150 ALPINES AND BOG-PLANTS 



for high, rough banks, so I will only chronicle my pretty 

 yellow-spiked Digitalis ambigua that I collected many 

 years ago in shady dells of the Esterel ; and a very beauti- 

 ful amUgua hybrid of which I have seedlings. The 

 parent-plant had close small-flowered spikes of lovely 

 rosy bells. Then for the Verbascums I am reduced to the 

 pretty phoeniceum, with flowers that vary through almost 

 every conceivable shade of purple. Decorum I once im- 

 ported from Servia, but he was very flannelly and very 

 like the common Mullein, so that wliat with one thing 

 and the other, I experienced no wild regret or surprise 

 when the whole lot mouldered off^ as a consequence of 

 damp on the journey. 



From thought of the Mulleins, so rank, so coarse, 

 I leap with pleasure to the contemplation of my tinier 

 bulbs. Not here is the place, nor am I the temerarious 

 soul to talk of DaiFodils, of wee Daffodils, of Narcissus 

 nanus, Bulhocodium, monophyllus, calathinus, t7-iandrus, 

 rnoschatus, and many another delicate angel of spring — 

 £apo<; ay'Y6\,o<; i/jLep6(j)a}vo<; a7]Swv. I will be content with 

 praising the ' pied Fritillary.' Difficult, indeed, are some 

 of these, and dowdy, but I worship the white variety 

 of our native Meleagris ; and this is a thrifty soul tliat 

 goes ahead in any decent soil. Aurea is perfectly beauti- 

 ful, with the same rounded bells, but much dwarfer, and 

 of a soft canary-yellow, faintly checkered with more or 

 less brown. Aimena is another pretty one, and so is 

 Moggridgei ; but the dingy ones like pyrenaica I consider 

 dull and ugly ; while pluriflora, with the scarlet flowers, 

 has never done much good here, and, altogether, it is in 

 pots rather than in the open that I get my pleasure out 

 of Fritillaria. The Erythroniums, however (why are 

 they called Red Violets or Dog-tooth Violets, or any 

 violets at all ? Nothing could be so unlike), approve of 

 me more warmly, and are always perfectly beautiful, with 



