90 SPEING FLOWERS 



the skyblue appenina, and Robinsoni with bronzy 

 foliage and petals of delicate lavender hue. In sunny 

 spots the intensely scarlet Anemone fulgens is as much 

 at home as in any oliveyard on the Mediterranean; 

 and, most remarkable of all, a variety of our native 

 Pasque flower, A. pulsatilla patens, with long silky 

 hairs on its leaves and bracts, giving it a strange old- 

 world look. 



Advantage has been taken of every ditch in the 

 wood ditches ! they are but woodland gutters and 

 thousands of squills, hepaticas, hellebores, saxifrages, 

 grape - hyacinths, and primroses gleam among the 

 withered leaves like living jewellery. In making men- 

 tion of the last, the Wonder of Wisley is touched on ; 

 for here are not merely 



' pale primroses 



That die unmarried ere they can behold 

 Bright Phoebus in his strength,' 



but primroses of hues never before beheld in that 

 modest flower. Blue roses, the type of unpractical 

 quest, have yet to be disclosed ; but by sedulous selec- 

 tion of seed-parents, Mr. Wilson has succeeded in pro- 

 ducing lusty clumps of primroses bearing flowers, not 

 only of cramoisie, cinnabar red, and royal purple, but 

 of veritable blue. When, a few years ago, these flowers 

 were first exhibited at the Royal Horticultural Show, 

 the Committee looked askance on them; the plants, 

 they suspected, had been doctored with mineral solu- 

 tion; but inquiry only proved that the strain was 

 really and incorrigibly blue. 



