CATANANCHE COERULEA. 
podium habit of C. tetragona, but with three-sided columns. Not 
so in the case of the most precious and fine of all, C. hypnoezdes, from 
Norway and the chills of the Arctic North, which is the most minute 
and filmy mass of fine green fur, with large ravishing white bells, 
preposterously big for the tuft, emerging and swinging on thread- 
like stems from the ends of the shoots, instead of sprouting from the 
sides. This is worth any pains to keep in health; which is almost 
as hard to do, say the disappointed, as to get hold of it at all. But 
in a certain Banbury garden, hot and open, there is a specimen of it 
daring successfully the arid or mouldy extremes of the English climate ; 
and the plant need never be despaired of, if only sound roots can be 
acquired. From the neighbourhood of London it departs indignant, 
and, having no suburban leanings, is as rebellious as a suffragette at 
Kew. C. Redowsky: in Hast Siberia makes shining masses of dark 
foliage with a darker margin, and four-lobed flower-bells; and C. 
Selago, accompanying C. fastigiata on the Roof of the World, is a 
slenderer species of the same kind, more straggling and selaginelloid, 
and with blossoms that swing out on longer threads; while in C. 
Stelleriana, from Sitka, the foliage is not scaly, but quite spreading and 
furry and dense on the shoots, with lobeless globes of blossom emerging 
from their tips. 
Castilleia, a group of American Scrophularias, some of the 
most gorgeous beauty, with tall spikes of bracts and flowers all alike 
of the most flaming scarlet. Such is the Indian Paint-brush, 
C. acuminata, as you see it blazing in the coppices above Lake 
Louise, the most magnificent of all, among the many others being 
C. miniata and C. pallida and C. indivisa. There is, however, no 
need to particularise, alas! for the whole race, like Bartsia, Euph- 
rasia, Pedicularis, and so forth, has the fatal family tendency towards 
parasitism, and cannot, accordingly, be recommended for general 
culture —though indeed their clumps have a deceptively indepen- 
dent look, and C. acuminata, at least, has once been seen in glory 
in a damp corner of an Irish garden—but even so, in only a 
diminished and faded form; for in conditions alien to its temper 
the colours of Castilleia no longer blaze with such passion as in its 
native hedgerows and copse-edges. 
Catananche coerulea; the noble blue Cupidone with a darker 
eye is very beautiful in wild rough places of the south of France, 
and no less splendid in any border or rock-work, with its wide and 
lovely blossoms waving on bare long stems of a foot or so, above the 
rosette of foliage all the summer through. It likes barren rough 
places of deep soil, and has a white variety only less attractive 
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