IRIS. 
loveliness of rose and cream: IJ. tenax, Douglasiana, bracteata, in vary- 
ing subtle flamboyancies of claret and silver, apricot and rose, are 
much larger than all these last, hate lime, and enjoy a deep sunny 
place in sandy peat where they can wax for ever. Then there is creep- 
ing wee delicious I. arenaria, with its golden flowers and their orange 
beards, so freely produced that often the plant dies of its own beauty ; 
this should have a surface depth of sand, but richer matter some four 
inches underground to root in; it should also at need be top-dressed 
and divided. Only a little larger is J. cretensis, the small form of 
I. unguicularis (I. stylosa), with peacock-eyed cups of powder-blue and 
gold in winter, filled with scent, and like gigantic goblets of Crocus 
byzantinus ; and there are also rare and lovely J. kumaonenis and 
I. Hookeriana, of mottled red and purple, hungry both for sun and full- 
ness of moisture while in growth. While of the small Flag-Irises 
no rock-garden will be without commoner things such as IJ. chamaeiris, 
bosniaca, rubro-marginata, balkana, subtle sad mellita, and olbiensis that 
has lost its home. And last of the list, and for the moment the most 
exquisite of all, the filmy grace of J. gracilipes, from the cleared upland 
coppices of Japan, where it grows as primroses grow in a Kentish 
clearing, all the hillside covered with its dancing 5-inch sprays of wide- 
winged delicate butterflies in the tenderest crumpled silk of pale-blue, 
with beard and enrichments of gold, and a pale veined eye—the most 
perfectly fairylike of its race, so that one feels that it is indeed a-flutter 
for its final flight. Yet in the garden in light woodland soil,notoverhung, 
but sheltered from the excess of sun and rain and wind, I. gracilipes, 
at the fringe of small low shrubs, remembers the Thousand Islands of 
Matsushima, and flutters gaily in a garden many thousands of miles 
away. And we now have I. Potaninii, and lovely I. gontocarpa. 
For the bog garden there is no place here to speak of IJ. sibirica, 
versicolor, virginica, Delavayi, Forrestii, gorgeous golden-veined and 
imperial IJ. chrysographes, setosa, laevigata, and all the huge clan that 
is Kaempferi (to be kept wet while growing, and dry while resting), 
IT, aurea, Monmeri, delicate cwprea, and a hundred others. But of the 
Oncocyclus Irids, none. They are a doomed and lonely race of irre- 
concilable Troades in weeds of silken crape, sullenly and grandly un- 
resigned to exile and captivity, passing out of their captor’s hands 
in a last defiant blaze of dark and tragic magnificence. They are 
chief mourners in their own funeral-pomps, wistful and sombre and 
royal in an unearthly beauty of their own, native to the Syrian hills 
that have seen the birth of gods, but strange and hostile to the cruder 
colder lands. They are the maidens that went down into hell with 
Persephone, and yearly in her train they return to make a carpet for 
438 
