The coloured pictures in this book of Oxford gardens are
less suggestive of their spirit than Miss Rolide's ingenious selection of historical anecdotes ; and her botany (in strong contrast to her ornithology) is good and full. There are two sorts of trees in Oxford which should be more often planted. One example is the Judas tree in All Souls, the other the deciduous cypress in the botanic gardens. The best Judas I know—and very beautiful it can be—is in the quaint little Quad, so to say, by the Picture Gallery at Dulwich. The finest group of deciduous cypress is perhaps to be seen in Brocket Park (though Beaulieu may run it close). Along the Stream that feeds the lake they find the conditions they like best, and they have there indulged very freely in their chief peculiarity of growth, the sending up from its roots of "thick and hollow protuberances." At Brocket they arc like stools set pell-mell about the pulpit of the trunks. No tree is more beautifully fitted to a marshy place.
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