Two small-leaved standard myrtles, in boxes, cannot be less than a hundred and fifty or two hundred years old. Their trunks measure thirteen or fourteen inches in circumference; it would be difficult to find many such in Europe. A leading English nurseryman has endeavoured to get them across the water; it is a pity he cannot, for they would be properly cared for here. There are many other far-from-every-day myrtles, which the head of the establishment seems trying hard to kill. He is the Celestine Doudet of greenhouse evergreens; his pupils do not thrive; his oleanders are in the last stage of suffering. The alleged excuse is want of sufficient accommodation and hands; but when a thing is to be done, it is not a bad plan to do it yourself. Had I such handsome orange trees, so neglected, so begrimed with soot, I would get up at three in the morning, and, in my shirt-sleeves, with an apron on, with a bucket of soapsuds and a sponge in hand, would mount an A ladder and work away, day after day, till the task was done. But are there no such things as garden engines in Ghent? A Victoria, in a tank, contrives to wash itself partially, though tattered and torn about the leaves; but it is not clear what business a pit of pine-apples has in a place for study, where scantiness of room is complained of. One plant, or two, are all right and proper, but a botanical lecturer does not want a crop of anything. Near the entrance of the garden stands a vase, conspicuously mounted on a pedestal, in which grows what the official who did the honours was pleased to point out as a rose-bush grafted on an oak-tree. I shook my head in disgust at the falsehood. “Look,” he insisted, “the stem is an oak-stem, the side branches are covered with oak-leaves, and the central twig is the rose which has been grafted in the middle. You can see that its leaves are rose-leaves, can’t you?--and it is full of buds coming into flower.” “No, no; it is only a trick,” I answered, without apologising for flatly contradicting him. “You have perforated the stem of the oak from the root to the top; through the tube thus made you have inserted the stem of a rooted rose-bush; but there is no union between the two, like the junction of a scion with the stock. It grows independently in the earth, as the oak-plant does, although encased within it; and you call that grafting a rose on an oak, which I am gardener enough to know to be impossible.” “Ah! you know that. You have found it out. And yet, many people, when they see this specimen, go away persuaded that we have succeeded in grafting a rose on an oak.”