44 
TTIE AMATEUR’S FLOWER GARDEN. 
most suitable for relief wliere any considerable breadth of 
colour is wanted, to separate large blocks of scarlet, or to fill 
any odd portion of a design which, like the nose on the face, 
has no relation to any other corresponding feature, but serves 
to separate and systematize them. For distinct dots, blots, 
angles, and small fillings-in, yellows and blues will be in good 
taste; and, if well used, will help to bring out the good pur¬ 
pose of the design. 
For the edgings of the beds there will be an admirable 
opportunity for the free use of gold and silver leaves. Sharp 
white, creamy, or amber lines bordering the whole will be in 
better taste than edgings of all colours ; yet, in a group of 
scarlet beds, two or three styles of edging are admissible, if 
very distinctly arranged, so as to balance every part of the 
design ; and, of course, the larger the scheme, the more 
various may the edgings be, and on them will depend in a 
large measure the picking out of the design, so as to enable 
the eye to apprehend and appreciate it from some point of 
view fairly commanding the whole. 
To colour the enclosing ribbon in the same way as the 
beds would show a poverty of invention, not a deficiency of 
taste. Scarlets with relief agents are perfectly admissible 
there ; but tones of red and purple, and an outside edging 
differing altogether in character from the edging in the beds, 
will be preferable. We will suppose that the only yellow in 
the beds occurs in the form of small dots, and is therefore 
inconspicuous. For that very reason, a yellow edging to the 
enclosing ribbon will be quite appropriate. It would be the 
reproduction of the golden fillet which the Assyrians and 
Egyptians used so successfully in their bold red colourings. 
For the second line, say three shades of red; then a bold, 
sharp line of white, grey, or pale blue. If the breadth of the 
ribbon needed more lines, three shades of red might be em¬ 
ployed again, with a finishing line of something bold enough 
to make a definite boundary. 
It is not pretended that there is anything new in this 
method of colouring. There is nothing new under the sun. 
It has been Nature’s mode of procedure ever since the first 
day of creation. The earth has shown to man, for his delight, 
successive breadths of dominant colours—white, primrose, 
and yellow in the spring and early summer; orange, red, and 
crimson in the full summer; russet, brown, bronze, and pur- 
