272 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 



our hardiest native lilies like the red-wood, Turk's 

 cap, and Canada bell-lily in an open border where 

 the porous earth, rilled by ice crystal, was raised by 

 the frost to the consistency of bread sponge? I did 

 this not many years ago and the poor dears looked 

 pinched and woebegone and wholly unlike their 

 sturdy sisters of meadow and upland wood edges. 

 Afterward, in trying to dig some of these lilies from 

 their native soil, I discovered why they were uncom- 

 fortable in the open borders ; the Garden, You, and I 

 would have to work mighty hard to find a winter 

 blanket for the lily bed to match the turf of wild 

 grasses sometimes half a century old. 



Many other beautiful and possible lilies there are 

 besides these four, but these are to be taken as first 

 steps in lily lore, as it were ; for to make anything like 

 a general collection of this flower is a matter of more 

 serious expense and difficulty than to collect roses, 

 owing to the frailness of the material and the different 

 climatic conditions under which the rarer species, 

 especially those from India and the sea islands, origi- 

 nated ; but given anything Japanese and a certain cos- 

 mopolitan intelligence seems bred in it that carries a 

 reasonable hope of success under new conditions. 



We have half a dozen species of beautiful native 



