THE 
WINTER ACONITE. 
Eranthis hyemalis. 
N common with many of the 
humbler kinds of garden flowers, 
the winter aconite is but little 
known to humble gardeners, but 
the managers of “great places” 
know it, and prize it, and turn 
it to good account in the com- 
paratively new order of decoration 
known as “spring gardening.” 
It is but a little herb, with a 
dark tuberous root, producing in 
February or March yellow flowers, 
surrounded by a whorl of glossy- 
green deeply-cut leaves. It lasts 
but a short time, and is not very 
showy even at the best. 
But as one star compels attention when the sky is 
black and no other star is to be seen, so this little flower, 
which is many degrees inferior in brightness of colouring 
to a common buttercup, has a most delightful appearance 
if we have the good fortune to see it on a soft sunny day 
in February. Then, indeed, it seems to say the spring 1s 
surely coming, and even the tfrost-defying daffodils, that 
