SYMPHYTUM. 



sainted Primrose in glory. So diaphanous and subtle is the tone and 

 texture of those flowers, that I know nothing like them in the 

 garden for the hyaline miracle of their make, seeming blown bells of 

 rarest Murano, tinkling along the ground in their incomparable multi- 

 tudes, and shining with a pale glow-worm glamour of their own among 

 the brighter and more earthly green of the amassed foliage. This most 

 noble trcasuro will grow for ever in any deep rich soil and any open 

 place, but its best altar of worship will be a deep ledge of light soil on 

 the rockwork, a foot or two above eye-level, that the profuse and elfin 

 beauty of its great bells may never fail to elicit the full measure of the 

 adoration for which they so sedulously ring out from July to October. 

 It should bo planted, too, with its blue twin S. ossetica, that the con- 

 trast of delicate tones might yet further, if possible, enhance the 

 unearthly beauty of those Serene Transparencies of crystal. 



S. Wanner i hugs the rocks of Roumania, the Banat, Transylvania. 

 It is about 6 inches or a foot long, and its boughs always cling tight 

 to the stone, after the fashion of the saxatile Campanulas, such as 

 C. Elatines. The leaves are roughish with hairs, oblong-narrow, sharply 

 toothed, and almost gashed, the basal ones diminishing to the long 

 leaf -stalks. But there are a few leaves on the stems also, and the 

 sprays branch into lateral shoots, all carrying flowers, so that they 

 become a th} T rse or ample spire of nodding long bells of imperial 

 violet and imperial magnificence. 



Symphytum. — No Comfrey is in place on the rock-garden, 

 for which their coarse, hairy, leafy, Borragineous habit wholly 

 unfits them. But in the wilderness they are superb, and all the 

 following should be grown, since they need no culturo, and reward 

 neglect so handsomely with their bunches of uncurling multi-coloured 

 bugle-bells in spring and early summer ; S. asperrimum, yard high, 

 with flowers of violet-blue ; S. bulbosum, yellow, and only 8 inches 

 tall, quite fitted for a choicer place, as is also 8. canescens, which makes 

 a little bush of 18 inches or so, with very many branching and clear- 

 borne bunches of beautiful clear-yellow flowers suggesting the Golden 

 Drop to which it stands so near in blood ; S. caucasicum is another 

 Anak of 3 feet, with blossoms of pink and blue, but S. cordatum is 

 quite small, not exceeding G inches, and begging, accordingly, to give 

 the rock-garden its chimes of creamy-white ; S. peregrinum is a 

 handsome red-flowered stalwart of 3 feet, and S. tauricum is half the 

 height, with its white blossoms continuing on into September and 

 October ; while S. tuberosum, again, is smaller yet, not much exceeding 

 10 inches, and bearing yellow bugles in June. Half-shade in the rough 

 light wilderness among the undergrowth lor all of these but the 



