92 A YEAR IN A LANCASHIRE GARDEN. 



remarkable of American women, Margaret Fuller 

 (afterwards Countess D'Ossoli), in which she says : 



"This flower" (it was the Yucca Filamentosa) 

 " was made for the moon as the Heliotrope is for the 

 sun, and refuses other influences, or to display her 

 beauty in any other light. Many white flowers are 

 far more beautiful by day. The lily, for instance, 

 with its firm thick leaf, needs the broadest light to 

 manifest its purity, but these transparent leaves of 

 greenish white, which look dull in the day, are 

 melted by the moon to glistening silver. . . ." 

 The second evening I went out into the garden 

 again. In clearest moonlight stood my flower, 

 more beautiful than ever. The stalk pierced the 

 air like a spear; all the little bells had erected 

 themselves around it in most graceful array, with 

 petals more transparent than silver, and of softer 

 light than the diamond. Their edges were clearly 

 but not sharply defined they seemed to have been 

 made by the moon's rays. The leaves, which had 

 looked ragged by day, now seemed fringed by most 

 delicate gossamer, and the plant might claim, with 

 pride, its distinctive epithet of filamentosa" 



On another grass-plot near I have one of the 

 beautiful Retinosporas of Japan, which was one 



