FIFTY AND SIXTY FUOWERS 293 



old. But there are degrees of so-called unseasonableness ; 

 and now and again December resembles an early spring 

 or autumn month. Certainly the December of 1934 was 

 so exceptional that some of its abnormal events are 

 worth putting on record, precisely. The villagers are 

 quite as nearly interested as the international phenolo- 

 gists, as they call themselves, the men who study the 

 dates of appearances and try to discover correlations that 

 may be useful to man, or as the weather expert of the 

 neighbouring agricultural station whose records of the 

 month were entirely surpassed. 



The following census of flowers in bloom was made 

 in the week following Christmas Day. The place was 

 the spacious and precious garden of a glorious country 

 house a score of miles north of London. One of the 

 features of the garden is a pair of immense cedars ; and 

 the owner was gratified on a visit to Lebanon to discover 

 that the trees did not grow in their native home to any 

 ske at all comparable with the transplanted cedars, with 

 their immense &quot; layers of shade,&quot; which was their special 

 virtue in the eyes of that precise and particular observer, 

 the poet Tennyson. It contained many exotic trees as 

 well as some exotic birds ; and inside its pale are flourish 

 ing many of the rare, and as yet unknown, plants that 

 were harvested in Tibet by Mr. Kingdon Ward, that 

 greatest of to-day s travellers in plants. Such a garden 

 may not be called characteristic or normal, though it is 

 very English and typical of the best of the country houses 

 that are the source of some of the greatest beauties in 

 English life and scenery. The village loves its country 

 house and rejoices to compare notes between the smallest 

 garden and the greatest. The little daphne is as deeply 

 admired, and certainly gives as much pleasure as au- 

 tumnalis. Its sweet, modest, almost violet-like blossoms 



