atuettes of the eighteenth
century are especially interesting to collectors. There are figures to
suit all; musicians may delight in that of Handel; others in the busts
of Wesley and Whitfield; explorers in the statue of Benjamin Franklin
made about 1770, and some in that of John Wilks seated near an old
column of a still earlier date. There is also a cleverly modelled figure
of Geoffrey Chaucer. One of the best known groups is that of the "Vicar
and Moses," made by Wood, of Burslem.

Garden Curios.

It is said that garden craft, like most other forms of art, came from
the East; that the cultivation of gardens commenced in Egypt, Persia,
and Assyria, travelling westward through Greece and Rome; and in some of
the early English gardens which horticulturists are so fond of copying
to-day there are traces of Eastern influence still remaining.

Although the garden is the place where we expect to find flowers,
foliage, and perhaps fruit and vegetables, it has always been associated
with home life, and some of the charms of domestic comradeship owe their
greatness to the garden and pleasance.

It has always been the aim of the professional and the amateur gardener
to furnish the lawn and flower-beds with appropriate settings, some of
which have become very quaint in the eyes of twentieth-century
horticulturists.

The Egyptians had their trellised bowers, and their tiny pools of clear
water. The Greeks, however, were fortunate in having undulated and even
hilly ground to cultivate, and their gardens were much more picturesque
than the level ground of Egypt, although the Orientals built terraces,
and by artificial means enhanced the beauty of their gardens. The
adornment of gardens with statuary comes to us from Greece, and many
modern reproductions of ancient Greek statues are regarded as the curios
of the modern garden. Delightful, indeed, are some of the statuettes in
stone and lead representing Aphrodite and the Graces. The Roman gardens
were magnificent in their miniature temples, replicas of which are found
in the old Georgian summer-houses, such as may be seen at Kew, and in
many private grounds, dating from that period. The Romans were lovers of
roses, and had many charming rose bowers, curiously and cunningly
formed.

The dawn of gardening on some approved plan, and then ornamenting the
portions not covered with greenery, began in monastic days. The oldest
of the occupations of civilized man, it was long held