APRIL 63 



that oxalic acid is formed in the human body by the decom- 

 position of sugar, urea, etc., and the diathesis is not 

 uncommon from this cause. If it is thus easily produced 

 indirectly, a fortiori it is still more likely to arise from the 

 direct use of rhubarb wine. Therefore I say to your readers, 

 eschew the doubtless very agreeable beverage which has 

 entered, through the medium of your columns, into com- 

 petition with tiillery mousscux.' 



XV 



He who allows himself to be bitten by a craze for 

 early-flowering rhododendrons lets himself Rnododen- 

 in for more anxiety and vexation than are ^^tie* 

 incident to the cultivation of any other family Kennedy 

 of hardy plants, lilies only excepted. So ran my troubled 

 thoughts when, on this morning of 16th April 1920, I 

 looked forth at 7 A.M. (summer time, a grim pleasantry ?) 

 upon a lawn as white as ' the lyart locks o' Harden's 

 hair.' A winter of unequalled mildness, followed by a 

 weeping March, had stimulated growth and brought 

 out such a 'flourish' to use a Scots term for 

 blossom ' on early rhododendrons as I have never seen 

 before. The display was gorgeous on R. arboreum, 

 barbatum, neriiflorum, campanulatum, Thomsoni, and 

 its numerous flaming hybrids. Five degrees of frost, 

 registered on a shaded thermometer, sufficed to turn 

 this feast of colour to ashes. Not the least vexatious 

 part of the mischief is that it was all wrought in four 

 or five hours. A friendly cloud would have warded it 

 off, and in fact no sooner Avas the ruin accomplished 



1 Probably, like many Scots expressions, a loan word from the 

 French fleuraiaon. 



