94 A YEAR IN A LANCASHIRE GARDEN. 



"pied wind-flowers," Shelley calls them, which first 

 sprang to birth when Venus wept Adonis. Then I 

 have had two successful beds of Ranunculus ; one 

 was prettily and fancifully mottled ; the other was of 

 the finest scarlet, a scarlet so intense that it seemed 

 to be almost black in the inner shadows of the 

 petals. A gifted American lady once said to me 

 " Does not black seem to underlie all bright scar- 

 let ? " and I have thought of this as I have looked 

 at this bed of Ranunculus, and I think of it often 

 as I see the red coats of our soldiers passing by. 

 I have often noticed, too, that, in an evening, when 

 there is still light enough to see flowers, that are 

 yellow, or blue, or pink, the blossoms of a scarlet 

 Pelargonium give forth no colour, but look as if 

 cut out of some soft black velvet. Another spring 

 bed, from which I had hoped much, has dis- 

 appointed me. It was a bed of Crown Imperials, 

 but for some reason they flowered irregularly and 

 produced no effect But the individual flowers of 

 some were magnificent. I had never examined a 

 Crown Imperial properly before, and never knew 

 that its great beauty lay in the little circlet of 

 pearls nectaries, I suppose they are which lie 

 at the bottom of each orange bell. They are 

 quite exquisite in their grey and white glittering 



