AMERICAN SEED CATALOGUES 



should be; and this Ust of tulips and daffodils, in 

 its completeness, its careful descriptive text, its 

 excellent prefatory notes, and its color sense, is 

 head and shoulders above most that we have — 

 much more like an English list. Temperamen- 

 tally it differs from an English list. It is buoyant 

 in language — in fact, almost affectionate in appre- 

 ciation of the beauties it describes. 



Lists of gladioli alone are now legion. They are 

 always fluttering through our mails, Cowee's, of 

 Berlin, New York, perhaps the earliest to have 

 been devoted to this flower alone. It is now in 

 very sumptuous dress and rainbowlike in color. 

 A charming catalogue comes each year from the 

 Tracys, of Wenham, Massachusetts, others from 

 groups of men in Ohio, such as Bidwell and Fobes, 

 the successors of that wonderful Frank Banning, 

 to whom we owe gladiolus America and that 

 other beauty Niagara. Clark W. Brown and Joe 

 Coleman are two notable growers of gladioli in the 

 same State, and send out attractive little books; 

 John Lewis Childs, of course, offers a huge list. 

 But it has remained for this season to introduce 

 to me the remarkable list of the only woman 

 grower of the gladiolus, commercial grower, that 

 I know. This woman is Miss Mary Lois Haw- 



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