THE MIXED BORDERS. 53 



nothing remained but a shred of wing. Two others 

 were still alive, but the Azalea had already nearly 

 drained their life away, and held them so tightly 

 with its viscid hairs that I could hardly release 

 them from its grasp. On the other blossoms in 

 the truss were other flies, three, four, or five ; so 

 that the entire Azalea shrub had probably caught 

 some hundreds. 1 



The mixed borders are almost past their best, 

 at least the hairy red Poppy, the day Lily, and the 

 early purple Gladiolus are over, and, of course, the 

 Irises and Paeonies. At present various Canter- 

 bury Bells, Valerian (which I saw bedded out the 

 other day at Liege), and the white and orange 

 Lily, are the gayest things we have. There is a 

 Mullein, too, which is well worth a corner in any 

 garden. Not long since I saw, in some book of 

 rambles through our southern counties, the spire 

 of a cathedral with its pinnacles and crockets com- 

 pared to a spike of Mullein flower. It is certainly 

 the Mullein (the distinctive name of which I do 

 not know) which is now in bloom with me ; and, 

 indeed, the resemblance had occurred to me before 

 I had read the book. 



But I hardly care to linger over other flowers, 



1 See note II. on the Azalea viscosa. 



