow the base from which they spring. An old quarry will supply the foundation of an excellent rockery, in which considerable height, relatively to the bottom, may be attained, and much of boldness. It should be seen, however, that in working it, masses of rock be merely wrenched or blasted off, in the most irregular manner, and no sawing or cutting to an even face be anywhere permitted. Extreme ruggedness of surface is what would be most characteristic in such a situation.

No collection of rocks should ever begin or end abruptly, but should gradually die away into the adjoining ground, by means of a few carelessly scattered groups or single masses of stone. Attention to this point will mark the difference between the practised and the unobservant artist, and will exercise a great influence over the whole composition.

Shrubs with trailing habits, evergreens, and a few of the less delicately branched weeping kinds, and those which assume a wild, and ragged, and picturesque character, are most congenial to rockeries. The first class, especially, including the Ivy, the

Savin, Cotoneaster microphylla, Berberis empetrifolia, Periwinkles, common Heaths, &c., always seem in place and at home. And the more decided climbers, such as Clematis, the Hop plant, Wistaria sinensis, some of the better sorts of Bramble, the Ayrshire Roses, Virginian Creeper, and several others, would, if suffered to scramble over the bolder parts of rockeries, and duly pruned and regulated so as not to smother things of more value, be most important and engaging accessories.

Among evergreens, probably some of the most suitable are the green-leaved Hollies, particularly Hodgins's Holly, Box, Arbutus, Pinus pumilio, Juniperus recurva, Yuccas in groups, Rhododendrons, and common Junipers. And, if the space permits, the Yew, the Hemlock Spruce, the Scotch Fir, the Pinus austriaca and laricio, the Stone Pine, the black Spruce, and the Deodar Cedar are most valuable.

Grass never harmonises well with rocks, if brought into immediate contact with them. They demand the adjunct of a rougher and less polished vegetation, such as attends them in a state of nature. Common moor heath, whortle-berry, &c., cut into sods, and laid with a broken line along the margin of rocks, and interspersed, in parts, with the dwarfest trailing evergreens, will give a beautifully rustic finish, and may be particularly valuable in connecting the rocks with any dressed grass beyond. Everything like a perceptible or continued line (much more a curved line) must be distinctly avoided in the appropriation of such materials. They should join the grass in the most jagged and inartificial manner.

Rockeries can be made to answer one or two simple purposes, which will impart meaning and spirit to them, and prevent them from becoming the expressionless and pointless things which they usually are. Where there are raised banks between one part of a garden and another, rocks can be employed to face the more private side of them, and will contribute to their solidity, at the same time that they increase their propriety and interest. If, again, a walk be cut through a bank, rocks may be used to hold up the sides of the opening, when steep. Or where a walk travels along a narrow hollow between two banks, the slopes of the banks can be partially covered with masses of rock. In both these last cases, an imperfect imitation of a small defile will be produced, and may be made very consistent

and natural. The plan will be particularly serviceable where the hollow has to be made as narrow as possible, and the banks have, consequently, to be kept pretty upright. At any rate, such an arrangement will be infinitely preferable to having mere heaps of stones, thrown together without any apparent object beyond the simple creation of the mass.

In localities where stone is not easily procured, or where it abounds so much that the use of another material would be preferable, for the sake of variety, the rugged stumps or roots of old trees may be substituted, and will yield quite as much picturesqueness. Indeed, when the partially decayed and contorted trunks of aged, pollarded, or deformed oaks have been rooted out, they may sometimes, from their length, be thrown into bolder and more varied forms than could be attained with any ordinary stones; and if used as the supports of climbers, or their cavities converted into nests for trailing plants, they may be made to produce the happiest combinations.

There is an admirable example of the account to which old roots and stumps may be turned in sustaining and rusticating banks, to the north of the Railway Station in the Crystal Palace gardens at Sydenham. From the position, (which is a quiet and shaded part of the grounds, and beneath a cluster of the few fine Oaks that remain to remind us of the departed sylvan honours of Penge Wood,) and the actual construction, and the clothing of this bank of roots, some truly excellent lessons on the subject may be derived.

4. Roses, which are favourites with everybody, may be fitly collected into a small separate garden, which will then be denominated a rosery. Like the rock-garden, or the private flowergarden, the rosery should be detached, away from the general lawn, and in some side nook, severed from the rest of the garden by a partial screen of shrubs. It can only, of course, find a place in gardens of medium and larger size. From very limited plots, it must necessarily be excluded.

As with the flower-garden, the rosery requires to be sheltered (not shaded) and sunny. And there is the more reason for it to be in a retired part, because it is very uninteresting during the winter season. It should be of some regular shape, with the beds tolerably bold and simple in their outlines. Very narrow parts in beds, or acute corners, would be nearly useless, and

look extremely meagre, because few plants could be inserted in them, and these would cover the ground but imperfectly. At the same time, the beds ought not to be much broader than will allow the centre of them to be reached pretty easily from either side. And they should have divisions of grass or gravel from three to four feet in breadth; as the admirers of Roses often want to go among them comfortably, to examine and attend to them, or pluck individual flowers. Grass will always look better than gravel as the ground work of a rosery; and when it is used, there will not be more than one or two cross walks of gravel and an encircling one necessary.

Perhaps the best shape for a rosery is a circle, or a square on which a circular pattern is laid, or an oblong figure rounded at the ends, or an octagon. A good form for the beds will be oblong, with the ends rounded, arranged in various sizes round a central circle, and diversified by a mixture of smaller circles.

Since Roses are very similar in height and character, a rosery filled with only the dwarf-growing kinds will be comparatively tame and monotonous. But, with the aid of standards of various heights and habits, and climbers trained to poles, much interest and variety of outline may be produced. These auxiliaries should not, however, be commonly put in the beds, (save a single climber or a cluster of them in the central mass,) but stand by themselves in little circles prepared purposely for them, and arranged symmetrically, as parts of the plan. Sometimes a very strong and brilliant effect may be occasioned by having a few small beds filled with Roses of only one colour. And a rosery may even be altogether furnished by assigning each tribe to particular beds, in corresponding parts of the garden. White and blush Roses make a good mass, as do those which have the colour of the common moss Rose, and particularly the dark-flowering Chinas, which bloom so long, and group together so admirably.

Covered archways made of wire, or small open temples formed of either wire or rough wood with the bark on, will sometimes be interesting features in a rosery, for the support of climbing kinds. To be able to sit in the shade during summer, embowered with only elegant Roses, is certainly a luxury of no mean or ordinary description.

Another desirable adjunct to a rosery, and one which, so far as my knowledge extends, has not yet been anywhere adopted,