THE CANTERBURY BELL. 43 



foregoing 1 observations that, instead -of following in the 

 wake of the blind man who made a fiddle out of his own 

 head, we turn to the pages of a great old master for a code 

 of instructions. In the " Abridgement " of Philip Miller's 

 "Gardener's Dictionary/' quarto, 1761, will be found the 

 following : 



" The third sort [Campanula medium] is a biennial 

 plant, which perisheth soon after it hath ripened seeds. It 

 grows naturally in the woods of Italy and Austria, but is 

 cultivated in the English gardens for the beauty of its 

 flowers. Of this sort there are the following varieties, the 

 blue, the purple, the white, the striped, and double flower- 

 ing. This hath oblong, rough, hairy leaves, which are 

 serrated on their edges; from the centre of these, a stiff, 

 hairy, furrowed stalk arises, about two feet high, sending 

 out several lateral branches, which are garnished with long, 

 narrow, hairy leaves, sawed on their edges; from the 

 setting on of these leaves come out the footstalks of the 

 flowers, those which are on the lower part of the stalk and 

 the branches being four or five inches long, diminishing 

 gradually in their length upward, and thereby form a sort 

 of pyramid. The flowers of this kind are very large, so 

 make a fine appearance. The seeds ripen in September, 

 and the plants decay soon after. 



" It is propagated by seeds, which must be sown in 

 spring on an open bed of common earth, and when the 

 plants are fit to remove, they should be transplanted into 

 the flower-nursery, in beds six inches asunder, and the 

 following autumn they should be transplanted into the 

 borders of the flower-garden. As these plants decay the 

 second year, there should be annually young ones raised to 

 succeed them/' 



