SPRING FLOWERS ill 



been doctored with mineral solution; but inquiry 

 only proved that the strain was really and incorri- 

 gibly blue. 



One question must occur to everybody who visits 

 this wilderness How comes it, seeing there is such 

 abundant variety to choose from, that most gardens 

 and shrubberies present such monotony in their 

 furnishing 1 Here is one plant, for instance, Daphne 

 Blagayana, covered with ivory-white rosettes of 

 exquisite fragrance, evergreen, shapely, and withal 

 as hardy as a box-bush, which one would expect to 

 be a general favourite, yet you shall look for it 

 in vain in ninety-nine hundred gardens out of a 

 thousand. How many ladies who really take pains 

 about their borders are acquainted with the lovely 

 little ground-laurel (Epigcea repens), the chosen 

 badge of Nova Scotia, or the quaint, oak-leaved 

 avens (Dryas octopetala), sheeting the banks with 

 dark-green foliage and gay white flowers ? The 

 Canadian ' puccoon ' or blood-root (Sanguinaria cana- 

 densis) far exceeds the snowdrop in lustrous white, 

 and is quite as easily naturalised ; while for match- 

 less blue consider the Himalayan Tecophilcea cyano- 

 crocus. 



