FIFTY AND SIXTY FLOWERS 295 



These cultivated flowers find no near parallel in the 

 wild flowers ; but a very great number of these, too, 

 though they are wiser students of our climate, are in 

 fresh and springlike bloom. You could make a long 

 list, headed by the daisies, dandelions, dead nettles, and 

 primroses that usually put out a few flowers to greet the 

 New Year. On the first day of another and less open 

 year a cottage garden census gave sixty flowers. The 

 daisies are in carpets ; and some much more surprising 

 blossoms are near them. On the coast of Dorset a good 

 deal of viper s bugloss was out ; and its flowers, that can 

 never decide whether to be red or blue, are curiously 

 similar in tints (which are rare tints) to the lungworts 

 that flower in our gardens, if we are wise enough to 

 encourage such common things. Some of the blossoms 

 are due, perhaps, to the discouragement of a dry summer, 

 though its suns were in general makers of flowers. For 

 example, I transplanted in the spring two bushes, one a 

 climbing rose, the other a Pirus japonica. Both fought 

 hard against heat and drought and finally won. The red 

 flowers that have now come out are perhaps the delayed 

 reward of the hard struggle. They were thrust into 

 a new garden of which the outstanding miracle to 

 which I know no parallel has been the crop of mush 

 rooms. 



On New Year s Day some hopeful gardeners have 

 the pretty custom of making a census of the braver plants 

 that Woom in the face of winter; and the list is un 

 believably long. It denies altogether the general im 

 pression. Here is one list belonging to a garden teed 

 up on a considerably raised ground well to the north 

 of London : 



Stocks Chrysanthemums 



Primroses Rosemary 



