The Sun.
London, England, 1864-09-08 00:00:00

THE

ACE.

Its Wonders of Vegetation,
Apropos to the magnificent show of Autumnal
Fruit and Flowers, yesterday blooming in a long
line down the centre of the nave of the Crystal
Palace, and still on View there, this day (Thurs-
day), it cannot but be deemed appropriate to glance
at some, et least, among the more remarkable of
the many marvels of vegetation, permanently adorn-
ing that noblest hot-house is the world.
First of all, however, in regard to this Fruit and
Flower Show of to-day and yesterday. Fortunately,
after many threatenings, the weather held up suffi-
ciently yesterday to enable more than 10,000 people
not only to enjoy the seasonable exhibition within
doors, but a lengthened saunter, about the grounds
and gardens of the Palace, afterwards. By general
admission, the Fruit and Flower Show itself was
regarded by those ten thousand visitors,
and with reason, as the very finest of the
whole year. Lovelier autumn fruit and flowers
could hardly by possibility, one would think, have
been gathered together. Some amongst them,
indeed—those exhibited, of course, by the chief
prizeholders (for the awards appeared to us to
have been most accurately given)—were just the
nearest possible approach to perfection. Such dark.
flushed, glossy nectarines—such large luscious
peaches, blushing through their natural pearl-powder
—such yellowing blobs of pears piled up in succw.
lent, unshapely pyramids—apples, some of them,
pulled one might think from the trees of Brobding-
nag—bunches of grapes, purple and white,
that the Israelites might have borne back
as samples from the Land of Milk and Honey
to their brethren waiting for news of it on the
margin of the Desert—plume golden and blue—
melons green-fleshed and red-fleshed—cucumbers
that the Brave Courier (familiar to the readers of
Pictures from Italy) might have brandished in a
sort of triumph, before slicing up for his refection !
And—together with these—lengthening out in
" gorgeous array" along the exhibition-tables
in the opposite direction (the Fruit to
the North, the Flowers to the South)—such
a profusion of autumnal blossoms ! Hollyhocks of
every imaginable hue, from funereal black to creamy
white ! Dahlias, also presenting to view a very
rainbow of colours—each dahlia an immense boss of
quilled leaves, perfect in every way, save
ing in one, its lack of perfume! Verbenas and
asters—roses, azaleas, and gandioli. Here
the very choicest callings from the autumnal
basket of Flora—there the very pick from
Pomona's orchards and southern-walls.! The fruit
has in one sense for us an especial interest this par•
tinier autumn—remembering, as we do, with
a pang of regret, how recently we Eng-
lish have lost from] the World of Art (not of
bigii art, we will admit, but of a very delicious art,
nevertheless) the two noblest Fruit Painters that
ever lived—one a consummate fruit painter in water
colours, the other a consummate fruit painter in
oil—George Lance and William Hunt. Yesterday
and to-day, each of them, had they been still living,
might have found an exquisite, an almost bewilder-
ing choice of subjects in the display of fruit squan-
dered, there, along the exhibition-tables of the
Crystal Palace, a display rendering that fairy
edifice for a while, in its way, a very cornucopeia.

And around this goodly show of the perishable
fruits and flowers of the passing season—there,
within the glass walls and under the glass arches
of the lengthened nave and the lofty transepts—
how many, are there not, of far more lasting beauties
or marvels (sometimes both in one) of every variety
of vegetation ! Confronting (appropriately) the
colossal figures seated at the western extremity of
the North Transept, for example—confronting
those huge Egyptian figures at the opposite, that
is at the eastern, extremity of that tran-
sept the Mammoth Tree from California !
A stupendous tree—or at least a mere portion of the
trunk of it—so much of it as could stand erect under
an arched roof of 104 feet high—the branches of this
might, product of nature only—at that altitude—
beginning ! A Californian Tree—the Wellingtonia
Gigantica, or some such title—and' how old do you
think ? Upwards of Three Thousand Years of
age! And there, hard by, as if to keep in countee
nance that venerable bole—(one from an awful
grove of the like dimensions found growing in
California)—there, hard by, as if to keep it
in countenance among so many surrounding juve-
niles and pigmies of vegetation—wonderfully lesser
in bulk, but at the same time, if possible, yet more
ancient-looking than the Mammoth Tree itself
—two of those extraordinary plants—gnarled,
misshapen blocks of wood, they look like,
plants called, however, not inaptly from the
general aspect of them—Elephant's Foot! Ex-
ceptional wonders of the vegetable kingdom, these
—how old, again, think you ? Why, again,
like the Mammoth Tree itself Three Thousand
Years of age. These two specimens of Eke
phant's Foot, being the largest specimens of the
plant ever imported to this country from the Cape
of Good Hope, the land where they flourish indigen-
ously. Apart, completely, however, from these rarer
phenomena of nature—around us as we traverse
the spacious floor of that radiant Palace of Glass at
Sydenham—blooming in tubs, sprouting (some of
them) to all appearance from between the planking
of the floor of nave or transept, clambering up the
iron pillars, festooning the arched roof from gallery
to gallery, dangling from suspended baskets. float-
ing broad-leafed, silver-blossomed, blue blossomed,
golden-blossomed, upon the surface of the pools
of water round the in-door fountains what a
lavish squandering about, is there not here,
of vegetation both native and tropical ! Yon.
der, distinguishable among the water-lilies,
pre-eminent among them all, as, in truth, alone
befits the name of it—the Victoria Begia—with its
gorgeous flowers and its floating green leaves of
enormous circumference ! Yonder, again, among
the green-tubbed orange and pomegranate trees—
the unrivalled collection formerly belonging to the
Orleans family, once upon a time collected
together from their various palaces to adorn the
pet palace among them all during the
reign of LOUIS PHILIPPE, the palace at
Neuilly—
but eventually bought up (during the sale of the
Orleans Property) by the Crystal Palace Company,
to the very great chagrin and disappointment, as
was well known at the time, of his Imperial Mae
jesty NAPOLEON 111. Several among this match-
less collection of orange and pomegranate trees,
being as many as—four hundred years of age !
Clauts
bering fuschias, such as those now flourishing in the
Crystal Palace, might be looked for vainly else-
where—interwoven pillars of greenery, as they are,
dazzling with their profusion of pendant blossoms,
fairy bells of red, and white, and purple !
Into the lap of Homer, as we passed by the
seated statue of him yesterday—his blind eyes
gazing upwards, the fingers of his right hand
straying along the strings of his lyre—had fallen
.---
one of those delicate fuschia blossoms.
Creepers of every variety' among them the Bigno-
nia, the Westeria and the Tacsonia give more
than merely promise of transforming the in-
terior of the Crystal Palac© into a very bower
of blooms and verdure--their exquisite work
to that end being already partly accomplished.
Hither and thither, about the interior of the Palace,
are distributed, apparently with a random hand,
but evidently, when the general Effect comes to be
examined more miuutely, with rare evidence of
artistic taste and judgment, the choicest selections
from the very finest specimens of richly Efflo-
rescent plants like the azalea, the camellia, and the
rhododendron. Ft athering palms and solid-leaved,
bristling aloes—the former comprising among them
the lofty and graceful coco pinmosa —pines and
indian-rubber plants—olives, myrtles, and cypresses
—vegetation, in fact, of every hue, and shape, and
dimension, alike exotic and native, drape and adorn
with eternal verdure and perennial c lihrescencc,
the lovely interior of the English People's Garden.
House.

THE CHANNEL FLEET.—On Monday night,
about twelve o'clock, the merchantmen in the Channel off
Plymouth were startled by hearing loud firing, which was
occasioned by Admiral Dacres having ordered the whole of
the ships forming the Channel squadron to beat to quarters
and open blank fire. Although the orders were given at
midnight, every man was at his post and the decks cleared
for action in six minutes after the order had been telegraphed
to tha various ships.