18th. _St. Prisca._ Four-toothed Moss. _Bryum pellucidum._ 19th. _St. Martha._ White Dead Nettle. _Larnium album._ THE GARDEN. In the “Flora Domestica” there is a beautiful quotation from Cowley, in proof that the emperor Dioclesian preferred his garden to a throne: Methinks I see great Dioclesian walk In the Salonian garden’s noble shade, Which by his own imperial hands was made I see him smile, methinks, as he does talk With the ambassadors, who come in vain T’entice him to a throne again. “If I, my friends,” said he, “should to you show All the delights which in these gardens grow, ’Tis likelier far that you with me should stay, Than ’tis that you should carry me away; And trust me not, my friends, if, every day, I walk not here with more delight, Than ever, after the most happy fight, In triumph to the capitol I rode, To thank the gods, and to be thought myself almost a god.” To the author of the “Flora Domestica,” and to the reader who may not have seen a volume so acceptable to the cultivator of flowers, it would be injustice to extract from its pages without remarking its usefulness, and elegance of composition. Lamenting that “plants often meet with an untimely death from the ignorance of their nurses,” the amiable author “resolved to obtain and to communicate such information as should be requisite for the rearing and preserving a _portable garden_ in pots;--and henceforward the death of any plant, owing to the carelessness or ignorance of its nurse, shall be brought in at the best as _plant-slaughter_.” * * * * * The cultivation of plants commences with our infancy. If estranged from it by the pursuits of active life, yet, during a few years’ retirement from the “great hum” of a noisy world, we naturally recur to a garden as to an old and cheerful friend whom we had forgotten or neglected, and verify the saying, “once a man, and twice a child.” There is not “one of woman born” without a sense of pleasure when she sees buds bursting into leaf; earth yielding green shoots from germs in its warm bosom; white fruit-blossoms, tinted with rose-blushes, standing out in clumps from slender branches; flowers courting the look by their varied loveliness, and the smell by their delicacy; large juicy apples bowing down the almost tendril-shoots wherefrom they miraculously spring; plants of giant growth with multiform shrubs beyond, and holly-hocks towering like painted pinnacles from hidden shrines: ------------- Can imagination boast, ’Mid all its gay creation, _charms_ like these?