EXPLANATORY. 3 
may have more of the varied beauty of hardy flowers than 
the most ardent admirer of the old style of garden ever dreams 
of, by naturalising innumerable beautiful natives of many 
regions of the earth in our woods and copses, rougher parts 
of pleasure grounds, and in unoccupied places in almost every 
kind of garden. 
I allude not to the wood and brake flora of any one 
country, but to that which finds its home in the vast fields of 
the whole northern world, and that of the hill-ground that 
falls in furrowed folds from beneath the hoary heads of all 
the great mountain chains of the world, whether they rise 
from hot Indian plains or green European pastures. The 
Palm and sacred Fig, as well as the Wheat and the Vine, are 
separated from the stemless plants that cushion under the 
snow for half the year, by a zone of hardier and not less 
beautiful life, varied as the breezes that whisper on the 
mountain sides, and as the rills that seam them. They are 
the Lilies, and Bluebells, and Foxgloves, and Irises, and 
Windflowers, and Columbines, and Rock-roses, and Violets, 
and Cranesbills, and countless Pea-flowers, and mountain 
Avens, and Brambles, and Cinquefoils, and Evening Prim- 
roses, and Clematis, and Honeysuckles, and Michaelmas 
Daisies, and Wood-hyacinths, and Daffodils, and Bindweeds, 
and Forget-me-nots, and blue-eyed Omphalodes, and Prim- 
roses, and Day Lilies, and Asphodels, and St. Bruno’s Lilies, 
and the almost innumerable plants which form the flora of 
the northern and temperate portions of vast continents. 
It is beyond the power of pen or pencil to picture the 
beauty of these plants. Innumerable and infinitely varied 
scenes occur in the wilder parts of all northern and temperate 
