•^ NOTE and COMMENT [^« 



GastERIAS. — A little knowledge is not only a dangerous 

 thing but it paves the way to numerous surprises. Some years 

 ago, a friend gave me a little plant that she said was a cactus 

 and although it was very unlike any cactus I had ever seen, 

 I took her word for it and treated it accordingly, giving it 

 gritty soil and a scant supply of water. Under this treatment 

 it throve amazingly soon outgrowing the parent plant and send- 

 ing out of its spiky heart a long, snake-like stem hung with 

 tiny bells. These flowers should have opened my eyes but 

 being busy with other things I gave them scant attention and 

 it was not until I visited the Botanical Gardens in New York 

 that I discovered my so-called cactus was a Gastcria, a member 

 of the lily family. Well, of course when my attention was 

 called to it, I saw that the tiny blooms did bear a family re- 

 semblance to Solomon's seal and others of that ilk, but who 

 would ever suspect the spotted dagger-like thing ( whose nick- 

 name in our family is "spikes") could be a lily? After mak- 

 ing this discovery, my first impulse, of course, was to give it 

 richer soil and a more generous supply of moisture, but here 

 Common Sense raised her hand and suggested that as the plant 

 was doing so well on its scanty fare, it would be folly to make 

 any change in treatment, so the soil is unchanged and the 

 water supply only slightly increased. The plant is much finer 

 than any specimen I saw at the Gardens so I must have un- 

 wittingly stumbled upon the right treatment. I would like 

 to know more of this particular branch of the lily family, but 

 have not been able to find out much about it. Could we have 



