PRIMULA. 



situations indeed, but has much larger flowers, and fewer of them, 

 and those of a washed and ugly magenta-lilac ; to say nothing of the 

 many other points of difference. In cultivation P. glutinosa has 

 roved a problem, until the invention of the underground- 

 red bed, in which conditions it finds the soaking summer circum- 

 stances that it enjoys, and is evidently prepared to grow away as 

 heartily as on the Alps, though it yet remains to be seen how heartily 

 it will bloom. But even on the hills, although by dint of sheer abun- 

 dance it clothes their expanses in blue, it is not a free-flowerer ; and 

 re in a hundred yards you will have a thousand half-nodding 

 heads of delicious violet springing from their clumps., yet, if you 

 look, you will see that the number of flower-stems is but one in ten 

 to that of all the n that might be sending them up. So that 



there need yet be no reproach against the plant on this score in 

 cultivation. On the hills it varies but little, though very fertile of 

 hybrids with P. minima, which are found treated in their place. 

 Once I met two -pecimens of a pure albino in the Monzoni-ThaL but 

 these had more the look of a little white Allium than of anything else, 

 and, but for their rarity, could not compare with the loveliness of the 

 viol- -t -blue type, which., to be loved as it deserves, must not be read of 

 in cold pages but seen for oneself, veiling the hills, high and far, 

 with a colour rich as the robes of Theodora on the walls of Ravenna, 

 but less evanescent than the imperial purples of Rome, never fading 

 to the present mud-colour of the great Augusta's vestm nt, but 

 preserving always its in splendour, inspired with a fragrance 



that seems the essence and everlasting spirit of the hills, when Spring 

 has once more trailed her coat of many colours for man to tread that 

 carpet of constellated lovelinesses. There is a little ledge, man-high, 

 under Colbricon, which is filled with P. glutinosa (descending from its 

 higher places just above on the moor), where it nods its shaggy heads 

 of sof; colour in one's face, and fills the air with a sweet thought of 

 the year's recurrent dawn, until one feels that no garden, save that 

 of forgot- is worthy to contain a thing so beautiful and so 



good. However. t< . .need labour under no artificial humility 



on this point — the Primula is quite capable of agreeing with him on 

 it- own account., and will very soon judge of his worthiness by in- 

 fallible 2. ; its own : and behave accordingly. It is a 

 challenging fairy, to be conquered and tamed with wise love : not 

 difficult like all good things, and amply worth the 

 wear of wi: 



ge of cultivation. It belongs to the 

 ip of P. \ of the bog. and its especial 



