GENTIANA. 
glossy leaf, stiff, and broad, and ample; conspicuous too, in often 
forming tight tufts, with half a dozen of those immense flowers glaring 
about at once on their tall and stalwart stems of 4 or 5 inches. Its 
place in the family is between G. latifolia and G. vulgaris, with both 
of which it probably produces intermediates, as it is not restricted to 
any range of its own, but occurs in both of theirs. It is even quite 
probable that G. Gentianella, so old in gardens that all trace of its 
origin is lost, is a hybrid, originally, between G. eacisa and G. vulgaris. 
G. Gentianella needs no advertisement nor description, for before 
the face of the border Gentian all others of its race must hide their 
heads and flee back again to the wild hills where they are so much 
happier. For G. Gentianella is the dog who has accepted the collar 
and comforts of civilisation; while its cousins are still the untamed 
wolves of the mountain, descending to ravage our purses, against all 
the defences of our home-dog, which declares to us anew every spring 
that we need go no further than our own familiar friend if we want 
to see the beauty of the hills. Yet this is not quite so; G. Gentianella, 
for vigour and homeliness and glory and popularity, has made a 
certain sale of its primitive simplicity ; and there will always be a 
delicious stimulating tang about the caprices of a wild species, that 
there can never quite be about the complacence of a garden plant, 
however ample and well-liking it may be. G. Gentianella has taken 
to lining borders, and acting as an edging: that saysall. No one will 
ever tame G. verna or G. excisa into making edgings; nor would it be 
right that they should. None the less, in deep rich soil, how unutter- 
able a glory is this ancient development of our gardens, so far leaving 
behind in display the wonders of its probable parents, G. ewcisa and 
G. vulgaris! No richness is too great for it ; feed it upon the blood of 
kings and it would but grow the stouter and bloom the bluer ; if the best 
is to be desired of it in the way of unbroken sheets of midnight sky in 
May, some part of its beds and borders should always be remade every 
five years, a trench being dug some 2 feet deep, and filled up for a 
foot or so with every kind of pig-trough garbage you can think of, 
and mown lawn-grass and old boots and every possible enrichment : 
then, on the top of that, the fattest of loam with abundance of lime, 
and then the Gentians planted firmly and always kept well watered 
in the earlier year, (And even here, in hot dry climates, the under- 
ground pipe would work wonders.) So, always in fullest sun and 
openness of site, the plants will take hold ; the year after planting they 
will do something ; the year after that they will do more, and cause 
you to caress the hand of your wife with sighs; but the third year 
heaven will have fallen solid upon your earth, and nothing short 
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