OF ODD TREASURES 151 
marbled leaves as with yellow or pink or white reflexing 
flowers. They are spattered all over the place, and 
thrive heartily—Americanum, Howelli, Dens canis, revolu- 
tum, and Stwarti (the true lovely white montanum I 
have never been able to get). 
Little bulbs uncountable does the cousinhood of the 
Lilies give one, and Grape-Hyacinths are among the 
prettiest. I have never specialised on any of these 
families ; so my Muscaris are restricted to ordinary ones, 
like the very heavenly Heavenly Blue, whose turquoise 
spikes are almost the earliest flowers to appear; then 
there is szovitzianum, with its white and its rare pale 
azure form ; and the common Jotryoeides, with our own 
native racemosum, all little cluster Hyacinths, these, to 
whom my love goes out far more readily than to plumy, 
wild monstrosities like comosum. 
Of the Hyacinths, my prime favourite is the soft, sky- 
blue amethystinus—a real sky-blue, with its white form 
—as well as the ordinary Dutch Hyacinth, when it has 
forgotten its Dutchness and grown thin and elegant 
again, in which reduced and reclaimed condition there is 
not a prettier plant alive than the Hyacinth that had - 
been so fat and horrid and soulless the year before, in 
beds or pots or glasses. Hyacinthella rumelica is a 
novelty that I am rearing from seed, and whether it is 
pretty or no I cannot say—at this moment I cannot even 
tell you whether it is alive or not. All I do know is, that 
if a thing with such a name can be ugly, I shall no longer 
believe that there is any sense of decency in nature. 
High, high among bulbs comes our well-known Blue- 
bell, too, and on this subject I must loose my wrath 
against the purblindness of people who, when they want 
to naturalise Bluebells, don’t buy our own Scilla nutans, 
but the kindred Scilla patula (or campanulata or his- 
panica), which is a Bluebell spoiled at every point, with- 
