JANUARY 175 



those who are fond of rare Tulips I must not forget to 

 recommend Tulipa kaufmanniana, which I bloomed for the 

 first time last spring, and which is quite equal in its way 

 to Tulipa gre'igi and several other Tulip species which I 

 have had from time to time from my afore-mentioned 

 Dutch friends. After the Calochorti, perhaps a bed of 

 Ixias from the same Haarlem firm was the next best 

 thing my garden produced in 1897. I find Ixias the very 

 easiest plants to grow, and this year they were all but as 

 good as I have ever seen them in Italian gardens. So 

 marvellously brilliant were they as to be quite dazzling 

 to the eyes on a sunny day. They have only one fault, 

 viz. that after flowering in June and ripening off they 

 begin their next year's growth in October, and so their 

 young leaves are rather apt to get punished by the black 

 frosts of spring. The fact is, they suffer from insomnia, 

 and so by rights they should be lifted in July and made 

 to sleep, in spite of themselves, on a dark shelf till 

 planted again in March; but they do wonderfully well 

 here even if left to take care of themselves.' It is quite 

 a relief to hear this wonderfully successful amateur has 

 difficulties with Lilies. All the same the description he 

 gives of his own seems to me very like success. He 

 speaks of the White Martagon (a Lily I am now trying to 

 grow) and Lilium testaceum as being great favourites 

 with him. He was struck at Torridon by another plant 

 which he says does so much better there than with him, 

 viz. the scarlet and green Alstrcemeria psittacina. The 

 clumps were almost as strong as sheaves of oats. ' I have 

 a new variety,' he writes, ' of this parrot flower a deep 

 crimson one which was very good here at the end of 

 November.' But if I go on I shall end by quoting the 

 whole of this most interesting gardening letter. I hope 

 the anonymous writer, who dates from Inverewe Poolewe, 

 where the climate must be such as to make any gardener 



