JULY, 1882. 



an extensive range, and the show of blossom of a brilliant 

 red hue is something startling. In the short space across 

 the top of the doorway the flowers are to be counted by 

 hundreds, to the complete exclusion of any green and 

 all these, it must be remembered, have to be supplied 

 with vigor, and life, and beauty through a stem like a 

 piece of small cordage. It is difficult to realise the speed 

 with which the sap must course upwards, in order to feed 

 such a magnificent display ; not to speak of the fresh 

 progress made daily and the daily new supply of flowers. 

 We look upwards with an idea that there is a secret to 

 be unravelled here, and that a dexterous experimenter 

 might arrange an experiment by which the speed of the 

 flow of sap would be measured. This beautiful and 

 graceful plant grows with the utmost luxuriance with us, 

 and yet it is exceedingly difficult to establish in a new 

 quarter. Many plants have been sent to the warm south 

 without success, and the more anxious the recipients 

 have been to secure it, the more obstinately has it declined 

 to be coddled. It especially affects a gravelly soil, and 

 whenever it takes a fancy to a district and it is left alone, 

 it will spread with marvellous rapidity, and threaten to 

 choke all other vegetation about it. 



Surely there is no other plant like this American exotic, 

 to send the sap scudding upwards through a minimum 

 of stem, we mutter, as we traverse the burn side with the 

 blue harebells in dainty groups nodding at us from the 

 wall on our dexter hand, and the white digitalis in studied 

 groups close alongside. We are at the garden gate under 

 a 2o-foot wall, and our attention is called to something 

 on the top of a tree, by the side of the stream a hundred 

 yards away. Quite a gay group on the tip top of the 

 tree, and the tree well nigh soft, over the stream. Your 



