NOVELTY AND VARIETY 251 



dwarf ones as well as the old trailing kinds. I even 

 confess to a certain liking for the podgy little dwarf 

 Snapdragons ; they are ungraceful little dumpy things, 

 but they happen to have come in some tender colour- 

 ings of pale yellow and pale pink, that give them a 

 kind of absurd prettiness, and a certain garden-value. 

 I also look at them as a little floral joke that is harm- 

 less and not displeasing, but they cannot for a moment 

 compare in beauty with the free-growing Snapdragon 

 of the older type. This I always think one of the 

 best and most interesting and admirable of garden- 

 plants. Its beauty is lost if it is crowded up among 

 other things in a border ; it should be grown in a dry 

 wall or steep rocky bank, where its handsome bushy 

 growth and finely-poised spikes of bloom can be well 

 seen. 



One of the annuals that I think is entirely spoilt 

 by dwarfing is Love-in-a-Mist, a plant I hold in high 

 admiration. Many years ago I came upon some of it 

 in a small garden, of a type that I thought extremely 

 desirable, with a double ilowef of just the right degree 

 of fulness, and of an unusually fine colour. I was 

 fortunate enough to get some seed, and have never 

 grown any other, nor have I ever seen elsewhere any 

 that I think can compare -with it. 



The Zinnia is another fine annual that has been 

 much spoilt by its would-be improvers. When a 

 Zinnia has a hard, stiff, tall flower, with a great many 

 rows of petals piled up one on top of another, and 



