Summer JFlotoer*. 153 



certainly worthy of all praise. It lasts long, and 

 its flowers are excellent for cutting. 



Speaking of bad colors, I think there is much 

 in what a young lady once observed to me at a 

 ball, the conversation turning on the newly deco- 

 rated rooms. " I don't think the glaring combi- 

 nations and unhappy uses of color we frequently 

 see in houses and exhibited in dress so much the 

 fault of individual taste as of a deficiency of the 

 color-sense. Let us count the green dresses, of 

 which there seem to be an unusually large num- 

 ber present, and I assure you in advance that at 

 least every third person you ask will pronounce 

 the delicate shades of green blue. It is the 

 same with reds. A hideous solferino looks all 

 right to some ; it appears the same shade to 

 them, doubtless, as a cardinal or a terra-cotta or 

 some other shade does to you. I haven't the 

 slightest doubt that color-blindness is at the 

 bottom of much of the distress that one's eyes 

 are forced to encounter." Solferino and magen- 

 ta, or shades closely touching upon them, should 

 not be tolerated in the garden. They are weeds, 

 that ought to be eradicated as soon as they ap- 

 pear. 



A writer in the London " Garden " gives a 

 simple rule to determine whether colors harmo- 

 nize : " People who have no natural perception of 

 ii 



