2 FAMILIAR GARDEN FLOWERS. 



The parting splendours of the day's decline, 

 With fascination to the heart address'd, 



So tenderly and beautifully shine, 

 As if reluctant still to leave that hoary shrine." 



A snapdragon might, with perfect propriety, be called 

 a " wall " flower, and a full list of plants that commonly 

 grow on walls would include a considerable number of dear 

 old garden friends. The finest wallflower I have seen was 

 a great tuft of wheat that kept company with snapdragons 

 and stone-crops and pellitories on one of the old fruit 

 walls within view of my bedroom windows. I watched it 

 through the summer with ever-increasing joy, anticipating 

 the harvesting of the crop, and the feeding of my parrots 

 with the " golden " grains. But when they, were about 

 half -ripe I saw, as I gazed from my window, a great hand 

 rise above the wall and grasp them, and they disappeared 

 as in the twinkling of an eye, while a thrill of horror went 

 through me from head to foot. It was the gardener, who 

 had suddenly resolved to make the wall tidy. 



The wallflower has no special renown in literature, and 

 is but rarely mentioned by the poets. It is not a native 

 of this country, and although so thoroughly at home as a 

 wilding on ruins, it is not known as a plant of the rocks, 

 and is not often met with remote from places that have 

 been modified by the hand of man. Its old name was 

 " stock-gillofer " and " wall-gilloflower/' Under the last 

 name Parkinson, in the " Paradisus/' describes seven sorts : 

 the Common Single, the Great Single, the White, the 

 Common Double, the Pale Double, the Double Red, and 

 the Double Yellow. The " streaked gillivors " that Perdita 

 speaks of as "nature's bastards" were, in all probability, 

 pinks or cloves, but the wallflower and the stock were 



