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COMPOSITAE 129 
over the sunny, dry pastures—its wide silver and white 
blossoms lying tight on their thorny rosettes, and looking 
like Water-lilies of silver tissue. In cultivation, however, 
the plant wants quite poor, miserable soil or else it gets 
coarse, developing a stem, and enlarging its leaves at the 
cost of its brilliancy. The variety acanthifolia I have 
always thought much less fine, for the same reason—that 
it is stalky, and not stemless. Our own Carlina vulgaris 
is near these two, but lacks the whiteness of blossom. 
The Saussureas look like little blue Thistles that have 
been packed up in cotton wool and got it inextricably 
twined among their flowers. They are not all distinct, 
but the one I grow as candicans is distinctly pretty. As 
for Cacalia and Brickelha, 1 mention them here merely as 
warnings. I bought them on the most flaring descrip- 
tions from America, and I can solemnly affirm that as far 
as my own taste goes, I do not think that even England pro- 
duces two more totally graceless, dingy, overgrown weeds 
than Cacalia tuberosa and Brickelia grandiflora—this 
last, especially, of a dowdy gawkiness beyond expression : 
and even more tragic is my tale of Myrrhiactis Wallichi, 
which I got seed of from the Himalya, and grew on ina 
perfect flutter of excitement, foreseeing promise of marvel- 
lous beauty, in its name—for surely nothing named for 
Wallich could be poor. Myrrhiactis prospered like a 
weed—whole framefuls of little pots. At last its in- 
numerable flower-stems swelled up and budded. ‘Then the 
flowers opened. They were like small groundsel-blossoms, 
with the outer rays entirely omitted. Myrrhiactis de- 
parted over the garden wall. 
The big blue Ball-Thistles are rather border- than 
rock-garden plants; however, I rejoice over Lchinops 
ruthenicus in a bold corner; and now am expecting even 
better things from my seedlings of the dwarfer-growing 
Echinops humilis. Another huge great plant is Sidphium 
I 
