THE GREATER BOG-PLANTS 193 



the ground of the dealer in herbaceous stuffs — so will slide 

 past the tall herbaceous Phloxes with a mere comment 

 that late summer holds nothing more richly splendid 

 than ' General von Heuzst ' — the spelling is uncertain in 

 all catalogues — sparkling cherry-rose, with a clear white 

 eye — flowering profusely too, in mounded heads of 

 circular flowers, and striking the eye, in a mass, from 

 quarter of a mile away. And this is only primus inter 

 pares, where almost all are beautiful. 



Now, last of all, comes my plaint for LysicMton kam- 

 schatcense. This plant, of daunting title, is very likely 

 not what I mean, though ; Kew's LysicMton has the 

 foliage of my lost love, but its flowers, I am told, are 

 yellow. Now this is the tale of my discovery and loss. 

 After a long toil amid the solfataras of Noboribets', in 

 the Hokkaido, I was returning, wearied, through the 

 calm twilight of a grey day, when I came suddenly upon 

 a sopping bog, filled with pools and gleaming stagnations 

 of wet. And, dotted about over the pale expanses, were 

 starting up, on stems of an inch or two, great snowy 

 blossoms exactly the size and shape and colour of Calla 

 ethiopica. As soon as the flowers were over, up would 

 come the leaves. I saw them, on advanced specimens — 

 opulent, splendid fans, exactly like those of Musa 

 Ensete. You may imagine how eagerly, with pantomime 

 and gesticulation, I procured me, from an Aino villager, 

 a spade or mattock that must have been twin to that 

 with which Cain killed Abel; how, with this primeval 

 implement, I raked up the stinking depths of the marsh, 

 to get a few plants with their vast white roots intact : 

 how I sent them off, with elaborate directions, to be 

 grown for me in Yokohama. And how, of course, amid 

 the torrid heats of that pestilential place they all unani- 

 mously expired, and I have never since been able to 

 acquire that precious plant in a living state. True, I 



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