JANUARY 153 



difficult to grow, and have a quite extraordinary love of 

 dying without any very obvious reason. I must devote 

 myself to finding out, if possible, what the reason is. I 

 see that Mr. Smee, in his book ' My Garden,' says they 

 did the same with him. 



I have just gathered three beautiful, full white buds 

 off a Niphetos Eose in the conservatory next the drawing- 

 room. It is blooming extra early this year. 



January 6th. Fate caused me to go to Ireland about 

 this time last year. I dreaded the long night journey 

 and the arrival on the gray winter morning. But were 

 the steamers far less splendid sea-boats than they are, and 

 the waves every day as stormy as they sometimes are, I 

 think it still would be well worth while for any garden- 

 fancier to visit Ireland in January, if only to admire and 

 enjoy the luxuriant green of the evergreens and the beauty 

 of the winter-flowering shrubs. I had never seen Garry a 

 elliptica in full beauty before. It had catkins six or seven 

 inches long, flowering from end to end, one little flower 

 growing out of the other like a baby chain made with 

 cowslips. The Jasminum nudiflorum was not a flowering 

 branch here and there, as in England, but one sheet of 

 brilliant yellow flowers. This beautiful plant is very easy 

 to propagate by laying some of the branches along the 

 ground and covering them with earth. In six or seven 

 months they will have made good root, and can be taken 

 up and planted where desired. One house I saw in the 

 neighbourhood of Dublin was covered on its southern side 

 with the Clematis cirrhosa or winter-flowering Clematis 

 from Algiers. The house was an old one, much frequented 

 by John Wesley and mentioned in Southey's Life. On 

 one of the thick strong walls, inside, was the following 

 inscription (translated, I believe, from the German) : 



The Angels from their throne on high 

 Look down on us with pitying eye, 



