154 COLIN CLOUTS CALENDAR. 



but nature makes that mean : * still, she makes it merely, 

 as it seems to me, by way of disease or disorganisation ; 

 and 1 go rather with Perdita (as Shakespeare himself 

 clearly did) in declaring ' I'll not put the dibble in the 

 earth to set one slip of them.' No : our cottage garden 

 does well enough with the old hardy perennials and 

 annuals, the mints and marjoram, the daffodils and violets, 

 the lilies and oxlips of our English poetry ; it will not 

 away with your modern gloxinias and echeverias, and 

 heaven only knows what other new-fangled things, 

 called by doubtfully classical names unlovelier than 

 themselves. 



Among all our old-fashioned garden flowers, not one 

 is brighter or prettier than these common pelargoniums 

 from the Cape which we all know familiarly as scarlet 

 geraniums. They are not exactly of the genuine 

 botanical geranium type, it is true ; but they are quite 

 near enough to it for even unlearned eyes to perceive, 

 immediately the close relationship between them. I 

 suppose everybody knows the little wild herb-robert of 

 our English roadsides — its pretty lace-like foliage turns 

 so bright a red on dry walls or sandy hedge-banks, that 

 even the most casual passer-by can hardly fail to have 

 learned its name. Herb-robert is the true geranium ; 

 and it has many familiar allies in Britain and in the rest 

 of Europe, including that large and brilliant kind the 

 blood geranium which stars the limestone rocks of the 

 Mediterranean and the Atlantic shores, from Sorrento 

 and Cadiz to our own Cornish, Welsh, and Cumbrian 

 cliffs. 



The ordinary scarlet garden pelargonium is descended 

 from a very similar type ; and yet though it is so 



