CROCUSES. 23 



looking over old volumes of Curtis's Botanical 

 Magazine, and have been trying to get, not always 

 successfully, a number of old forgotten plants of 

 beauty, and now of rarity. We have found enough, 

 however, to add a fresh charm to our borders for 

 June, July, and August. 



On the lawn we have some Aconites in flower. 

 They are planted at the foot of two great Beech 

 trees, and last year they lay there a soft yellow 

 light upon the grass. This year they are doing 

 badly. I suspect they must have been mown 

 away last spring before their tubers were tho- 

 roughly ripe, and they are punishing us now by 

 flowering only here and there. I know no flower so 

 quaint as this the little yellow head emerging 

 from its deeply-cut Elizabethan ruff of green. 

 Then, too, the Crocuses are bursting up from the 

 soil, like Byron's Assyrian cohorts, " all gleaming 

 in purple and gold." Nothing is more stupid than 

 the ordinary way of planting Crocuses in a narrow 

 line or border. Of course you get a line of colour, 

 but that is all, and, for all the good it does, you 

 might as well have a line of coloured pottery or 

 variegated gravel. They should be grown in thick 

 masses, and in a place where the sun can shine 

 upon them, and then they open out into wonderful 



