ANTIRRHINUMS 



Tew, surely, who have any love at all for flowers fail to 

 recall the old-fashioned Antirrhinums that grew and blos- 

 somed with extravagant freedom in our grandmothers' 

 gardens. We called them by such names as Snapdragon 

 and Bunnies' Mouths, and evenbefore we were old enough 

 to appreciate their beauty we found amusement in pinch- 

 ing the tube of the blossom to make it open its mouth. 



True, those old-fashioned cottage-garden flowers were, 

 generally speaking, of somewhat dull or washy colours; 

 the spikes and the individual blossoms were small, and the 

 plants were of straggling and ungainly habit ; but they 

 had always that much to their credit, that they were liardy 

 enough to grow anywhere, to look after themselves, and 

 they were continuously in bloom from the very beginning 

 of summer to the very end of autumn. 



A plant with such characteristics was bound to find its 

 way into the gardens of those who, whilst having a love 

 for flowers around the homestead, had little of cultural 

 knowledge, spare time, or money to spend upon their 

 LTardens, and it was because the Antirrhinum was strong 

 and prolific that it survived the battles for existence and 

 became widespread throughout Cottage Gardendom, 

 where the law of Survival of the Fittest was often as 

 inexorable as on the hillsides and wide wastes of the open 

 countryside. 



There must, however, have been something more than 

 mere hardihood and tenacity about even the old cottage- 

 garden Antirrhinum, for it found a place many long^ years 

 ago among the favoured flowers that engaged the atten- 



