FIFTY AND SIXTY FLOWERS 297 



edge of frost and snow and sleet and gale it is well to 

 record the extreme lateness of one season. The eve of 

 December is very much the same as the eve of most 

 Novembers. 



Flowers are early, like the heather ; late, like the arabis ; 

 seasonable, like the naked-flowered jessamine and that 

 strange year ending with an early winter as with a 

 late autumn. We picked the most characteristic of wild 

 plants, the field mushroom, in the last week of December. 

 That was strange ; but to some it is stranger that we also 

 picked excellent raspberries, the most delicious of any 

 sum trier fruits. The mushrooms and raspberries are, 

 nevertheless, in very different categories. The one is an 

 exceptional gift of an exceptional season ; the other is a 

 permanent advance in the art and craft of defeating the 

 sun. By combing out the world from China, especially 

 China, to Peru and by scientific breeding we have in 

 some measure composed a complete floral girdle for the 

 year in this northern but temperate island. &quot; Perpetual &quot; 

 and &quot; perennial &quot; (which we use as lightly as &quot; per 

 manent &quot; in a very different application) become more 

 or less accurate. The Lloyd George raspberry always 

 fruits in late November. The winter jessamine always 

 flowers in December. Roses (at any rate in the Isle of 

 Wight and the south-west counties) can be picked in 

 every month, perhaps in every week, of the year. Praecox 

 is an adjective proper to many more plants than the 

 Himalayan rhododendron (or rose-tree) which anticipates 

 spring at Kew in that fertile crook of the Thames, where 

 ver semper viret. Our zoological and botanic gardens 

 differ in this. The imported birds have an inclination 

 to obey the seasons of their adopted country. Many of 

 the plants keep true to their native almanac and go on 

 flowering at their accustomed date, though the mercury 



