PRIMULA. 



glass from Murano. Then ascend the stems of 4 or 5 inches, powdered 

 pure white, and hang out an even bunch of four or five stout bells of 

 soft cream-colour and thick waxen bloom, with their calyx-lobes and 

 bracts above the pendent chime all white with meal, and making a 

 sort of inadequate snowy penthouse or umbrella for the blossoms. 

 P. Reidii, however, like most supreme things, is very difficult of 

 achievement, and until established (as now so marvellously on the 

 rock-work at Wisley), hard to keep as love (even in nature it is 

 always as rare as perfection). It should have a fight spongy mixture 

 of peat and sand and leaf -mould, with abundance of chips ; and water 

 should be kept as steadily running beneath its roots all the summer 

 as it should be diligently held off all the winter, and this treasure kept 

 as dry as if it were indeed the pearls and diamonds that it is so like, 

 and so well worth. 



P. Reinii has taken a long time to arrive, but now there is no fear 

 of its departure, for this delicate and dainty little Japanese woodland 

 species from Hak'san hi Kanga turns out to be quite hardy and easy 

 and ready to thrive and spread in light rich soil under almost any con- 

 ditions, so as to be neither parboiled nor water-logged. The small 

 stalked leaves are hearts or kidneys (according to taste) of softly 

 velvety texture ; and among them and above them the short stems 

 throw out a loose spray of cheery-looking flowers, enormous for the 

 plant, of delicate pink, with a radiant star of darker colour from the 

 centre, the segments being straight-sided, heart-shaped and deeply 

 lobed, with the lobes standing apart, so that the whole bloom does not 

 make a circle or a face of fatness, but a dainty expanded star, of ten 

 full rays, not plump enough for rotundity, nor lean so as to look 

 scraggy and ill-furnished. So then, when these are over by mid-May, 

 and the seed matured by later summer, the entire clump dies down 

 to a tidy collection of brown budlings, waiting the call of spring to 

 rise up again next year and play the whole game again with redoubled 

 vigour. So free is it of increase that either in spring or in summer 

 can it happily be divided. Of all the woodlanders it is easily supreme 

 in charm, small in stature, gigantic in blossom, clean and sweet in 

 colour, graceful in all its outlines, and graceful no less in demeanour 

 and temperament. 



P. reptans is much tinier than P. minutissima, and creeps over the 

 ground on the highest passes of Kumaon, rooting as it goes in a hearty 

 manner, and forming little wandering mats of infinitesimal outspread- 

 ing foliage, so deeply toothed that the wee stalked ovals look like 

 those of some gin-fed Chrysanthemum alpinum ; and on the mass 

 stand stemlcss the wide-eyed, long-tubed stars of soft pale purple, 



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