THE ELDER 71 



purposes. On a lawn they make an intolerable litter. 

 The irregularity of its growth and the bareness of its 

 sterns unfit it for the shady alley or the hedgerow, 

 though in old gardens it is not unfrequently seen in 

 such situations. Its proper uses in ornamental plant- 

 ing, in which it should not be altogether passed over, 

 are to be found in the wild shrubbery, in a clump of 

 shrubs in the park, or the edge of a wood, or in any 

 other situation in which its masses of white blossoms 

 and clusters of black berries can appear in effective 

 contrast to the surrounding leafage. To relieve the 

 undeniable heaviness of its mature foliage, it may be 

 either mixed with, or replaced by, some of the varie- 

 gated forms that are in cultivation. " 



An undoubtedly more attractive plant for such 

 purposes is the Dwarf Elder, or Dane wort (Sambucus 

 E'bulus L.). Though a perennial, its herbaceous stem 

 hardly entitles it even to rank as a shrub ; but its 

 noble foliage renders it worthy of more notice at the 

 hands of our landscape gardeners, and though un- 

 common either in a wild or in a cultivated state, it is 

 too fine a plant to be here passed over unpraised. 



It seldom exceeds four feet in the height of its 

 main stem, which terminates in a cluster of flowers ; 

 but the leaves are made up of from five to eight pairs 

 of lance-shaped, smooth, but serrated leaflets, each of 

 which is nearly six inches long, so that they measure 

 as a whole some twelve inches in width, and, with the 

 terminal leaflets, nearly eighteen inches in length. 

 These grand leaves are surmounted, in July or 

 August, by a flat cluster of flowers, whose corollas 

 are pink on their under- surfaces. To this cluster 



