COMPOSITAE Ear 
enough even for the higher wilder banks. I imported 
sericea with a great deal of excitement one year from the 
East, but it turned out a huge, silky-leaved, golden- 
flowered edition of the common Yarrow. But of Achillea 
the name is legion; learned catalogues are swelled out 
with columns of them. I have no inclination to specialise 
on this race, and I am sceptical as to the beauty or dis- 
tinctness of many of those recorded—however an Achillea- 
enthusiast, if any such there be, must go bravely on 
experimenting, in hopes to acquire unsuspected loveliness. 
So far as I know, all the Yarrows are easy to grow, 
though perhaps the glacial sorts may give trouble. 
Close to Achillea, and only a little more attractive, are 
the Alpine Camomiles. Anthemis aeizoon, I must heartily 
acknowledge, is a very beautiful plant indeed, with 
rosettes of silver-white-pinnate leaves, and abundance of 
pure, snowy Marguerites, large and brilliant. Biebersteine 
is an Oriental, rather coarser, with big yellow flowers, 
that everybody else seems to admire a great deal more 
than I can. This race, again, looms large in catalogues ; 
but I have never found an Anthemis to beat aetzoon, so 
perfectly easy and hardy that it is a pleasure to sit and 
look at its silver cushions. Pyrethrum is a race more 
famous in borders than in the rock-garden, but I have 
(or had, for the winter seems to have killed it), a Pyre- 
thrum densum, neat and pretty, with lovely silver-woolly- 
pinnate leaves and dull yellow flowers; while Pyrethrum 
transylvanicum is so new here that I can only commend 
its beautiful white foliage and pretty habit. Chamaemelon 
caucasicum is a ferny-leaved trailing little cousin of the 
Camomiles, with white Camomile flowers, not by any 
means particularly attractive or remarkable. Chrysogonum 
virginianum is a very free-growing dwarf plant, with 
abundance of golden yellow flowers, which I have never 
been able to help thinking rather mean in colour and 
