Vices of Plants 109 



and but scanty rations are accorded either to old residents or 

 the new-comer. I try to play a Guardian of the Poor to these 

 too-numerous waifs, and I know the difficulty of finding 

 good Christian homes for the progeny of Lychnis dioica rosea, 

 Veronica spicata, Digitalis purpurea, Aquilegia vulgaris, Rud- 

 beckia, Chrysanthemum parthenium. Chrysanthemum maxi- 

 mum, all illustrious families found in every Florist's Blue 

 Book. I try to build model tenements to accommodate the 

 most promising of them in the annual construction of new 

 beds, but I cannot keep pace with the teeming population, 

 and for want of sufficient ground space, may have to devise 

 hanging gardens eighteen stories high garden-scrapers shall 

 I call them ? I should like to communicate with any one in 

 possession of the original working plans of the hanging gar- 

 dens of Babylon, for though they may be somewhat old-fash- 

 ioned, yet they may furnish good ideas. I always prick up ears 

 when Asa Gray mentions any plant as "cultivated in choice 

 gardens," certainly a patent of floral nobility. I now believe a 

 choice garden represents the aristocratic inner circle, the elite, 

 a condition where the undesirable proletariat, the free seeders, 

 are strictly excluded. Surely that is high society that has 

 no poor relations, no unsought younger sons, no Botany Bay. 

 Some plants are valetudinarians, tender of constitution, 

 with crochety appetities; and if the table prepared for them 

 is not to their liking, they die of disapproval. Lilies are ex- 

 amples of this caprice. They like rich food, the richer the 

 better, but it must be predigested, as it were. They require a 

 heavily manured soil, further enriched with leaf mold; but 

 it must be prepared a year or two in advance, and then they 

 must be carefully insulated from it by a generous environment 

 of sand. Their conduct reminds me of delicate ladies who 

 pretend to nibble at the table, and gorge unseen from the 

 pantry shelf. Would it be surprising, after eons of such cod- 



