SNOWDROP GROWING 41 



commonly like a truism, but it is the essence of 

 the matter. 



The gardeners have taken the snowdrop in hand 

 and produced various modifications, the flowers and 

 foliage being in some of these of much greater bulk; 

 but, after all, size is not everything, and one can 

 turn from these back to the simple yet beautiful 

 wildling with renewed pleasure. We sometimes 

 see the flowers, too, doubled under cultivation, and 

 thereby the delicacy of form of the blossom entirely 

 lost. 



If so soon as the plants begin to reach the bud- 

 ding stage we carefully dig them up and bring them 

 indoors, placing the bulbs in a little mound of earth 

 in the centre of a plate, and covering our mound 

 over with the moss that we shall find in the wood, 

 the result will be entirely charming. The moss is 

 pleasant in itself to the eye, conceals the bare earth, 

 and retains moisture, and from its midst for a long 

 time will rise a group of these beautiful little flowers. 

 We have tried planting the bulbs freely on our lawn, 

 and in the early spring the effect is very pleasing ; 

 but one requires sometimes to look a little ahead in 

 divers matters, and this is one of them. After the 

 flowers have perished the leaves greatly develop ; 

 if we cut them down too speedily we do some little 

 injury to our bulbs, but if we do not do so the large 

 tufts of rather coarse leaves scattered freely over 

 the lawn are somewhat of a disfigurement. 



