8-2 FAMILIAR GARDEN FLOWERS. 



appear. Fully nine-tenths of all the smaller flowering 

 plants that are prized in gardens belong to sandy, cal- 

 careous, or peaty soils. A very small proportion, and 

 those of a somewhat rank habit of growth, belong to 

 the heavy loams and the deep clays. Those smaller plants 

 with large and lustrous flowers love light, moisture, pure 

 air, a free soil, in which their roots can run freely j but 

 stagnant moisture at their roots and a pasty soil are 

 unfavourable to their full development, and sometimes 

 forbid them to live. Thus we have explained to us 

 that in the London garden, and in any other garden 

 where the soil is heavy and damp, and the atmos- 

 phere particularly impure, this crimson geranium be- 

 comes rank in growth, and produces but few and pale- 

 coloured flowers. And the final lesson, for the present, 

 is, that in forming rockeries for such plants, we must 

 insure perfect drainage, so that the soil may never be 

 water-logged; and provide for the principal bulk of the 

 smaller plants a soil consisting of sandy loam, mere 

 siliceous grit being in many cases necessary to their 

 well-being. 



Our mid geraniums are a pretty lot, and find favour 

 w^ith the cultivators of rustic plants. In the books the 

 geraniums are classed as crane^s-bills, to distinguish them 

 from pelargoniums, which are stork's-bills, and the 

 erodiums, which have heron's-bills; these descriptive names 

 referring to the resemblance of the seeds to the long- 

 pointed bill of a bird. The dusky crane's-bill [Gerauiuiii 

 phaiuii), the knotty crane^'s-bill [G. nodosum), the meadow 

 crane's-bill [G. prateuse), and the shining crane's-bill 

 [^G. lucidum) are all good garden plants, the last but 

 one in the list being remarkably handsome when well 



