SCOTTISH GAEDENS 



piece now hangs on the wall of the ante-room in 

 the modern house of Monreith. Among the flowers 

 most easily recognised in the design are the 

 madonna lily (which refuses to flourish with us 

 now), the Isabelline lily, clove carnations, mullein, 

 lupine, hyacinth, red primrose, auricula, polyanthus, 

 guelder rose, anemone, moss rose, scarlet lychnis, 

 pink geranium (its leaves variegated with white), 

 convolvulus, sunflower, sweet-william, scabious, and 

 Canterbury bells, whence one is able to form a 

 good notion of the furniture of a Scottish garden 

 in the eighteenth century. Strange to say, the 

 common daffodil is not among them ; the only re- 

 presentative of the family being that double form 

 of Narcissus incomparabilis which goes by the 

 homely name of Butter-and-eggs. 



No doubt many of the flowers still adorning 

 these grounds are borne on the same roots which 

 furnished patterns for the gentle artist a century 

 and a half ago ; for there is no fixed limit to the 

 life of some of the humblest herbs. The oxlip may 

 outlive the oak which overshadows it ; yonder massive 

 sycamore may be but a child in years compared 

 with the celandine that stars the bank at its foot, 

 and who shall declare the " expectation of life" in 

 the lowly stonecrop that creeps beneath our feet. 

 The green mound, whereon stands the keep of the 

 old castle, breaks out each spring on its south side 

 with a constellation of white violets, wide-spread on 

 the slope. They have long outlived the memory of 



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