OCTOBER 



Are our carnations and streak'd gilliflowers, 

 Which some call nature's bastards : of that kind 

 Our rustic garden 's barren, and I care not 

 To get slips of them. 



Polixenes. Wherefore, gentle maiden, 



Do you neglect them 1 



Per. For I have heard it said 



There is an art which, in their piedness, shares 

 With great creating Nature. 



Pol Say there be ; 



Yet Nature is made better by no mean, 

 But Nature makes that mean, so o'er that art, 

 Which, you say, adds to Nature, is an art 

 That Nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry 

 A gentler scion to the wildest stock, 

 And make conceive a bark of baser kind 

 By bud of nobler race : this is an art 

 Which does mend Nature change it rather but 

 The art itself is Nature. 



Per. So it is. 



Pol. Then make your garden rich in gilliflowers, 

 And do not call them bastards. 



Per. I '11 not put 



The dibble in earth to set one slip of them ; 

 No more than, were I painted, I would wish 

 This youth should say 'twere well : and only therefore 

 Desire to breed by me. 



Yet have these busy florists so multiplied varieties 

 and increased the splendour of the Gladiolus, for instance, 

 that it is hard to forgo their presence in the middle 

 rows. The most striking novelty among them, perhaps, 

 is ' Baron Hulot,' which bears a fine spike of large rich 

 violet flowers, quite unlike anything hitherto seen ; but 

 'Princeps' has the largest flowers of any gladiolus, 

 flaming scarlet in hue. 



