Numerous Early Comers 



mention of Winter Aconites. The common one, Eranthis 

 ht'emah's, like Chionodoxa, is one of the test plants of the 

 established maturity of gardens : your parvenu, architect- 

 planned, and colour-schemed affair can seldom include 

 such a fine drift of its cheery yellow faces in their green 

 Toby frills as one may see in the garden of many a 

 parsonage or quiet old grange. It is difficult to establish 

 a new colony of it unless one can rob an old one, for it 

 is one of those plants which suffer terribly from being 

 kept out of the ground any length of time, and here I 

 find the best time to transplant it is during its period of 

 flowering. Roots bought in autumn are generally sick 

 unto death. 



This season the extraordinary mildness of early 

 December brought it into flower quite a week before 

 Christmas, and the blooms were small, dingy, of thin 

 texture, with no staying power in them, and they came out 

 a few at a time and so made no display, being one of the 

 few flowers that are better for a severe winter if it comes 

 before their flowering time. Gerard knew this, and writes : 

 " The colder the weather is, and the deeper that the snow 

 is, the fairer and larger is the floure, and the warmer that 

 the weather is, the lesser is the floure, and worse coloured." 

 This I have noticed, and take to mean that the flowers are 

 better for being kept back until they are thoroughly 

 matured as under a covering of snow, and then burst out 

 with the thaw in full strength and numbers. 



The behaviour of seedlings is worth noting : they con- 

 tent themselves for their first season with no leaves other 

 than the pair of cotyledons, but find them all-sufficient 

 to gather enough carbon dioxide from the air to add to 



