EXPLANATOTiY. 3 



may have more of tlie varied beauty of hardy flowers than 

 the most ardent admirer of the old style of garden ever dreams 

 of, by naturalising innumerable beautiful natives of many 

 regions of the earth in our woods and copses, rougher parts 

 of pleasure grounds, and in unoccupied places in almost every 

 kind of garden. 



I allude not to the wood and brake flora of any one 

 country, but to that which finds its home in the vast fields of 

 the whole northern world, and that of the hill -ground that 

 falls in furrowed folds from beneath tlie hoary heads of all 

 the great mountain chains of the world, whether they rise 

 from hot Indian plains or green European pastures. The 

 Palm and sacred Fig, as well as the Wheat and the Vine, are 

 separated from the stemless plants that cushion under the 

 snow for half the vear, bv a zone of hardier and not less 

 beautiful life, varied as the breezes that whisper on the 

 mountain sides, and as the rills that seam tliem. They are 

 the Lilies, and Bluebells, and Foxgloves, and Irises, and 

 Windflowers, and Columbines, and Eock-roses, and Violets, 

 and Cranesbills, and countless Pea-flowers, and mountain 

 Avens, and Brambles, and Cincpiefoils, and Evening Prim- 

 roses, and Clematis, and Honeysuckles, and ]\Iichaelmas 

 Daisies, and "Wood-hyacinths, and Dafl'odils, and Bindweeds, 

 and Forget-me-nots, and blue-eyed Omplialudes, and Prim- 

 roses, and Day Lilies, and Asphodels, and St. Bruno's Lilies, 

 and the almost innumeralile plants wliich form the flora of 

 the northern and temperate portions of vast continents. 



It is beyond the power of pen or pencil to picture the 

 beauty of these plants. Innumerable and infinitely varied 

 scenes occur in the wilder parts of all northern and temperate 



