MIDWINTER GARDENS 



their blossoms. He saw the low, sweet-scented 

 geraniums of lemon, rose and nutmeg odors, 

 persisting through the winter unblighted, and 

 the round-leaved, "zonal" sorts surprisingly 

 large of growth — in one case, on a division 

 fence, trained to the width and height of six 

 feet. There, too, was the poinsettia still bend- 

 ing in its Christmas red, taller than the tallest 

 man's reach, often set too forthpushingly at the 

 front, but at times, with truer art, glowing like 

 a red constellation from the remoter bays of 

 the lawn; and there, taller yet, the evergreen 

 Magnolia fuscata, full of its waxen, cream- 

 tinted, inch-long flowers smelling delicately like 

 the banana. He found the sweet olive, of re- 

 fined leaf and minute axillary flowers yielding 

 their ravishing tonic odor with the reserve of 

 the violet; the pittosporum; the box; the myrtle; 

 the camphor-tree with its neat foliage answer- 

 ing fragrantly the grasp of the hand. The dark 

 camellia was there, as broad and tall as a lilac- 

 bush, its firm, glossy leaves of the deepest green 

 and its splendid red flowers covering it from 

 tip to sod, one specimen showing by count a 



183 



