OF ODD TREASURES 151 



marbled leaves as with yellow or pink or white reflexing 

 flowers. They are spattered all over the place, and 

 thrive heartily — Americanum, Howelli, Dens canis,revolu- 

 tum, and Stuarti (the true lovely white montanum I 

 have never been able to get). 



Little bulbs uncountable does the cousinhood of the 

 Lilies give one, and Grape-Hyacinths are among the 

 prettiest. I have never specialised on any of these 

 families ; so my Muscaris are restricted to ordinary ones, 

 like the very heavenly Heavenly Blue, whose turquoise 

 spikes are almost the earliest flowers to appear; then 

 there is szovitzianum, with its white and its rare pale 

 azure form ; and the common hotryoeides, with our own 

 native racemosum, all little cluster Hyacinths, these, to 

 whom my love goes out far more readily than to plumy, 

 wild monstrosities like comosum. 



Of the Hyacinths, my prime favourite is the soft, sky- 

 blue amethystinus — a real sky-blue, with its white form 

 — as well as the ordinary Dutch Hyacinth, when it has 

 forgotten its Dutchness and grown thin and elegant 

 again, in which reduced and reclaimed condition there is 

 not a prettier plant alive than the Hyacinth that had 

 been so fat and horrid and soulless the year before, in 

 beds or pots or glasses. Hyaclnthella rumelica is a 

 novelty that I am rearing from seed, and whether it is 

 pretty or no I cannot say — at this moment I cannot even 

 tell you whether it is alive or not. All I do know is, that 

 if a thing with such a name can be ugly, I shall no longer 

 believe that there is any sense of decency in nature. 



High, high among bulbs comes our well-known Blue- 

 bell, too, and on this subject I must loose my wrath 

 against the purblindness of people who, when they want 

 to naturalise Bluebells, don't buy our own Scilla nutans, 

 but the kindred Scilla patula (or campanulata or Ms- 

 panica), which is a Bluebell spoiled at every point, with- 



