GARDEN LESSONS 283 



flowers. His answer was, ' I cannot tell you, and I 

 have come to the conclusion that I know nothing 

 whatever about flowers.' A few days after I asked 

 another friend's advice about a plant that was not 

 doing well. His answer was, ' Oh yes, I can tell you 

 all about it ; I can tell you at once what is the matter 

 with a plant.' I very soon reached the bottom of his 

 knowledge, or rather of his ignorance. As I walk 

 round my garden, I read in every plant my own 

 ignorance of its real history. Take the flowers now so 

 popular, and so beautiful, the hellebores, or Christmas 

 roses. The pure white flower is not, as it seems to be, 

 the corolla, but the sepals of the calyx. The true 

 petals are curious little things shaped like trumpets, set 

 round the ovaries, and soon falling off. The petals of 

 the yellow aconite are the same, and by old writers 

 they were called nectaries ; and if by nectary is meant 

 the part which holds the bait that attracts the insects, 

 the name is a good one. Both hellebores and the 

 winter aconite belong to the same great family of 

 Ranunculacece, but in no other member of the family, 

 and as far as I know in no other family, do we find 

 these trumpet -shaped petals. What can be their 

 special use in the economy of the plant I cannot say ; 

 I can only guess that as these plants come into flower 

 always in cold weather, and often in the depth of 



