CURRENT LITERATURE.
Lawns and Gardens. By N. Jonsson-Rose. (G. P. Putnam's Sons.) —This book is divided into two parts, the first on the general arrangement of small gardens, and the second on plants and trees which will flourish in the United States. The author is hardly abreast of the times with regard to flower gardens. Over here "summer bedding" and "foliage" plants are no longer planted in hundreds in lozenge.shaped beds the moment the unhappy bulbs have done their outburst of simultaneous flowering. Neither are our herbaceous plants banished to a special border, "generally located in an out-of-the-way place in the vegetable garden." It is curious that the author should tolerate such doings, as his views on the "grouping and massing" of shrubs are very sound and good. He deprecates the usual practice of keeping the ground under shrubs quite bare and clean by frequent raking, and suggests covering it with the wood- land flowers of which there are so many exquisitely beautiful kinds. This, of course, is nothing new to students of Mr. Robinson's methods of laying out gardens, and M. Jansson-Rose might learn many other beautiful ways of lessening the dreari- ness of shrubberies from Mr. Robinson's writings on the subject. The chapter on the plan of the garden has some good things in it, but there is a tendency to waste, or rather to no economy of ground, in the disposition of the paths, &c. After all, the garden with- out a plan which, like Topsy, " growed" out of the requirements of the owners is the most beautiful. The book is very well pro. duced and illustrated.
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