Flowers and Gardens 



flowering it is bespotted here and there 

 with little scarlet lady-birds, whose bright 

 tints add most conspicuously to the beauty 

 of the plant, and seem absolutely to belong 

 to it. I do not know what they are doing 

 there, — probably in search of insects or 

 of other food, — but they furnish in their 

 scarlet and black the very colour that is 

 needed to set off the green by contrast. 

 The plant is almost incomplete without 

 them. I wonder if they are attached to 

 it in its native country. 



84 



