160 FAMILIAR GARDEN FLOWERS. 



border flower. At all events, when planted in the border 

 it is exposed to the risk of being dug up and destroyed 

 a risk it shares in common with many good things that 

 never last long where the practice of promiscuous digging 

 of borders is permitted. The jobbing gardener appears to 

 have been commissioned by Mephistopheles to crush out of 

 existence all the good hardy plants, and to supply in their 

 place geraniums at three shillings a dozen. He does his 

 best, at all events, to annihilate daffodils, and paeonies, and 

 delphiniums, and day-lilies, and aconites, and dielytras, 

 because they do not show themselves at the time when he 

 plies his spade industriously. Perhaps he ought to know 

 that their roots are alive below ground, and ought not to 

 be made into mincemeat ; but we must make allowances, 

 for it often happens that between what is and what 

 " ought " to be there is a great gulf fixed, and a man 

 may be a gardener and yet not know everything. 



PRINTED BY CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED, LA BELLI SAUVACK, LONDON K a 



