86 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN 



steadily plant-life goes on in spite of all hindrances. 

 It is really sad to go round the garden during a long 

 drought, with the lawn brown, the shrubs getting 

 scorched, and the beds looking almost like dust-heaps. 

 Yet no sooner does the rain come than all is at once 

 changed, and we are taught that the garden was by 

 no means dead, but only biding its time ; it was like 

 a man who from illness or other cause is driven into 

 enforced idleness, but who, as soon as the cause is 

 removed, shows that the idleness was only from 

 temporary weakness, which ended in increased strength. 

 Within a very few days after the rains come to us 

 after a long drought the grass becomes of the freshest 

 green and the shrubs put out fresh leaves, herbaceous 

 plants begin to shoot upwards, and it is no exaggera- 

 tion to say that all Nature rejoices. I think none of 

 us are aware what a large reserve of plant-life Nature 

 is always keeping in the most unlikely places. We 

 see it in our dust-heaps and ballast-heaps, which, left 

 to themselves, soon get covered with vegetation ; and 

 I was told recently by an officer who had served at 

 Suakim, that the tents of the soldiers were pitched in 

 the barest sand of the desert, and that his tent was 

 pitched next to the photographer's; and in a very 

 few days the space between the two tents was clothed 

 with a rich herbage, which sprang up from the 



