96 A YEAR IN A LANCASHIRE GARDEN. 



reed," and gives a very fair illustration of it. He 

 adds, however, " Myself have planted it in my 

 garden divers times, but it never came to flowering 

 or seeding, for that it is very impatient to endure 

 the injury of our cold climate." Cowley, too, 

 speaks of the " lustre of the Indian flowering 

 reed ; " and Dr. Darwin, in his Loves of the Plants, 

 gives it (with its single pistil and stamen), as the 

 best type of the conjugal fidelity of flowers, and 

 tells how 



" The tall Canna lifts his curled brow, 

 Erect to heaven ; " 



adding, in prose, that " the seeds are used as shot 

 by the Indians, and are strung for prayer-beads 

 in some Catholic countries." Indeed, the plant is 

 often called the " Indian Shot," and as the seeds, 

 shining, hard and black, ripened with me last 

 year, I can undertand how appropriate is the 

 name. 



A bed of double Potentillas, some red, some 

 yellow, and some with the two colours mingled, 

 has been very fine ; and so has a bed of hybrid 

 Bulbous Begonias, which seem quite hardy. I 

 plant the blue Lobelia between them, and it con- 

 trasts pleasantly with their crimson and orange 

 bells. A long row of Sweet Peas of every variety 



