SEPTEMBER 33 



we assuredly persuade our selues that there are no such 

 plants, but meere fictions and deuices, as we terme them, 

 to giue his friend a gudgeon.' ' Giving his friend a 

 gudgeon ' is apparently a Gerardian expression for what 

 we should now call in familiar language ' pulling his 

 leg.' 



I alluded before (page 132 of ' Pot-Pourri ') to the 

 cultivation of the large Japanese Stonecrop (Sedum 

 spectabile). I have grown to like it more and more, 

 because it is a very obliging plant, and will grow even in 

 shade, though the specimens are far finer if grown in good 

 soil and moved into a sunny place in July or August. I 

 always take this little trouble, and in September I have 

 my reward. Many people will not appreciate the great 

 beauties of this plant because of the colour of the flowers, 

 which are of rather an inartistic magenta-pink ; but 

 the insects do not find this so, and the reason I grow so 

 much of it is that the bees simply love it. The little hard- 

 working honey-bee, the large handsome bumble-bee, flies 

 and beetles of all kinds, and the beautiful common butter- 

 flies, all flop about it with the keenest enjoyment, the 

 colour of the flower only making a groundwork to their 

 bright hues on a sunny September morning. I never fail 

 either to think, as I look at this scene, of a little poem 

 by Victor Hugo which was the delight of my youth, though 

 perhaps for non-floral reasons : 



La pauvre fleur disait au papillon celeste : 



4 Ne fuis pas ! 

 Vois comme nos destins sont differents. Je reste, 



Tu t'en vas ! 



' Pourtant nous nous aimons, nous vivons sans les homines 



Et loin d'eux, 

 Et nous nous ressemblons, et 1'on dit que nous sommes 



Fleurs tous deux ! 



D 



