AQUILEGIA. 
therefore while in the North of England it will take all the pale sun- 
rays it can get, in the more torrid South it may prefer to live on 
the outskirts of some small light bush, even as the finest specimen 
I know anywhere is luxuriating near London close by an over- 
shadowing Cytisus—and wholly for years refused to luxuriate until 
there so placed. In the market Aphyllanthes is too often sold in 
over-divided, tiny pieces which have thus been drained of the will to 
live; yet this can hardly be wondered at, seeing that the rarity is 
not of readily-handled increase, spreading indeed, but disliking 
removal, ‘and not by any means free or prompt in seed. 
Apocynum, a race of tall, rank and running Vincaetoxicum-like 
rampers, mostly from America, for the cool sheltered wild-garden in 
dampish, half-shady places ; but taller and leafier than Vincaetoxicum, 
with branching stems of honey-sweet flower-heads, pink or white. 
Aponogéton distachyon, the Water Hawthorn of the Cape, is 
quite hardy and a well-known grateful adornment for still waters 
of 2 or 3 feet in depth, on whose surface its dark leaves lie like those 
of some Potamogeton all the year, while through the winter appear 
in profusion its two-branched heads of deliciously scented whiteness. 
Aquilegia.—What race has so delicate and desirable a charm as 
this? The Columbines, however, are not alpines so much as sub- 
alpines, not often ascending to great elevations, but preferring, as a 
rule, the more open places of the mountain woods and coppices, among 
such things as*the dwarf pines, the narcissiflora Anemones, and the 
Woodland-lilies. Though many of the more ordinary sorts are per- 
fectly easy and perennial, it is sadly notorious that in droughty parts 
of England some of the most lovely queens of this race are corre- 
spondingly difficult and miffy in temper—as short-lived as a Mid- 
Victorian heroine, and as resentful of all parched peas or crumpled 
rose-leaves in their beds as Hans Andersen’s Princess. In point of 
fact, the prime requirement—a hard one, but by no means impossible 
of attainment—is a very rich soil that shall always be perfectly porous 
and sweet and light, crumbling and never caking, spongy with vege- 
table matter, freely loosened with an admixture of chips, and sharply 
drained with the most unfailing and absolute precision. Let such 
a bed be made then in a sheltered corner, where its inhabitants will 
fear no more the summer sun nor the furious winter’s rages, in a 
place not overshadowed nor dank; shielded from wind, yet open 
to a certain amount of sunshine, never for too long together at 
its full strength ; and there, in the lee of Pinus montana, or some 
such light sufficient weather-guard, there need be no difficulty about 
making at least a temporary success of even A. Stuartii. But 
