22 FAMILIAR WILD FLOWERS. 



Such a hedge is, and quite legitimately, the horror of the 

 methodical cultivator with whose balance-sheets such a 

 state of things is in direct antagonism, but it is equally 

 legitimately the delight of the botanist and the artist, who 

 find in its rich confusion a perfect wealth of interest and 

 beauty. The true home of the creeping bell-flower is in 

 the open glades of woods, and in fields that are to some 

 extent shaded by surrounding foliage. When it is once 

 established amidst congenial surroundings, either in the 

 woodland recesses or in the rural garden, its creeping root 

 and general vitality enable it to hold its ground, and as 

 the plant is a perennial, it may with confidence be looked 

 for year after year. An author to whose pages we 

 turned on this subject says that the plant is " difficult 

 of extirpation/' but we could hardly imagine any one test- 

 ing the point practically, as the graceful beauty of the 

 plant renders it a very desirable acquisition, either to the 

 many charms of woodland scenery or to the glowing flower 

 border. The long lines and borderings of scarlet gera- 

 niums, calceolarias, and the like, that are made up of 

 dozens or hundreds of similar plants, are a floral heresy 

 that the cottager has hitherto escaped, and which all of 

 botanical tastes and an eye for the picturesque will care- 

 fully eschew; and we certainly shall not extirpate our 

 treasured specimen of creeping bell-flower in our own 

 garden to make room for any number of circles in blue, 

 diamonds in red, or zig-zags in yellow, whether com- 

 pounded of Countess of Ellesmere petunias, Amy Hogg 

 zonate pelargoniums, Prince of Orange calceolarias, or 

 Beauty of Ravensbourne lobelias. Even with those who 

 are snared by an attractive name, our plant again may 

 put in a plea for non-extirpation, for those who find Amy 



