iy8 MY GARDEN 



though I pull out a good deal each autumn. Those 

 tiny and beautiful floating aquatics, azolla and salvinia, 

 are not hardy, and must be preserved and propagated 

 under glass, though they do well out of doors in 

 summer. From these to the mighty arundo donax l 

 is a far cry. The great reed does well in my marsh, 

 and increases steadily but has not flowered. Its 

 foliage rises above a large plant of caladium esculen- 

 tum, and the contrast between the glaucous green 

 of the reed and the mingled velvety tones of the 

 elephant's ear is very beautiful. Here also prosper 

 myrica gale, a native thing of delicious fragrance, 

 and various plants of mimulus, including M. cuprea. 

 The slipper flower grows here too ; and there were 

 true lilies once canadense and superbum but they 

 have departed for the moment. 



I have grown most known lilies in my time, but 

 of late the iris has occupied my first affection, and 

 lilies are just now very low with me. I get an 



1 Arundo Donax. Humboldt marks three stages of civilisation by the 

 use men make of the Great Reed. First, in the days of palaeolithic man, 

 it serves for the spear-haft and the shaft of arrows ; next, the pastoral age 

 saw shepherds playing on the pipe of Pan ; while thirdly, when agriculture 

 came to be understood and developed, the great reed made baskets for the 

 fruits of the earth, and trellises for growing of vine and gourd. A fourth 

 use, higher than all these, belongs to our own arundo pragmites. Not 

 only for warfare, music, agriculture, and thatching did the early men 

 employ arundo. It was busy at the dawn of books, and the first pens 

 used by our forefathers were cut from it. Merlin wrote his verses with 

 the reed ; Gildas, father of all British history, assaulted the Saxon 

 invaders of his country with such a weapon ; though the pen was not 

 mightier than the sword in the sixth century. When I see an English 

 reed-rond, mark the purple feathers swaying, and hear the silky, sleepy 

 music of a thousand blades caressed by the wind and each other, I always 

 think of the first Saxon pen and the learned clerk sharpening it. 



