68 THE ENGLISH FLOWER GARDEN. 



But even when the flower or plant is some- 

 thing better than a " touch" of colour, there is 

 often some gross carelessness, or ignorance, which 

 gives a sense of annoyance rather than of pleasure. 

 Each returning year, the Gardeners' Chronicle re- 

 views the Royal Academy from a botanical point 

 of view, and nothing can be droller than the 

 blunders it points out. Sometimes all sorts of 

 flowers of various seasons are growing together, 

 or a wood, through which a knight is riding, is 

 adorned with agarics and fungi that belong to 

 different periods of the year. Sometimes places, 

 no less than times, are set at nought, as in an 

 instance quoted by Mr. Rossetti from the Exhi- 

 bition of 1868, where a Greek maiden is gathering 

 blossoms from a pot of (American) azaleas. But, 

 indeed, such instances are only too common. In 

 how many modern classical pictures, for example, 

 has not the large sunflower of America been 

 introduced ? But when the flower itself is one 

 important part of the picture, how curiously un- 

 satisfactory is too often the result ! No one has 

 tried more earnestly to set our painters right in 



