APRIL 275 



cremated who wish it, detailed directions might be left 

 that the ashes should be spread under the sweet vault of 

 heaven, and a memorial erected, useful or otherwise, in 

 church or street, as seems good to the family. That 

 alone, in my opinion, gives dignity to the whole pro- 

 ceeding ; the burying of box or urn is meaningless and 

 almost puerile. How dogmatic it reads in print, to say 

 simply what one feels ! But I mention my view of the 

 question because, in talking with people, I so often find 

 they have done such and such a thing merely because 

 they had not thought of the other way. The old world, 

 it is true, collected the ashes. But we know that in 

 later days they were used by the Roman washerwomen, 

 so long as they could get them, as we use soda, for the 

 purifying alkalies they contained. I see no need for us 

 to provide alkaline matter for future generations. 



April 2nd. — I have been lately to some of my Suffolk 

 friends, in whose gardens I always learn so much. In a 

 bowl of mixed flowers in my room I quickly detected a 

 flower I did not know, a pale lavender double -daisy- 

 shaped ball, many on a branch, and yet not crowded or 

 thick. This turned out to be double Cineraria, grown 

 from seed sent out by Veitch. I can see the horror of 

 many of my good- colour-loving, bad -colour -hating 

 friends, who dislike the ordinary finely -grown gardener's 

 Cinerarias as much as I do. These double ones have 

 the advantage of doing exceedingly well picked, and are 

 one of the few plants which I really think are prettier 

 double than single, though I afterwards saw that some 

 of the plants were very crude and hard in colour. 



Dimorphotheca eclonis is a very pretty- growing, 

 long -flowering pot -plant from Africa. It is of the same 

 family as Calendula (Marigold), and very like Calendula 

 pluvialis, figured in Maund's 'Botanic Garden,' that 

 never -to -be -too -much -praised book. The whole family 



