ON CLEMATISES 113 



Traveller's Joy, Brier, and Wayfaring Tree, are open 

 to the criticism that they indicate slothful farming, 

 and be sure that students at agricultural colleges have 

 various instructive data tending to the discredit of the 

 spreading masses; but we cannot but rejoice in their 

 free, untrammelled beauty. We remember, too, that 

 it is to the English hedgerow that we owe our abund- 

 ance of songbirds. Without the shelter and protec- 

 tion of the hedges, feathered life must necessarily 

 diminish. 



Pretty Species. The Traveller's Joy is not much 

 used as a garden plant nowadays, for there are many 

 kinds far more suitable. The old species flammula^ 

 which came from France as far back as 1596, is one ; 

 the growth is much neater, and the flowers are fragrant. 

 It is not entirely hardy, but in sheltered gardens it often 

 lives for many years, gracing a gable or old roof with 

 a foam of white blossom. But this good old plant has 

 receded, in spite of its perfume, giving place to the 

 earlier-blooming mountain Clematis (montana), which 

 has forged ahead in popular esteem with such rapidity 

 that it is now grown in hundreds of thousands of 

 gardens. Its popularity is easily explained. In the first 

 place, it blooms as early as May, and there are few wall, 

 arch, or porch plants that flower so early. In the second 

 place, it is a very rapid grower and profuse bloomer. 

 In the third place, it will thrive in almost any soil or 

 position, not objecting to stiff land, or an eastern aspect, 

 or a town atmosphere. The flowers are white, and 

 of about the size of a half-crown. They are scented, 

 although not so strongly as those of flammula. The 

 perfume of C. montana led to its being also called C. 

 odorus. 



The mountain Clematis is a native of the Himalaya, 



H 



