i 4 2 MY GARDEN 



like wings brooding over the darkness within. Seen 

 against the light, a wonderful pattern of network 

 and splash that covers the whole flower will be found 

 not black but purple a red purple on the falls and 

 style-arms, and a violet purple on the standards. No 

 man has spoken a better word upon this iris than 

 Parkinson, and none have so perfectly described the 

 colour in a phrase. " The chief of all," he says, " is 

 your Sable flower, so fit for a mourning habit that I 

 thinke in the whole compasse of nature's store, there 

 is not a more patheticall, or of greater correspond- 

 ency, nor yet among all the flowers I know any one 

 comming neare unto the colour of it." Elsewhere 

 he says that it is of the hue "almost of a snake's 

 skinne, it is so diversely spotted." The cast slough 

 of a serpent is certainly a simile of genius for this 

 extraordinary flower. 



If susiana be the queen of irises, and fit adornment 

 for the bosom of our loved dead, then Lorteti may 

 be called king, and his brilliance, purity, and wonder 

 are worthy to stand for an emblem of life and dawn. 

 It is nearly as large as susiana, and I may struggle 

 vainly to describe the amazing thing from the plant 

 I figure. This, in its second year, has just given 

 me five blossoms. Certainly it is the most beautiful 

 flower I have ever seen, even in the tropics. The 

 great standards are silvery white most delicately 

 veined with purple ; and the contrast of the falls is 

 striking, for these have a groundwork of golden white 

 or palest cream-colour, and are closely spattered with 

 crimson, which deepens on the signal patch to darkest 



