182 A BOOK ABOUT THE GARDEN. 



show and that show, and the cups we were going to 

 win ; but when, in the third spring, they began 

 a-rawming and a-scrawming * all over the house, and 

 to rub themselves against the roof, looking something 

 like a swan in a hen-coop, and seeming to say, " How 

 could you bring us into such a poky place as this ? " 

 when the Thief-Palm unfolded a leaf about the size 

 of a small door, and Alocasia macrorhiza favoured us 

 with foliage having the circumference of a large tea- 

 tray, we began to find out that we had made a 

 mistake, and to feel as uncomfortable about our 

 numerous and growing family as the old woman who 

 lived in a shoe. And the worst of it was, that 

 after all our trouble, when we had selected our twelve 

 for exhibition (three of them, I remember, were taken 

 out through the roof, the door being much too narrow) 

 we were signally defeated by a nurseryman from a 

 distance, who had plants to which ours were pigmies. 

 Let no gardener, who has only a moderate space under 

 glass, attempt to show collections of stove and green- 

 house plants, but let him either confine himself to 

 some special class, such as the Gloxinia for the stove 

 and the Pelargonium for the greenhouse, or, using his 

 houses for general purposes, let him exhibit in some 

 other department hardy flowers, or vegetables, or 

 fruit. Let him consider what he can do, and then 

 determine to do it thoroughly. Let him never rest 



* " Kawm " I believed to be a corruption of roam, and I was 

 powerless to throw any light upon " scrawm," when a floral 

 friend explained that the two words had been corrupted from 

 rambling and scrambling, by pronouncing broadly the first 

 vowel, and eliminating a consonant and liquid altogether, 



