ON BELL-FLOWERS 33 



" At least the Canterbury Bell has been immortalised," 

 some one will say, " and it, too, is a Campanula." Oddly 

 enough, the Canterbury Bell, popular flower though it 

 is, seems to have received scant attention. You turn up 

 reference book after reference book, and " See Cam- 

 panula " meets the eye with exasperating iteration. And 

 when you get to Campanula you merely find " Medium, 

 the Canterbury Bell." Writers seem to have troubled 

 about it very little ; in fact, they have not even asked 

 themselves how it got its popular name. If the South- 

 Eastern Railway had existed when it was christened I 

 might have suggested that some traveller had called it 

 the Canterbury Bell because of its abundance on the 

 sides of the chalk cuttings on the Elham Valley line near 

 the old cathedral city. The Canterbury Bells are very 

 happy there, and nowhere is their blue more sparkling 

 than on chalk, though to be sure the plants do not grow 

 with anything like the vigour that they display on the 

 deep clay. These wildlings have doubtless strayed out 

 of gardens, and we may assume that the Canterbury Bell 

 has long been a popular flower in East Kent. 



It is one of the oldest Campanulas that we have, 

 having been introduced from Germany in 1597, one 

 year later than the Peach-leaved Campanula, persicifolia. 

 Stevens and Leebault included Canterburie bels in the 

 garden of the Maison Rustique, published in 1600. 

 Those grand old botanists, Gerard and Parkinson, both 

 gave illustrations of the Canterbury Bell, but the draw- 

 ings are almost as quaint as the descriptions. Philip 

 Miller referred to it in his Gardener's Dictionary, telling 

 us that it grew wild in Austrian and Italian woodlands, 

 but was appreciated by English gardeners for the beauty 

 of its flowers. His description is minute : 



" There are the following varieties : the blue, the 



C 



