European Gardens Research Articles

The Flowering Plants of South Africa

EUROPEAN gardens owe so much to South Africa for the plants which adorn them that the appearance of a South African Botanical Magazine is an event of considerable interest. Dr. I. B. Pole Evans, the energetic Director of the Botanical Survey of South Africa, who is editing “The Flowering Plants of South Africa,” is to be congratulated on this new venture to bring the treasures of the South African flora to the notice of a wider public. In the preface it is stated that the publication is due to the keenness and interest of a South African lady, “whose love for her country and its natural beauties has been the means of procuring the necessary funds for the initiation of the work.” The plants illustrated will represent so far as possible the flowering plants of the several provinces of the Union of South Africa.

A Handbook on the Management of Animals in Captivity in Lower Bengal

CONSIDERING the number of zoological gardens in Europe, and their long establishment, it is singular that it should have been left to the superintendent of a zoological garden at Calcutta, and to a native of India withal, to produce the first practical handbook on the management of animals in captivity. The author, who, we believe, is a member of the “Brahma Somaj,” and one of the very few natives of British India that have exhibited any taste for natural history, has been for some years superintendent of the Zoological Garden at Calcutta, an excellent institution mainly kept up by the Government of Bengal, but under the control of a committee of the subscribers. This committee, at the suggestion of Sir Steuart Bayley, the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, came to the conclusion that, after thirteen years' experience of the management of animals, it might be possible to produce a handbook on the subject which “would be of interest to the scientific world,” and at the same time “of great use to nobles and other persons who, on a smaller scale, keep a collection of animals in captivity.”

The Garden Roses of India

THE principal garden roses cultivated in Europe and in India may be traced to Western Asia and China. The old-fashioned summer roses, which were the ornament of gardens in Europe forty to fifty years ago, are mostly referred to Rosa gallica, which has its home in South Europe and Western Asia, and to Rosa centifolia and damascena, which probably came from the mountains of Armenia and Northern Persia. All these are dis-inguished by the incomparable delicacy of their aroma, and of the two last-named kinds one or the other is cultivated on a large scale in Southern France, Italy, Macedonia, Asia Minor, Persia, and Northern India, for rose-water and essence of roses (attar). The flowering season of these kinds is short, lasting a few weeks only, and it was an important event for horticulture when, towards the close of last century, the China roses were introduced in Europe. The most important of these was Rosa indica, thus called by Linnæus because it was brought from India, where it has long been grown in gardens. Its home, however, is not India, but China, and its great value consists in this, that it flowers throughout summer and autumn, hence the name autumnal rose, also monthly rose (Monatsrose). For this reason a variety was called Rosa semperflorens. Another variety, described under the name of Rosa fragrans, distinguished by its strong though not always very delicate scent, became the parent of the tea-roses. By crossing these kinds and other species with the old garden roses, the numberless varieties of hybrid perpetuals and tea-roses have been obtained, which now ornament our gardens in Europe as well as in India.