OLD-TIME FLOWERS 201 



deviating precision — a most self-conscious flower, al- 

 ways on its good behavior. The dissolute members 

 of the family — careless "parrot" strains — only came 

 into polite society when such society became less pains- 

 taking about its politeness, along with the breaking 

 up of garden and other affected little conventionalities, 

 towards the end of the seventeenth century. 



By this time the discoveries in the West Indies, 

 South America and our own continent had brought 

 many new plants to the gardens and gardeners of 

 Europe; and these novelties gradually usurped the 

 place of the haughty belle from the Orient. Indeed, 

 not only was she dethroned, but the time came when 

 this flower of flowers — which had driven the staid 

 Hollanders to such a degree of madness that their 

 government interfered to stop the ruinous speculation 

 in tulip bulbs in which they were indulging — was con- 

 sidered, for a while at least, only a very common, lowly, 

 poor man's flower. 



It is not with the amazingly popular flowers of old 

 time that we are concerned, however — at least not with 

 these to the exclusion of others, although in any repro- 

 duction of an old type of garden these should of course 

 receive the prominence which that particular type ac- 

 corded them — ^but with the generally planted flowers, 

 the flowers which grew in everyone's garden during 

 the one hundred and seventy-five years which we have 



