110 APRIL 



is as much at home as in any oliveyard on 

 the Mediterranean; and, most remarkable of all, a 

 variety of our native Pasque flower, A. pulsatilla 

 patens, with long silky hairs on its leaves and 

 bracts, giving it a strange old-world look. 



Advantage has been taken of every ditch in the 

 wood ditches ! they are but woodland gutters 

 and thousands of squills, hepaticas, hellebores, saxi- 

 frages, grape-hyacinths, and primroses gleam among 

 the withered leaves like living jewellery. In 

 making mention of the last, the Wonder of Wisley 

 is touched on ; for here are not merely 



' pale primroses 



That die unmarried ere they can behold 

 Bright Phoebus in his strength,' 



but primroses of hues never before beheld in that 

 modest flower. Blue roses, the type of unpractical 

 quest, have yet to be disclosed; but by sedulous 

 selection of seed-parents, Mr. Wilson has succeeded 

 in producing lusty clumps of primroses bearing 

 flowers, not only of cramoisie, cinnabar red, and 

 royal purple, but of veritable blue. When, a few 

 years ago, these flowers were first exhibited at the 

 Royal Horticultural Show, the Committee looked 

 askance on them; the plants, they suspected, had 



