270 MORE POT-POURRI 



tends to make the process ridiculous. And as only those 

 are cremated who wish it, detailed directions might be 

 left that the ashes should be spread under the sweet vault 

 of heaven, and a memorial erected, useful or otherwise, 

 in church or street, as seems good to the family. That 

 alone, in my opinion, gives dignity to the whole proceeding ; 

 the burying of box or urn is meaningless and almost 

 puerile. How dogmatic it reads in print, to say simply 

 what one feels ! But I mention my view of the question 

 because, in talking with people, I so often find they have 

 done such and such a thing merely because they had not 

 thought of the other way. The old world, it is true, 

 collected the ashes. But we know that in later days they 

 were used by the Koman washerwomen, so long as they 

 could get them, as we use soda, for the purifying alkalies 

 they contained. I see no need for us to provide alkaline 

 matter for future generations. 



April 2nd. I have been lately to some of my Suffolk 

 friends, in whose gardens I always learn so much. In a 

 bowl of mixed flowers in my room I quickly detected a 

 flower I did not know, a pale lavender double-Daisy-shaped 

 ball, many on a branch, and yet not crowded or thick. 

 This turned out to be double Cineraria, grown from seed 

 sent out by Veitch. I can see the horror of many of my 

 good-colour loving, bad-colour hating friends, who dislike 

 the ordinary finely-grown gardener's Cinerarias as much 

 as I do. These double ones have the advantage of doing 

 exceedingly well picked, and are one of the few plants 

 which I really think are prettier double than single, though 

 I afterwards saw that some of the plants were very crude 

 and hard in colour. 



Dimorphotheca eclonis is a very pretty-growing, long- 

 flowering pot-plant from Africa. It is of the same family as 

 Calendula (Marigold), and very like Calendula pluvialis, 

 figured in Maund's ' Botanic Garden,' that never-to-be-too- 



