136 
through the winter. These Lilies are 
practically hardy. 
Add at least one Auratum to your 
bulb order, and as many more as your 
plant allowance will permit — yea — cull 
out some less desirable or more com- 
mon bulb if you must, but get at least 
one choice Auratum bulb, and keep 
everlastingly at it each year until you 
have a Lily bed fit for a king, one that 
for its mingling of exquisite odors and 
combining of color cannot be sur- 
passed. 
To the heart that responsive to Nature’s, 
Is sweetly in tune. 
Each Lily-bell, breeze-blown and swaying, 
Rings out the glad rune. 
If with soul and sense, ye can listen. 
This the message they bring — 
“ Consider the Lilies ; they toil not ; 
Yet never a king 
Was arrayed in a robe of such richness 
Or of texture so lustrous and fair ; 
And the love that provides for the Lilies, 
For his children will tenderly care. 
— Alice R. Corson. 
Soil and Plant Habitat. 
The botanist and the flower-gatherer soon 
come to recognize instinctively various plant 
habitat, partly from the mere looks of the 
place and partly from the conspicuous plants 
which grow there. So well known is this con- 
nection between the soil and the plants which 
inhabit it that we naturally expect to find cer- 
tain species where we find other very differ- 
ent ones growing. Fern hunters in search 
of the adder’s-tongue or the curly grass 
( Schizaea ) often rely upon “call plants” grow- 
ing with them to indicate their whereabouts. 
We do not expect hickory-nuts on every 
wooded hillside, nor strawberries in every 
field. It all depends upon the soil. This is 
also the reason we seldom find huckleberries, 
arbutus, laurel and the pink lady’s slipper 
growing with trillium, bloodroot, phloxes, 
mandrake, and the like. Even the trees in 
whose shade these two groups of plants grow 
are different. With the first group we find 
pines and oaks and with the second bass- 
wood, ash and maple. We find, however, 
that the soil not only influences the charac- 
ter of the plants which grow in it, but the 
plants in turn influence the soil. The leaves 
of certain plants produce acids when they de- 
cay while others become alkaline. If the 
soil is calcareous, the acids may be neutral- 
ized and form habitats in which our ordinary 
plants can grow, but if the soil is acid only 
certain specialized plants can survive in it, 
such as the heaths, some of the orchids, the 
pitcher plant, sundew, and various others. 
Until recently the acid soils were supposed 
to be confined to the bogs, but it is now 
known that many upland soils may be acid 
and form peaty deposits similar to those in 
the bogs. This accounts for certain species 
of heaths living on hillsides. At present, the 
principal plants of the acid and alkaline soils 
are fairly well known, but the lesser species 
are not. It would be an interesting experi- 
ment to list the plants of two such regions 
and accurately determine which species are 
confined to each. Undoubtedly there are 
some that will grow in either, but the num- 
ber is likely to be small in comparison with 
the list of those confined to one soil or the 
other . — The American Botanist. 
The fairy story on this page entitled 
“ The Naming of the Peonies,” brings 
in some extremely interesting studies. 
That there are things in nature which 
cannot be seen but only sensed, those 
who are close students are perfectly 
willing to admit. There is doubtless 
much more in this fairy story than the 
average person can get from a casual 
reading. 
Slower (Brower 
September, 1920 
The Naming of the Peonies. 
(A Story.) 
By BARNEY WESTHAWS. 
[Written exfrenly far The Flower Grower . ] 
T HE GARDENER of Thorniknowe was a 
venerable man by the story of the 
years, but he was as young as he was 
old. He was, as was fitting, in view of 
his vocation, a nature-lover, and also some- 
thing of a sage and poet. And he was, of 
course, on intimate and friendly terms with 
the “little people,” the fairy folk of garden, 
wood and stream. 
The garden at Thorniknowe was devoted 
almost entirely to flowers, that is to plants 
and shrubs bearing beautiful blooms or of fine 
form and foliage; but the gardener’s chief de- 
votion was to the Peony, of which he had 
the best varieties in cultivation both of the 
herbaceous and of the Moutan, or Tree Peony. 
Thorniknowe is located in the northern 
part of the Empire State; but it will not be 
found on any map. Indeed, it is a place 
with which maps and prosy literal descrip- 
tions have nothing to do; and this is as pre- 
cise an account of it as is likely ever to be 
given. 
The gardener of Thorniknowe had many 
friends sharing with him the love and joy of 
the flowers, some, indeed, whom he had 
never met, but who had become his friends 
through the little things he now and then 
wrote and which, by strangely winged trans- 
mission, had sometimes travelled far. One 
of these friends, with whom he maintained 
an informal correspondence, was a lady whose 
home was far away among the citrus groves 
of the Pacific coast. 
Though this friend had never seen the 
garden from the gardener’s references to it in 
his writings and letters she had such a 
vivid conception of it that she seemed to 
know it and to love it even as did the gar- 
dener himself; and she shared with him also 
a sort of mystical sense by which phases of 
the world usually regarded as distinct and 
antithetic are seen as correspondent and 
kindred, and by a larger comprehension the 
world of sense and the world of soul blend 
in one cosmic unity, the garden becoming 
the mirror and manifestation-point of the 
whole. 
In the year whose happenings are being 
related the Peony season had opened with 
rich promise. The Tennifolias had revealed 
their dainty fringe-set floral forms, the Mou- 
tans unfolded their delicate nuances and ex- 
pansive splendors, and the Officinalis Rubras 
spread their massive array of deep red 
blooms; and the earliests of the Albifloras 
were with undaunted and rejoicing pride 
holding high on as yet unbending stems their 
gorgeous effects. Finest consummations were 
assuringly forecast by this auspicious open- 
ing. 
Something of all this incipient glory and 
promise in the Peony garden had been com- 
municated by the gardener, with character- 
istic enthusiasm and touches of poetic ideal- 
ism, to his friend in the West. Responding 
in like vein she had expressed a wish that 
the fairies would convey her to the garden 
and place her in the petalled bosom of the 
gardener’s favorite Peony that she might with 
directer observance and fellowship share the 
garden’s delights. 
That she did not seriously mean this does 
not need to be said. It was but an outburst 
of exuberant fancy, a tribute of friendship, 
and an attestation of her deep communion 
with her friend in his garden cares and joys, 
clothed in strong hyperbole. It happened 
however that the Queen of the Fairies, who 
chanced to be near at the time, caught the 
lady’s volatile utterance. Now the fairies 
have a way of taking people at their word 
and translating most fictile utterance into 
actual effect. Or is it that they see beneath 
the play of superficial fancy, view the inner 
springs of desire, and know the deep and 
true reality of those motions which seem but 
wind-blown ripples upon the surface of con- 
scious life ? At any rate, the Fairy Queen re- 
garded the lady as meaning what she said 
and at once detailed a fairy entourage to con- 
vey her— a mere psychic presence, of course, 
intangible save to fairy senses— to the floral 
boudoir of her lightly expressed wish. 
The tiny cavalcade, with great eclat, yet 
with a great sense of responsibility and privi- 
lege withal, started at once upon its enterprise. 
It did not, however, make a direct course to 
its destination, but zigzagged hither and 
thither, visiting many noted gentle places on 
the way; and great fairy junketings marked 
the days, or rather nights, of their progress 
across the continent. But they took care 
not to let the Peony season at Thorniknowe 
pass its height before their arrival. Also a 
swift courier was despatched to take a more 
direct route and apprise the fairies of 
Thorniknowe of the expedition that was 
afoot (or should it rather be said awing?) with 
the garden as its destination. 
Great excitement and rare anticipation 
thrilled the little people of Thorniknowe at 
the intelligence, and they set themselves to 
eager and assiduous preparation for the 
event. They were soon all astir, and the air 
fairly throbbed with their pulsing intensity. 
As the gardener walked in his garden by night, 
which oft he did, as though finding commun- 
ion with his flowers even when their forms 
were veiled, and as though the stars shone 
with a gentler radiance on the garden than 
elsewhere, the air seemed alive and palpi- 
tating. The busy little folk could hardly 
keep their secret. Indeed, they did not 
wholly keep it. Somehow the Peonies got an 
inkling of it, and it wrought an even deeper 
stir in flowerdom than it had in fairydom. 
Each Peony became passionately and hope- 
fully ambitious to be the favored one to en- 
shrine the looked-for visitant. The gardener 
had at one time or other encouraged each 
one with words of appreciation; and so each 
strove with eager zeal for the crowning honor. 
This emulative struggle was especially in- 
tense among some seedlings which the gar- 
dener was cultivating with deeply interested 
and hopeful care. By cross-fertilization the 
finest strains were incorporated in the germ- 
inal bases of these plants, and great expecta- 
tions were indulged now that with a stalwart 
growth they were coming to their first bloom- 
ing. These seedlings felt that the honor of en- 
shrining the lady belonged properly to them. 
They said, “We belong to Thorniknowe in 
the truest sense. Those others are from 
China, Japan, France, Holland, England and 
a few gardens in America, and are here 
mostly as immigrants. But we were born 
here, and have had our very breath and be- 
ing in the garden of Thorniknowe. We truly 
represent, the garden, and it must be ours to 
receive its most sacred trust and distinguish- 
ing honor.” And aiong with their well based 
plea of nativity they put forth all their ener- 
gies in the activities of growth and efflores- 
cence, backing the claim of origin by special 
worthiness. 
The lady, by the way, knew nothing of 
all thi6. She never definitely realized the 
vagrancy of her psychic presence, not finding 
it anything like so serious a matter as Peter 
Pan did the loss of his shadow. The only 
sign of it was a tendency to absent minded - 
ness and a sense of being somewhere else as 
