PRECOCIOUS KEW 459 



cottage gardens, or hanging from cottage walls into 

 the road, as white as the sheets that are hung out 

 to dry on washing day. And in gardens where it is 

 almost the only joy, its tenancy equal to that of 

 almost the oldest inhabitant, the flowering currant 

 can be seen among the hills in full blossom, though at 

 Kew the bunches are no more than pink catkins peep- 

 ing from the young leaves. Just so did the cottager's 

 " fair maids of February " come up for him in their 

 white-skirted thousands earlier and more abundantly 

 than in the gardens of Royal Kew ; and so did the 

 ancestral mezereon cover itself with pink fragrance on 

 cold clay and on harsh stone brash as early as did its 

 battalions on this warm sand. One would think that 

 these old-favoured flowers had a special delight in their 

 owners who live and sleep so near them, and came up 

 early for love. 



The cottager is as faithful as his flowers. He does 

 not introduce into his garden the early heaths from 

 the Mediterranean, or the still earlier hybrid that the 

 nurseryman has produced. These show us their 

 tender promise before Christmas, and almost with the 

 New Year their bells open, though with a pallor that 

 only deepens into rose and carmine as the sun climbs 

 to mid-February. And all the time their stamens 

 hang out of the tube and ripen their pollen in the 

 open frost, to shoot off like pistol shots at the touch 

 of the first adventurous bee. We have heaths here 

 from all over the world, some for almost every month 

 of the year, many to take the place of the earliest as 

 soon as they begin to wane. With them will come in 

 the first brooms from Spain and Greece, mostly in 

 very pale lemon, though some of the white dots now 



