MAY 109 



XXIV 



Not until this jocund month of May 1 has run half 

 its course will gardeners be able to balance spring 

 their accounts with last winter 1908-9. The Flowers 

 proportion of labels that will remain only to mark 

 the deathbeds of departed treasures is likely to be 

 unusually large, so fierce and searching was the cold of 

 Christmastide and March. The frost, though not pro- 

 longed, did excessive damage in districts where its 

 effects was not mitigated by a protective snowfall. 

 We have ourselves to blame for the loss, by reason of 

 our perversity in endeavouring to cultivate in the open 

 plants which will only just endure the capricious 

 climate of the British Isles. Many of our highly-prized 

 exotics are not one whit more desirable than some of 

 our indigenous flora. For instance, there is no yellow- 

 flowered shrub in the world none, at least, known to 

 me equal in splendour and affluence of blossom to our 

 native gorse and broom ; but familiarity has bred its 

 customary offspring, and the places of honour in our 

 borders are reserved for aliens not always desirable in 

 themselves and often of a crabbed humour. Have not 

 I been taking untold trouble to obtain a spring display 

 of gold from the Chinese Forsythia, with the result of 

 a meagre sprinkling of palish yellow bells ; while for 

 leagues around, on moor edges, seashore, river banks, 

 and rocky pasture, farmers and peasants have been 

 seizing every dry, windy spell to fire hundreds of 



1 Written in western Scotland, where May 1909 was really ' jocund,' 

 as it certainly was not in southern England. The mean temperature 

 of the month was many degrees higher in Iceland than it was in Surrey. 



