2 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, Aran, 5, 1859. 
path, to use a sporting phrase. I was born with a gun 
over one shoulder, and a shot-belt over the other; and I 
have hunted every animal, under the game laws and over 
them. I hunted other things, too ; but I can safely say, 
that no hind of hunting brings in more real pleasure than 
the hunting after beautiful flowers ; and no kind of them 
more so than spring flowers. 
Last night I was at a chemist’s, and saw rows of scented 
bottles of the “ Essence of Spring Flowers.” I asked 
for a smelling, and it was very pleasant; but to hunt out 
flowers on a cross-scent, means that they are to be used 
in cross-planting—not in straight rows, or in circles, or in 
the bedding-out fashion, but entirely for the mixed border. 
A garden without a border for mixed flowers is seldom 
to be met with; but it has now happened, three years 
running, that some of our country friends mistook our 
sport, and believed our whole pack was after spring 
bedding-plants, or such spring flowers as could be planted 
in that style : whereas, we had a cross-scent every time, 
for the avowed purpose of adding more interest to the 
spring mixed borders. 
The two best, the two rarest, and the least known 
spring flowers of this description that have yet been men¬ 
tioned this spring—are the Epimedium macranthum and 
Epimedium pinna turn. The last is mentioned in another 
page to-day; also, at page 402 of our last volume, where 
Epimedium pinnatum is called colchicum. Pinnatum is 
the proper name—that is, the first that was applied. Dr. 
Fischer, of St. Petersburgh, is the author of it, and Sir 
W. Hooker adopts it in the “Botanical Magazine,” where 
a figure is given of the plant (4456). It was in a col¬ 
lection of cut flowers of Epimediums, which was sent 
from Cheshire, three or four years back, to a Meeting of 
the Horticultural Society in Regent Street. The genus 
is of spring flowers ; and, as the kinds cross, there is a 
great chance of really good things from it for the spring 
borders. 
Pinnatum, alias colchicum, is so far tender, that cold 
winds and sharp frosts nip and destroy the blooms, being 
from some high parts in Persia. It requires an earlier 
and warmer spring than ours ; but there are Epimediums 
hardy enough for the Isle of Sky, and crossing will do 
the rest. The cross from pinnatum by the pollen of 
macranthum is the first step, and the colour of the cross 
is most beautiful; but we must look to the more dingy 
kinds to cross with macranthum, and with •pinnatum —the 
two best of the genus—in order to get a new hardy race ; 
then, by breeding in and in, the beauty of the original 
parents may easily be imparted by the cross-breeder. 
Epimedium pinnatum, in the meantime, ought to be cul¬ 
tivated extensively for spring decoration in pots in-doors— 
to be done exactly, or nearly exactly, like the Lily of the 
Valley ; but the roots to be potted in August, and the pots 
placed under shelter in October; and, after the flowering 
is over, to return them to the cold-pit till the frost is 
all but gone ; then to plant them out. Also, to have them 
out in the open air, in a sheltered place, and where a mat 
could protect them as the flower-stalks are rising. 
Macranthum soon fades in water; but pinnatum lasted 
three weeks with me, in a cool room. The flower-scape 
is ten inches long, and six inches of the length are set with 
flowers, which are as large and of as bright a yellow as 
those of Cheiranthus Marshalli. The nectarian processes, 
which are peculiar to this genus, are in the shape of four 
brown short horns, in the middle of the flower; the same 
processes in macranthum run out into long tails ; and, in 
the new cross, they are of the intermediate length between 
the two. The mother carried the ground colour. The 
time the cross held good, in water, was also intermediate 
between the times both parents lasted. So much for a 
cross scent. 
The next run will bring us to the foot of Mount Ararat 
and the times of Noah and the flood. What was the best 
spring flower in those days ? The answer must involve a 
delicate question; and if I must answer it, you will have 
to overlook the delicacy of the thing altogether. In olden i 
times Corhularia meant the same thing as crinoline means 
in our own day—that is, a hooped petticoat. The fashion 
began immediately after the flood; and at first it con¬ 
sisted of a mere fringe between the “ body ” and the 
skirt. In successive generations, however, it enlarged 
step by step, till, at length, it was as long—and somewhat 
longer than the skirt itself ; and when that was first the 
fashion, the skirt was slashed up from the bottom in five 
or six parts, in order to show the corbulary —the inflated 
petticoat. Every word of this we can prove from natural 
facts, which are revealed to us in the Lilies of the field, 
the bulbous plants of spring flowers; whereof the smallest, 
and amongst the earliest, are hooped petticoats, as pretty 
as any of the Rob Roy crinolines of the present day. 
Any good combination of black and red, in bands or 
stripes, is called Rob Roy style in the Highlands; those 
being the only two colours in Rob Roy’s tartan. But to 
say that this is the first time that hooped petticoats ap¬ 
peared in crinoline, and in different colours, on the fairest 
flowers of the creation, is just to show one’s ignorance of 
that branch of natural history which explains the thing as 
clear as crystal. It is sheer nonsense to talk and write 
against an article of dress, at once so ancient and so 
becoming, and at the same time the most natural that 
ever was invented since Adam and Eve wore skins: and 
anyone who could trace the history and biography of the 
celebrities who wore and upheld the fashion, from the 
fringe to Hymenocallis —the true wedding petticoat—to 
the slashing of the skirt in corhularia, would be doing us 
more real good than a man who could name all the bulbs 
in cultivation from memory. The hoop petticoats of 
Ajax minor, major, media, pumilla, imd pusilla are among 
the rarest and the most useful of early spring flowers, all 
single flowers; but there are double kinds of some of 
them; but I never saw one but the double minor, which 
is extremely rare. In general, they are all scarce. Minor 
single is common enough about here ; and no bulb can be 
more hardy—frost and snow seem to agree with it rather 
than not. They all bloom in March, and earlier in some 
seasons ; and might be likened to children, as compared 
with the great buibocodiums, which are the true hoop 
petticoats. 
The Narcissus family, to which the Corbularias 
belong, offers more really good spring flowers than 
any other; but the names are so confused, that no 
reliance can be placed on any botanical account of 
them in all our books. We want a good practical ar¬ 
rangement of them, composed entirely of improved kinds 
from seeds, drawn up into sections of dwarf plants, 
medium and tall kinds, early bloomers, middle-season and 
late kinds. The Narcissus dubius, mentioned at page 402 
of our last volume, and again to-day, as a “ beautiful pot 
plant, being too dwarf but too early for out-door work,” 
is a garden seedling of Narcissus papyraceus, and the 
very best of the family to force, or come in in January 
and February without forcing. The wild parents of this 
kind have only from two to three flowers on a scape ; but 
seedlings from cultivated plants of them, andfrom judicious 
crossing, would number from six to twelve or fifteen 
flowers in one head, all as pure white as the driven snow. 
Mr. Cutbush, of Ilighgate, exhibited thirty kinds of 
the Polyanthus Narcissus, at St. James’s Hall, last spring; 
but they were botanically so numbered, and you might 
just as well apply botanical discrimination to Fuchsias, 
Verbenas, and Calceolarias as to Narcissus. Out of those 
thirty kinds of Narcissus, one might pick five or six really 
distinct and good kinds for pot culture. 
The Pheasant-eye Narcissuses might make a nice group 
by themselves. Tripodalis, majalis, and recurvis are all 
pheasant-eyed—that is, with the present fashion of the 
petticoat developed more or less in the crimson or pale- 
scarlet ring round the cup. A good cross-breeder might 
make a fine strain of May-blooming plants from these 
three, which must be only three variations of one original 
