AUGUST. 



347 



ble, is not often seen : the double is one of the sweetest of 

 herbaceous plants, and as beautiful as it is fragrant. Can- 

 terbury Bells, Ragged Robin, Lychnis, Monkshood, Honesty, 

 &c., are more of the old favorites. 



These we name as a few of such as were once common, 

 indeed almost the only kinds in some gardens, but now rarely 

 seen, only as we recede from the places where fashion holds 

 her sway, in the neighborhood of splendid villas, to the cot- 

 tage in the country, where, tended by fair hands, yet happily 

 ignorant of the Whitlavia, Eucharidium, and similar hard 

 named and far less beautiful flowers, they flourish and display 

 their familiar forms and colors. 



With the progress of floriculture the herbaceous plants 

 have not been entirely neglected. There are some who, 

 knowing their merits, duly appreciate them, and devote their 

 time to their improvement. Both French and English culti- 

 vators have done so to a great extent, particularly the French. 

 Witness the Phlox, which now numbers its hundreds of vari- 

 eties of every shade and form, flowering early and late, and 

 whose massive spikes of flowers are the most beautiful orna- 

 ments of the garden from June to October. The Larkspur is 

 another tribe : what variety and intensity of coloring has 

 been achieved in some of the varieties of recent introduction. 

 And the Hollyhock, scarcely the same flower once alm.ost 

 banished from the garden for its coarse foliage and spikes of 

 single flowers. Even the old but yet no less beautiful Sweet 

 William, in the hands of the florist, has been greatly 

 improved, and appears with a distinctness of pencilling 

 rivalling the Picotee. But we have no space to enumerate 

 all the plants which, though neglected by many, have occu- 

 pied the labors of others until they have been brought up to 

 that higher standard which cultivated taste erects, and whose 

 claims upon those who banish nature's flowers, because of their 

 simple beauty, are now fully entitled to recognition. 



It is the fault that we overlook the smaller, more delicate, 

 and exquisitely beautiful species and varieties in our eager 

 desire for the large and showy ; some of them common, but 

 the greater part almost unknown in our American gardens, 



