WATER-LILIES 93 



city where I live is a great park, with ornamental lakes, 

 in which water-lilies and other aquatics are grown. The 

 walk across the park is charming. Undulating ground 

 gives incessant variety to the landscape ; avenues of 

 overarching trees temper the summer heat ; now and 

 then we catch sight of a wide plain with scattered villages 

 and church-towers ; and beyond the plain a range of 

 noble hills shows its dim outline. The hall is of Queen 

 Anne's time, stately and formal. Seventy years ago it 

 was devastated by fire, and it has never been restored. 

 The walls are still standing, but the roof and floors are 

 gone. Though the hall is desolate, the gardens with their 

 clipped hedges, and terraces, and fountains are still kept 

 in good order. The natural beauty of the place is enhanced 

 by its loneliness. Ancient magnificence has been first 

 humbled, and then invested with simple natural sweet- 

 ness. The solid masonry with its time-worn classical 

 ornaments has lost all its stateliness, and hop, wistaria, 

 clematis and roses now trail over walls which were once 

 rigid and imposing. At the meeting-place of three 

 avenues have been formed a terrace, an artificial lake and 

 smaller basins. Here the water-lilies can not only be 

 admired, but studied closely, for even their great root- 

 stocks can be reached in the shallower pools. 



We have only two common native species of water-lily, 

 the yellow and the white. There is another native plant 

 which looks very like the true water-lilies, and would 

 be easily taken for such on a hasty inspection. This is 

 the Villarsia, which is really a water-gentian, but has the 

 form of leaf and the habit of a true water-lily. It shows 

 in a striking way the power of external conditions to 

 produce similarity of structure in plants quite distinct 

 from one another. The flowers and fruits of Villarsia 

 are totally unlike those of any true water-lily. 



The leaves of the white water-lily (Nymphsea) float at 

 the surface, and take a shape not uncommon with floating 

 leaves, that is, oval, with the margin slightly raised and 



