MOUNTAIN ECHOES.* THE architecturally minded are apt to class the
rock garden with the greenhouse, and to long to consign them both to bottomless perdition. Both are so often allowed to interrupt the scheme of an otherwise fine formal garden, and both absorb labour and
money that might be spent upon vistas, terraces, groves, and
obelisks. But surely this condemnation is unjust. Cannot some inspired follower of Repton contrive to fit a rock garden comfortably into a formal scheme ? Ruins, even Gothic ruins, are admitted by the most severe. Might not the judicious addition of a broken column, a ruined arch, or a lichen-grown urn serve to chaperon the " shocking naturalism " of an ordinary rock garden ? For with all duo respect to our modern La Nitres, no one who has ever loved the austere beauties' of the
mountains can ever again see Alpine flowers—gentian and aconite and anemone—without a thrill of pleasure, even if they are grown in the ordinary, dreary typo of rock garden and
overshadowed by the usual forest of tin labels. The mountain- .
lover will take the pleasure in a rock garden that the musician takes in hearing the overt ure to Die Zauberflote played on the gramophone, and this is to some extent how Mr. Reginald Ferrer, the author of the present exhaustive and authoritative book, seems to view his subject. He is an immensely keen and expert horticulturist and a learned botanist, but before all he is a traveller, and, as he tells us in the little "Foreword," corrected his two big volumes for the press at Lanchou-fu, Kansu, in China ; while he appears to be familiar with the glaciers and moraines of every mountain chain in the five continents.
Till Mr. Ferrer compiled his present work there seems to have been no authoritative book of reference upon the names of rock plants. Consequently the nurseryman's catalogues have been full of pitfalls :—
" Even if a beautiful plant be fully described and sold to the enthusiast under one name, how is he to bo sure that it has a right to bear it, how is he to be sure that next year the same plant will not again ho sold to him at a still higher price, and under a still stranger name ? . . . . This book has aimed at getting back to the genuine original specific name for every species, so that these may never again appear disguised as novelties in the same list that also contains their more common, superseded name. On this matter research is final ; Prinzula Viscosa, All., 1785, rests on bed-rock, and is for ever an un- changeable Inonunzentunt aere perenniue : so far as in me lies and the power of study can avail, I have done my best to ascertain these ultimate names, once and for all, and put them into the hands of all such as desire correctness and the avoidance of expensive delusions."
Mr. Ferrer has taken great pains to make his descriptions of plants comprehensible to those who are not familiar with
botaniCal terms, and generally to make his book readable without taking away its character as a learned work of reference.
• The English Roca Garden. By Reginald Barrer. 2 vols. Landon: T. (I and E. O. Jacn fa se. nett
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