" * A garden full of bees, 

 Large drooping poppies, and Queen hollyhocks, 

 With butterflies for crowns/' 



JEAN INGELOW. 



JULY 



" A SUMMER burial deep in hollyhocks." Was there 

 ** ever a line more exquisitely worded than this one of 

 Tennyson's ? Such a number of thoughts seem to be crowded 

 into that one line, telling us that when the hollyhocks shall 

 have ceased to bloom, Summer will have been buried with all 

 its sweet delights. Even now, as I write, the first faint sign of 

 approaching Autumn is upon the garden, more especially upon 

 the fallen golden leaves of the limes. In many a garden at 

 the present time the hollyhocks are sending up their tall spikes 

 of rosette-like blossoms of many glowing colours. Little 

 seems to have been said about this delightful old inhabitant, 

 and the glory of many a garden. Shakespeare never once 

 mentions it, strange to say, although it is mentioned as early 

 as the thirteenth century. To repay a tireless search for in- 

 formation on this flower which I so love, I find it mentioned 

 in a vocabulary as holihoc, while the French in the fifteenth 

 century called it hoc ; the Saxons named it ymale. Sad it 

 seems to say, that year by year it is growing into greater dis- 

 favour, and in many districts it has quite given up its struggle 

 for existence, owing to the blight which has of late years 

 attacked it a virulent little fungus, bred, it is supposed, in 

 the leaves and stems of the marsh-mallow and kindred plants. 

 John Parkinson, writing of this flower in his " Paradisus in 

 Sole," says, in his quaint manner : " Hollihockes, single 

 and double of severall colours. The stalkes sometimes 

 growe like a tree, at least, higher than any man, with divers 



