In England and the European continental gardens, apartments are allotted to collections of our native plants, and usually denominated the American department. It is somewhat amusing to read the directions laid down as to its soil, situation, etc., as if our country, which presents the greatest diversity of soil, climate and altitude, with corresponding vegetable productions, some delighting in the swamp, others in the mountain, some sustaining the frosts of high northern latitudes, others luxuriating in the sunny south, each choosing for itself its own peculiar soil - were as hounded and contracted as the British Isle. We annex a specimen. "American Plants. These comprise many very different species, which, resembling each other in requiring a peaty soil and abundance of water, are usually cultivated in a separate department, where the garden establishment is extensive; and, wherever grown, should have a compartment to themselves, a very acutely sloping bank, facing the north or east; and some of them, as the Rhododendron, Andromeda, and Azalea, do not object to being overshadowed by trees.

The soil, as already stated, must be peat; and the best annual dressings that can he applied are such matters as decayed leaves, and the bottom of old wood stacks; or any other mixture of decayed woody fibre".