NEWS OF SPRING 



of their grace, something of their gaiety into the souls of our 

 ancestors. 



But where do they hide themselves? They are becoming 

 rarer than those which we call rare flowers to-day. They lead 

 a secret and precarious existence. It seems as though we were 

 on the point of losing them ; and perhaps there are some which, 

 discouraged at last, have lately disappeared, of which the 

 seeds have died under old ruins, which will never again know 

 the dew of the gardens and which we shall find only in very 

 ancient books, on the bright grass-plots of azure miniatures or 

 along the saffron-tinted lawns of the Primitives. 



They are driven from the borders and the flaunting 

 flower-beds by arrogant strangers from Peru, the Cape, China, 

 Japan. The have two pitiless enemies in particular. The 

 first of these is the crowding and prolific Begonia Tuberosa, 

 that swarms in the beds like a tribe of turbulent fighting-cocks, 

 with innumerous combs. It is handsome, but insolent and a 

 little artificial ; and, whatever the silence and meditation of the 

 hour, under the sun and under the moon, in the intoxication of 

 the day and the solemn peace of the night, it sounds its clarion 

 and proclaims a monotonous, gaudy and scentless victory. 

 The other is the Double Geranium, not quite so indiscreet, but 



C178] 



