150 ALPINES AND BOG-PLANTS 
for high, rough banks, so I will only chronicle my pretty 
yellow-spiked Digitalis ambigua that I collected many 
years ago in shady dells of the Esterel ; and a very beauti- 
ful ambigua hybrid of which I have seedlings. The 
parent-plant had close small-flowered spikes of lovely 
rosy bells. Then for the Verbascums I am reduced to the 
pretty phoeniceum, with flowers that vary through almost 
every conceivable shade of purple. Decorwm I once im- 
ported from Servia, but he was very flannelly and very 
like the common Mullein, so that what with one thing 
and the other, I experienced no wild regret or surprise 
when the whole lot mouldered off as a consequence of 
damp on the journey. 
From thought of the Mulleins, so rank, so coarse, 
I leap with pleasure to the contemplation of my tinier 
bulbs. Not here is the place, nor am I the temerarious 
soul to talk of Daffodils, of wee Daffodils, of Narcissus 
nanus, Bulbocodium, monophyllus, calathinus, triandrus, 
moschatus, and many another delicate angel of spring— 
Eapos ayyeXos (wepodwvos anowv. I will be content with 
praising the ‘ pied Fritillary.” Difficult, indeed, are some 
of these, and dowdy, but I worship the white variety 
of our native Meleagris; and this is a thrifty soul that 
goes ahead in any decent soil. Aurea is perfectly beauti- 
ful, with the same rounded bells, but much dwarfer, and 
of a soft canary-yellow, faintly checkered with more or 
less brown. Armena is another pretty one, and so is 
Moggridgei ; but the dingy ones like pyrenaica I consider 
dull and ugly; while pluriflora, with the scarlet flowers, 
has never done much good here, and, altogether, it is in 
pots rather than in the open that I get my pleasure out 
of Fritillaria. ‘The Erythroniums, however (why are 
they called Red Violets or Dog-tooth Violets, or any 
violets at all? Nothing could be so unlike), approve of 
me more warmly, and are always perfectly beautiful, with 
