ONONIS. 



lovely to behold, hovering so exquisitely on the gleaming silver 

 cushion, almost as if flowers of Eritrichium were beginning to take 

 flight from one of his cushions, feeling that earth is no more worthy 

 of their heavenly beauty. 



O. Thomsoni makes a good sound peremiial root-stock, up in the 

 desolations of Western Tibet at 13,000 feet ; and from this sends up 

 a rich multitude of fine slender branching stems, roughish to the 

 touch, and showering forth the family stars of azure, lax and airy. 



O. verna, they say (whoever They may be), was the favourite flower 

 of Queen Marie-Antoinette ; was it part of her hapless naturalness 

 that she brought with her, into the scented court of Versailles, a child's 

 remembered love of Blue-eyed Mary, rambling in the woods of Schcen- 

 brunn far away back in the days of sunlight, across the darkening 

 unnoticed shadow of her world's end ? For Blue-eyed Mary is a subject 

 of the Hapsburgs, and in many a mountain copse and stony place of 

 the Eastern ranges may be seen its trailing shoots of heart-shaped 

 bright-green foliage, from which spray forth deep azure Forget-me-nots 

 in a scattered drift of blue sparks from February till May. And even 

 so, no matter under what ill-treatment, will Blue-eyed Mary, the 

 scullion of her cosseted race, behave in copses and woody corners of 

 England, no matter how weedy and worthless and forgotten. There 

 is also a white form, most delicate and beautiful, but hardly to compare 

 with the typical Omphalodean splendour of clear turquoise. As for the 

 multiplication of Blue-eyes, she herself will look to that ; and, in any 

 case, can endlessly be divided, and pulled to pieces, and struck. 



Onobrychis. — Not a choice race of Pea-flowers, nor of value in 

 the rock-garden, though in the Alps their pea-flowered spikes of 

 dazzling rose have much attraction, and often so fill the high poor 

 levels as to colour the distances. 0. sativa is the common Sainfoin, 

 and 0. montana its more vivid alpine development ; it is dwarf er 

 than the lowland plant, and so is 0. lasiostachya, with spikes of flaming 

 pink. 0. arenaria and 0. petraea are about a foot high, the former 

 pink, and the latter purplish. But all are of a lax and straggling 

 habit, and, though melliferous in a high degree, not urgently needed 

 in the rock-garden. 



Ononis. — A family of half shrubby or quite shrubby Pea-flowers, 

 of which the common Rest-harrow is a type (and, in its best forms, by 

 no means without its merits as a carpet for some hot and perfectly 

 worthless place). Much dwarf er yet, however, and fine and frail and 

 quite peculiarly choice and charming, is prostrate small O. cenisia, 

 about whose character uncertainty hangs. For the species is one I have 

 never succeeded hi finding on the very limited habitat in its name- 



