Chapter XI

The Wood and the Withered Leaves--Statues--Sun-dials--The
Snow--Plans for the Spring--Conclusion.

_November 7._--The soft autumn weather still spares what flowers the rains have left us, and here and there are signs as if of another spring. Violets along the grass walks, Strawberries in flower, and to-day a little yellow Brier Rose blossoming on an almost leafless spray, remind us of the early months of the year that is no more. But here, too, are some of the flowers of November. The Arbutus has again opened its bunches of waxen pink, and the Chrysanthemums are again blooming on the shrubbery beds. The year has all but completed its circle since first I wrote these notes, and I speak to-day of the flowers, the same, yet not the same, as those of which I wrote eleven months ago.

The trees have lost nearly every leaf, and our little wood is bare as the wood wherein poor Millevoye, so soon to die, once strolled when

"De la depouille de nos bois
L'automne avait jonche la terre;
Le bocage etait sans mystere
Le rossignol etait sans voix."

"The autumn's leafy spoil lay strewn
The forest paths along;
The wood had lost its haunted shade,
The nightingale his song."

Had there been in happier days a "mystere" beyond the charm of waving branches and whispering leaves?

Another French poem on a withered leaf is better known, for it was Macaulay who translated Arnault's verses, and rendered the last three lines so perfectly:--

"Je vais ou va toute chose,
Ou va la feuille de Rose,
Et la feuille de Laurier."

"Thither go I, whither goes
Glory's laurel, Beauty's rose."

Among my ideas--I cannot call it plan, for my mind is not quite made up about it--I half fancy putting up a statue of some sort in a nook in the little wood, where the Beeches grow the tallest and the Elders are the thickest. Such things were once common, and then they got so common, and often so out of place, that they became absurd. Every villa garden had its statue and its rockery.

Batty Langley has an amusing chapter about statues. He says--"Nothing adds so much to the beauty and grandeur of gardens as fine statues, and nothing is more disagreeable than when they are wrongly placed; as Neptune on a terrace walk, mound, &c.; or Pan, the god of sheep, in a large basin, canal, or fountain;" and then, "to prevent such absurdities," he gives the most elaborate directions. Mars and Jupiter, Fame and Venus, Muses and Fates, Atlas, Hercules, and many more, are for open centres or lawns. Sylvanus, Actaeon, and Echo, are among those recommended for woods. Neptune, Oceanus, and the Naiades, will do for canals and fish-ponds. Pomona and the Hesperides for orchards, Flora and Runcina ("the goddess of weeding") for flower-gardens, Bacchus for vineyards, Aeolus for high terrace walks, and "the goddess Vallonta" for valleys. He gives the right deities for paddocks, for wheat-fields, for "ambuscados," and for beehives. In short there is no place for which he does not think a statue ornamental and appropriate. I hope he would approve of my own very humble idea, which is a statue of Hyacinthus,--for, where I thought of placing it, the wild Hyacinths or Bluebells will come clustering up, and make the grass all blue. The poetry of gardens is so entirely neglected in these days of "bedding stuff," that it is well to do anything that can properly be done, without extravagance of taste or method, to revive it.

In the inner garden I think also of placing a sun-dial, which would be in good keeping with the rather formal character of the beds. Mrs. Gatty's beautiful book on sun-dials should help me to a motto. They are of two sorts--the mottoes that warn, and the mottoes that console. "The night cometh,"[11] or "Pereunt et imputantur," are good examples of the one; "Horas non numero nisi serenas," or "Post tenebras lucem spero," are the best instances of the other. But there is a verse by Mrs. Browning, which (if I may so adapt it by a slight alteration in the second line) would make a finer inscription still--

"See, the shadow on the dial,
In the lot of every one,
Marks the passing of the trial,
Proves the presence of the sun."

[11] Many years ago Miss Martineau told me of this motto, and I see
that in her "Autobiography" she speaks of it as "perfect in its way."
She however finally adopted for her own sun-dial the happier "Come,
light! visit me!"

_Nov. 28._--We wake to find snow all thick upon the ground, over lawn and flower-bed, and the children are out betimes rolling up huge snowballs on the grass. This snow is the best thing possible for the garden, for we have already had a night or two of sharp frost, which killed all it could reach of our herbaceous plants. "Autumn's last delights were nipped by early cold," as in the garden of Lord Houghton's "Old Manorial Hall," and the Dahlias and the Fuchsias were all shrivelled into brown unsightly tufts. We have covered up the Fig-trees on the wall. We have trenched up the shrubbery borders. We have done our last planting--a Catalpa in one place, a Paulownia in another--and some more fruit-trees in the orchard. We have planted our bulbs and sowed our autumn annuals for spring gardening. I was so pleased with the Nemophila bed of last May that I am repeating the experiment on a larger scale. I shall have one bed of Nemophila, and another of Virginian Stock. I shall have a bed of pink Saponaria edged with white. Along the Vine border I shall stretch a ribbon of white Saponaria, blue Myosotis, pink Silene, and many-coloured Sweet Peas.

Then again, at the end of the grass walk, where it runs up against the hedge of the croft, I am fixing an arched trelliswork of wire, with a wire seat inside, and over it I shall train and trail the broad leaves of the Aristolochia and the scarlet blossoms of the Tropaeolum speciosum.

The vineries are of course at rest; but in them are Roman Hyacinths, now ready for the house, and pots of Polyanthus Narcissus will be also ready within a week.

The porch of the house is filled on either side with stages of Chrysanthemums, and the fine glossy foliage of an Aralia looks well in the inside vestibule.

And now I bring these notes to an end. My aim has been to show how much interest and pleasure may be gathered out of a garden of moderate pretensions, and with no great appliances in the way of glass, nor any advantage in the way of climate.

I have endeavoured, too, to reclaim for our English gardens those old flowers, which Shakespeare and Milton and Marvell and Cowley loved. They have been far too long neglected for flowers, whose only charm is charm of colour and a certain evenness of growth. The ordinary bedded garden of to-day is as inferior to the Elizabethan gardens of old, as all gardens anywhere must be to the delights, which fancy conjures up in the enchanted gardens of Armida, or the bowered pleasance of Boccaccio. Meanwhile we can only do what best we can, and when all else fails we can say, like Candide, "Il faut cultiver _notre_ jardin."

And so I bid a hearty farewell to those readers, who for months past have followed the fortunes, and shared with me the hopes, of a year in a Lancashire garden.

SUPPLEMENTARY CHAPTER.

Flowering Shrubs--Yuccas--Memorial Trees--Ranunculus--
Pansies--Canna Indica--Summer Flowers--Bluets--
Fruit-blossoms and Bees--Strawberry Leaves--Garden Sounds--
Mowing--Birds--The Swallow--Pleasures of a Garden.

Almost more interesting than herbaceous plants are the flowering shrubs. Most beautiful of all, if, indeed, it may be called a shrub, is the Buddleia Globosa, in the inner garden, which I have already mentioned. When June draws to its close, it is laden with thousands of blossoms like little golden oranges, and fills the air with honied scent. It is the largest Buddleia I ever happen to have seen, for it stands sixteen feet high, and stretches its branches over a round bed of blue Iris to a circumference of seventy feet.

And just about the time when the Buddleia is in bloom, masses of the sweet homely English Elder, screening off the little wood, will perfume all the approach to the house. Common enough it is, but delightful in its dark foliage, its rich creamy blossoms, its clusters of purple berries. We do not make the use of it we should, and Elderberry water and Elderberry Wine are known to me by name alone, but the berries are excellent for tarts and puddings.

One shrub which I planted a year or two ago has answered far better than I had any right to hope. It is the Desfontainea Spinosa. It is so like a holly that it puzzles everybody who sees, for the first time, the scarlet and yellow tubes of blossom which stand out among the prickly leaves. The year before last it flowered twice with me, but the cruel winter we have just had has cut it sadly, and it will be long before it will recover.

I have spoken of trying whether by the planting of a second Arbutus I could make my beautiful old shrub fruit. The result has been quite successful, and I have had for two years past bright red berries hanging down among the pale waxen blossoms and the dark-green leaves. The Magnolia between the vineries has become prodigal of flowers as it has grown older, and last year I had no less than ten blossoms from it, and it is still young. The Magnolia (also a Grandiflora) on the house has also begun to flower, but I had nearly lost it altogether, and the story is rather a curious one. I had noticed that both it and other creepers were looking unhappy, and I could not guess the reason. The Escallonia showed bare branches in many places, the Ceanothus seemed shrunken and brown, and a Gloire de Dijon Rose did no good. At last it occurred to my gardener that the galvanised wire, which I had put up to avoid driving nails into the stone work of the windows, was to blame. I pulled it all down, coated it thickly over with paint, and, when it was again put up, all the creepers seemed to start into fresh life, and grew strong and vigorous.

On a patch of green grass near the house stands a Yucca Gloriosa, which I am always hoping will flower, but it has never done so yet. Not long ago I was at a stately place in Shropshire, and at the end of a broad walk, where a circle of Yuccas had been planted, there were no less than five in full flower, throwing up pale jets of blossom, like fountains, towards the sky. I never saw anything more perfect in its way. But it is said that the right time to see a Yucca is by moonlight. There is a very striking passage in one of the letters of the most remarkable of American women, Margaret Fuller (afterwards Countess D'Ossoli), in which she says:--

"This flower" (it was the Yucca Filamentosa) "was made for the moon as the Heliotrope is for the sun, and refuses other influences, or to display her beauty in any other light. Many white flowers are far more beautiful by day. The lily, for instance, with its firm thick leaf, needs the broadest light to manifest its purity, but these transparent leaves of greenish white, which look dull in the day, are melted by the moon to glistening silver...." The second evening I went out into the garden again. In clearest moonlight stood my flower, more beautiful than ever. The stalk pierced the air like a spear; all the little bells had erected themselves around it in most graceful array, with petals more transparent than silver, and of softer light than the diamond. Their edges were clearly but not sharply defined--they seemed to have been made by the moon's rays. The leaves, which had looked ragged by day, now seemed fringed by most delicate gossamer, and the plant might claim, with pride, its distinctive epithet of _filamentosa_.

On another grass-plot near I have one of the beautiful Retinosporas of Japan, which was one day planted for me by a friend. He is the poet, who says that--

"Eastward roll the orbs of heaven,
Westward tend the thoughts of men:
Let the Poet, nature-driven,
Wander Eastward now and then:--"

and this tree, while it lives, will remind me of the East, and of him who wrote these lines.

But there are other pleasant ways of recalling one's friends to memory.

I never stay anywhere, where there is a garden, without bringing back with me some one or more shrubs, as a remembrance of a beautiful place or happy hours; and, when I plant them, I fasten to them a label, mentioning their old home, and thus I am reminded--now of a quaint low house covered with creepers and nestling among the hills of Wales--now of a magnificent castle with its pleasance in the north of Ireland,--now of a great hall in Scotland, where a wild glen runs down past the garden to the woods,--now of an old English abbey, where the flowers of to-day spring up among the ruins of a thousand years ago.

Among the flowers in the inner garden, which have well repaid me during the last year or two, have been the Anemones--delightful old flowers--"pied wind-flowers," Shelley calls them,--which first sprang to birth when Venus wept Adonis. Then I have had two successful beds of Ranunculus; one was prettily and fancifully mottled; the other was of the finest scarlet,--a scarlet so intense that it seemed to be almost black in the inner shadows of the petals. A gifted American lady once said to me--"Does not black seem to underlie all bright scarlet?" and I have thought of this as I have looked at this bed of Ranunculus, and I think of it often as I see the red coats of our soldiers passing by. I have often noticed, too, that, in an evening, when there is still light enough to see flowers, that are yellow, or blue, or pink, the blossoms of a scarlet Pelargonium give forth no colour, but look as if cut out of some soft black velvet. Another spring bed, from which I had hoped much, has disappointed me. It was a bed of Crown Imperials, but for some reason they flowered irregularly and produced no effect. But the individual flowers of some were magnificent. I had never examined a Crown Imperial properly before, and never knew that its great beauty lay in the little circlet of pearls--nectaries, I suppose they are--which lie at the bottom of each orange bell. They are quite exquisite in their grey and white glittering movement, as the light plays upon them, and are more like pearls than anything else in nature.

Among my humbler flowers, of which I have somehow made no mention, is the Pansy, yet few flowers have more associations connected with them. The Pansy--the _Heartsease_ we still sometimes call it--is Shakespeare's "Love in Idleness," and Milton's "Pansy freak'd with jet." The American poet, Edgar Poe, speaks of the "beautiful Puritan Pansies;" and I remember a fine wild passage in one of this same poet's little-known essays, where two angels are talking, and one of them says--"We will swoop outward into the starry meadows beyond Orion, where for Pansies, and Violets, and Heartsease, are the beds of the triplicate and triple-tinted suns."

Last year my finest bed was one of the Canna Indica, in which every plant threw up grand broad leaves and spikes of crimson or yellow blossom. Why is not the Canna far more common in all our gardens? At present one sees it in public parks, or where gardening on a great scale is carried on, but in smaller gardens it is very rare, and yet it is easy enough to grow; and once I think it must have been more known than it is at present. Gerarde speaks of it as "the flowering reed," and gives a very fair illustration of it. He adds, however, "Myself have planted it in my garden divers times, but it never came to flowering or seeding, for that it is very impatient to endure the injury of our cold climate." Cowley, too, speaks of the "lustre of the Indian flowering reed;" and Dr. Darwin, in his _Loves of the Plants_, gives it (with its single pistil and stamen), as the best type of the conjugal fidelity of flowers, and tells how--

"The tall Canna lifts his curled brow,
Erect to heaven;"

adding, in prose, that "the seeds are used as shot by the Indians, and are strung for prayer-beads in some Catholic countries." Indeed, the plant is often called the "Indian Shot," and as the seeds, shining, hard and black, ripened with me last year, I can understand how appropriate is the name.

A bed of double Potentillas, some red, some yellow, and some with the two colours mingled, has been very fine; and so has a bed of hybrid Bulbous Begonias, which seem quite hardy. I plant the blue Lobelia between them, and it contrasts pleasantly with their crimson and orange bells. A long row of Sweet Peas of every variety of colour extends along the border in front of the vinery, and fills the garden with its scent; and not far off is a wire screen, which I cover with the large Convolvulus, and through the summer months the "Morning Glories," as the blossoms were once called, display all their short-lived beauty.

On either side of the grass-walk, which runs down the garden, at a right angle to the vineries, I am making rustic trellises of logs of wood, round which I shall plant Vegetable Marrows and Gourds, and at intervals clumps of the great Sunflower.[12] In another corner I am sowing a bed of the Bluet, or Corn-flower, the favourite flower of the Emperor of Germany. For some reason the Violets of Napoleon, of which I once had abundance, have not been so successful with me during the last few years,--will the Corn-flower do better?--What a glorious blue it is! and how much we have neglected it! because, I suppose, it is too common, and grows wild amid the ripening Corn and the scarlet Poppy.

[12] See Note IV. on the Sunflower of the Classics.

Turning to the fruit-garden, my great discovery has been that I _must_ have bees--not at all for the honey, but for the proper setting of the fruit. A large May Duke Cherry is always covered with blossom, but scarcely anything has ever come from it. Last year I examined its blossom closely, and found that the pistil is so much longer than the stamens that it cannot fertilise itself, and must be dependent on insects. This is not the case with other varieties of Cherries, so far as I can see, and I am curious to find out whether my remedy of a bee-hive will this year have the desired effect. I believe it will be of service to the other wall-fruit too, and I have already seen the affection the bees have for the blossoms of the Apricot.

How beautiful a garden is when all the fruit-trees are in bloom! and how various that bloom is! Each Pear-tree bears a different blossom from its neighbour, and the handsomest of all, in size and shape of flower and form of cluster, is the Jargonelle. But no Pear-blossom can compare with the beauty of blossom on the Apple-trees;--and of all Apple-trees the Pomeroy is most beautiful, when every bough is laden with clusters of deep-red buds, which shade off into the softest rosy white, as, one by one, the blossoms open out.

Of other fruit I have nothing new to notice, unless it be to ask whether any one now living can smell the scent of dying Strawberry leaves? We all remember how Mrs. Gaskell in her delightful story gives Lady Ludlow the power, but now we all seem to have lost it. Certainly my dying Strawberry leaves give me no sense of sweetness. Was it a mere fond and foolish fancy? or were the Strawberries of Elizabethan gardens different from those we are now growing? Bacon tells us that, next to the white double Violet and the Musk Rose, the sweetest perfume in the open air is "Strawberry leaves dying, which yield a most excellent cordiale smell;" and I find in an old play by Sir John Suckling--

"Wholesome
As dying leaves of Strawberries."

But there are sounds that haunt a garden hardly less delightful than its sights and scents. What sound has more poetry in it than when in the early morning one hears the strong sharp sweep of the scythe, as it whistles through the falling grass, or the shrill murmur of the blade upon the whetstone; and, in spite of mowing machines, at times one hears the old sound still. How fond Andrew Marvell was of mowing and the mowers! He has given us "Damon the Mower," "The Mower to the Glow-worm," "The Mower's Song," "The Mower against Gardens," and "Ametas and Thestylis making Hay-ropes;" and again, in his fine poem, on "Appleton House," he describes the "tawny mowers" dividing the "grassy deeps,"

"With whistling scythe and elbow strong."

One of our latest poets too, Mr. Allingham, has a delicious little mower's song, with a quite perfect refrain of--

"A scythe-sweep and a scythe-sweep,
We mow the grass together."

And again, what does not the garden owe to the voice of birds; the deep cawing of the rook in its "curious flight" around the elm-trees; the clear note of the cuckoo from the limes that bound the orchard; and, best of all, the rich, full melody of the thrush! The nightingale's song may be sweeter and stronger, but the nightingale only sings in certain places (certainly not with us), and the thrush is everywhere. The nightingale sings later in the night, but the thrush will go on till nine, and begin again at four, and surely that is all we need. Can anything be truer, or better said, than these lines of Browning's about a thrush?--

"Hark! where my blossomed Pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field, and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops, at the bent spray's edge--
That's the wise thrush--he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture."

But there is one bird dearer to us than the thrush, and that is the swallow, which for some years past has built its nest in our porch. It has been pretty to mark her skimming round and round with anxious watching, till we have left the place. Prettier still, when we have kept ourselves concealed, to see her darting upwards to the nest, which was fringed by four little heads all in a row, and, going from one to the other, give each its share. We could hear the sharp little cry of satisfaction as each nestling was attended to. How much the poets have written about swallows! There is the charming passage in Longfellow's "Golden Legend," where the old monk is speaking; he is the librarian, whose duty it is to illuminate the missals for the convent's use and pride:--

"How the swallows twitter under the eaves!
There, now there is one in her nest;
I can just catch a glimpse of her head and breast,
And will sketch her thus in her quiet nook,
For the margin of my gospel-book."

Then how delightful is the boast, which Mr. Courthope, in his _Paradise of Birds_, puts into the nightingale's mouth, that a bird is better than a man, for--

"He never will mount as the swallows,
Who dashed round his steeples to pair,
Or hawked the bright flies in the hollows
Of delicate air."

And, long before this, Banquo had marked their "pendent beds" on Macbeth's castle, and noticed that--

"Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed
The air is delicate."

And who does not recall Tennyson's--

"Swallow, swallow, flying, flying south,"

and bearing on swift wing the message that--

"Dark and true and tender is the north"?

Or who, that has once read it, can forget _Les Hirondelles_ of Beranger, and how the French captive among the Moors questions the swallows about his country, his home, his friends, which they perhaps have seen?

Lastly, what a felicitous line is this of the American poet Lowell, when he describes

"The thin-winged swallow _skating_ on the air."

I must bring these Notes, such as they are, to a close, and yet I feel I have scarcely even yet described the pleasures of a garden. But my memory at least can do it justice. It recalls summer afternoons, when the lawn tennis went merrily on on the lawn, by the weeping ash-tree, and summer evenings, when the house was too hot, and we sat out after dinner upon the terrace with the claret and the fruit. The air was all perfume, and the light lingered long in the east over the church steeple three miles away, and no sound but of our own voices broke the silence and the peace.

Again, there were fine bright autumn days--days when the garden was full of warm scent and warmer colour--days when the children could swing for hours in the hammock, which hangs between two large Sycamores, and have their tea-table beneath the trees,--days when the still air was only stirred by the patter of a falling chestnut, or the note of some solitary bird, or the sound of church bells far away. Beyond the grass-field, which comes nearly up to the house, was a field of wheat, and we could watch the harvesting, and follow with our eyes the loaded waggons as they passed along by the hedge-row trees.

But such recollections grow thicker as I write, and words, such as I at least can command, do them little justice. I cannot really share with my readers these pleasures of the past, though I like to fancy that they may feel some kindly sympathy, as they remember happy days in gardens dear to them as mine to me.

NOTES.

NOTE I.

ON THE VIOLA OF THE ROMANS.

I contributed the following note on "The Viola of the Romans," to the _Gardeners' Chronicle_ of September 26, 1874, as I found a correspondent had been adopting Lord Stanhope's views.

* * * * *

Mr. Ruskin in his _Queen of the Air_ wrote, "I suspect that the flower whose name we translate 'Violet' was in truth an Iris" (he is speaking of the Greek _ion_, but the Viola no doubt is whatever the _ion_ was).

In Lord Stanhope's _Miscellanies_, second series, which was published in 1872, a paper, which had been previously (in 1830) read before the Society of Antiquaries, treats of the "Viola of the Ancients."

Lord Stanhope identifies it with the Iris, and on the following grounds:--

1. Because when riding through Sicily in the winter of 1825, he saw many Irises and no Violets, and heard that the country people called the Iris Viola.

2. Because Pliny speaks of Violae luteae, whereas there are no Violets of that colour.

3. Because Pliny also describes the Violet as growing in sunny and barren places ("apricis et macris locis"), whereas really Violets always grow in the shade.

4. Because he speaks of the Violet as springing from a fleshy root-stock ("ab radice carnoso"), whereas the Violet root is fibrous.

5. Because Ovid couples the Violet with the Poppy and the Lily as flowers which, when broken off, hang their heads to the ground.

I need not say much as to Lord Stanhope's not finding Violets in Sicily in winter, for the question is, whether he would not find them in Italy in spring. Nor does the fact of the Sicilian peasants speaking of the Iris as a Violet disturb me any more than when I hear a Scotch peasant speak of the "Harebell" as a "Bluebell."

The real authority is Pliny, and Pliny settles the question completely. He says (I quote for convenience from Bohn's translated edition):--"Next after the Roses and the Lilies, the Violet is held in the highest esteem. Of this there are several varieties, the purple, the yellow, and the white, all of them reproduced from plants, like the Cabbage. The Purple Violet, which springs up spontaneously in sunny spots with a thin meagre soil, has larger petals than the others, springing immediately from the root, which is of a fleshy substance. This Violet has a name, too, distinct from the other wild kinds, being called 'ion,' and from it the ianthine cloth takes its name."

He goes on to say that of cultivated kinds the Yellow Violet is held in most esteem. He speaks then of the Tusculan and Marine Violet as having broader petals than the others, but being less sweet, while the Calathian Violet is also without scent.

A little farther on he describes the Iris itself, and says "the stem of this plant is a cubit in length and erect, the flower being of various colours like the rainbow, to which circumstance it is indebted for its name." It is, he adds, a plant of a caustic nature, and the root is used in perfumery and medicine, but the flower is _never employed for garlands_.

After this, perhaps, it is needless to add that of course Lord Stanhope is mistaken in supposing that there are no Yellow Violets (he may find any number half-way up the Rigi), or that Violets do not often grow in sunny and sterile places, or that the Purple Violet has not a fleshy root-stock.

That the Sweet Violet, which Pliny says was used for wreath-making, was generally cultivated is certain from Horace's

"Tum _violaria_ et
Myrtus, et omnis copia narium
Spargent olivetis odorem."

_Odes_, ii. 15.

Then, again, the Sweet Violet was used for the flavouring of wine--the "vinum violatum."

There are other passages in which Pliny speaks of the sweetness of the Violet. He says it is sweetest at a distance, and that it has no scent except in the flower itself.

There can be no doubt then whatever (I conceive) that the Greeks, when they spoke of the "ion," or the Romans of the "Viola," generally meant our Violet, and that the Violet-wreaths were made from this familiar flower.

Still the name was perhaps loosely used, and it is highly probable that the flower to which Ovid refers, in the passage which Lord Stanhope quotes, was the Snowflake or Leucoion (literally, "White Violet").

NOTE II.

ON THE AZALEA VISCOSA.

I was much pleased to see my observations on the Azalea as a fly-catcher confirmed by a subsequent paragraph (October 3, 1874,) in the _Gardeners' Chronicle_. It is interesting, and I now reprint it.

* * * * *

AZALEA VISCOSA A FLY-CATCHER.

Under this heading Mr. W. W. Bailey gives the following observations in the current number of the _American Naturalist_:--

"The many curious observations published of late in regard to vegetable fly-catchers have opened my eyes to such phenomena as are presented in my forest walks. As is well known to all botanists, our sweet swamp Azalea (Azalea viscosa) has its corolla covered on the outside with innumerable clammy and glandular hairs. Each hair is a prolongation of the cuticle, and is surmounted by a purple and globular band. In the bud these hairs appear to cover the whole surface of the flower, but when the corolla expands they are seen to occupy the midrib of the petals as well as the tube of the corolla. These glandular hairs are efficacious fly-catchers, but what the object is in thus securing insect prey I will not pretend to state. I have been amusing myself, if any such apparently cruel occupation can be considered entertaining, in watching the capture of flies by the Azaleas. When I first brought the flowers home, many small insects, as winged ants, were entrapped amidst the hairs. These have remained alive several days, still vainly struggling for freedom. As the house-flies are abundant in my room, it occurred to me that I might extirpate the pests, and at the same time learn something of the process of insect-catching. I have not noticed that the powerful fragrance of the blossoms attracts the house-fly, although I have no doubt that it does the smaller insects. It seemed to be accidental when the house-flies were captured. I exposed a number of buds and fully-opened blossoms on a sunny window-sill thronged with flies. It was not many minutes before I had several captives. A mere touch of a fly's leg to the glutinous hairs was sufficient for his detention. A struggle only made matters worse, as other legs were by this means brought in contact with the glands. These emit long glairy threads, which fasten to the hairs of the flies' legs. They may be drawn out to a great length and tenuity, still retaining their strength. If two buds are pressed together, and then drawn apart, innumerable threads may be seen to bind them. There is a complete network of them between the various glands. They will confine the strongest fly; he is at once held like Gulliver among the Lilliputians. Under the microscope the legs of the fly are seen to be covered with the secretion, which is perfectly white and transparent. In one attempt to escape, a house-fly lifted a flower bodily from the window-sill, perhaps a quarter of an inch, but at once sank back exhausted amidst the hairs. One, after long efforts, escaped, but seemed incapable of using its legs; it flew away readily. In one instance I have found the dried remains of a small insect embedded amidst the hairs, but cannot say whether its juices were in any way absorbed by the plant. If such assimilation takes place, what is its purpose? Can this phenomenon of fly-catching be accidental, or is some nice purpose concealed in it? I merely state the facts as I have observed them; perhaps others can supply further information."

NOTE III.

ON THE SOLANUM TRIBE.

It is very curious to compare the two following passages of two great masters of style--Ruskin and Michelet--both writing of the tribe to which belongs the Tomato. Ruskin, in _The Queen of the Air_, p. 91, says:--

"Next, in the Potato, we have the scarcely innocent underground
stem of one of a tribe set aside for evil, having the deadly
nightshade for its queen, and including the henbane, the
witch's mandrake, and the worst natural curse of modern
civilisation--tobacco. And the strange thing about this tribe is,
that though thus set aside for evil, they are not a group
distinctly separate from those that are happier in function. There
is nothing in other tribes of plants like the form of the bean
blossom; but there is another family with forms and structure
closely connected with this venomous one. Examine the purple and
yellow bloom of the common hedge Nightshade;--you will find it
constructed exactly like some of the forms of the Cyclamen; and
getting this clue, you will find at last the whole poisonous and
terrible group to be--sisters of the Primulas.

"The nightshades are, in fact, primroses with a curse upon them,
and a sign set in their petals by which the deadly and condemned
flower may always be known from the innocent one,--that the stamens
of the nightshades are between the lobes, and of the primulas
opposite the lobes of the corolla."

Now for M. Michelet. In _La Sorciere_, p. 119, he writes of the herbs used by the witches:--

"Ce que nous savons le mieux de leur medecine, c'est qu'elles
employaient beaucoup, pour les usages les plus divers, pour calmer,
pour stimuler, une grande famille de plantes, equivoques, fort
dangereuses, qui rendirent les plus grands services. On les nomme
avec raison, les _Consolantes_ (Solanees).

"Famille immense et populaire, dont la plupart des especes sont
surabondantes, sous nos pieds, aux haies, partout. Famille,
tellement nombreuse, qu'un seul de ses genres a huit cents especes.
Rien de plus facile a trouver, rien de plus vulgaire. Mais ces
plantes sont la plupart d'un emploi fort hasardeux. Il a fallu de
l'audace pour en preciser les doses, l'audace peut-etre du genie.

"Prenons par en bas l'echelle ascendante de leurs energies. Les
premieres sont tout simplement potageres et bonnes a manger (les
aubergines, les tomates, mal appelees pommes d'amour). D'autres de
ces innocentes sont le calme et la douceur meme, les molenes
(bouillon blanc), si utiles aux fomentations.

"Vous rencontrez au dessus une plante deja suspecte, que plusieurs
croyaient un poison, la plante miellee d'abord, amere ensuite, qui
semble dire le mot de Jonathas: 'J'ai mange un peu de miel, et
voila pourquoi je meurs.' Mais cette mort est utile, c'est
l'amortissement de la douleur. La douce-amere, c'est son nom, dut
etre le premier essai de l'homoeopathie hardie, qui, peu a peu,
s'eleva aux plus dangereux poisons. La legere irritation, les
picotements qu'elle donne purent la designer pour remede des
maladies dominantes de ces temps, celles de la peau."

Speaking of magical herbs reminds one of the "moly," which Mercury gives to Ulysses, and which enabled him to withstand the enchantments of Circe. This "moly" with its white blossom is particularly well known to me, for, when I first came to my present house, the wood near the lodge was so full of it that it seemed as if a dinner of onions was for ever being cooked: I found it exceedingly hard to eradicate. "Moly" is none other than the Garlic, and Circe had apparently the same objection to it as had the wife of the Merchant of Bagdad in the _Arabian Nights_.

By the way, what could Mr. Tennyson have been thinking of when he describes his lotus-eaters as

"Propt on beds of amaranth and _moly_"?

Another poet too, now a well-known divine, once spoke of

"--souls that pure and holy
Live and love and prosper well,
Leaning aye on myrrh and _moly_,
Melilote and asphodel."

NOTE IV.

ON THE SUNFLOWER OF THE CLASSICS.

I have been much puzzled to know what was the Sunflower of classical story,--in other words, what was the flower into which, according to the legend, Clytie was so sadly changed.

I had always supposed, as nearly every one supposes, that it was what _we_ call the Sunflower (the Helianthus), with its upright stem and large radiated disc. But, first of all, I found, as a matter of fact, that the Helianthus does _not_ follow the course of the Sun, and that various blossoms of the same plant may at the same time be facing in different directions. And then I found, what of course was fatal, that the Helianthus is not a European plant at all, and first came to us from North America.

Having consulted _Notes and Queries_ in vain, I determined to look into the matter more closely, as it seemed to me a rather curious question.

If the Sunflower of the Classics was not the Helianthus, and if this, as I imagine, only obtained its name from its flowers, which in some way resemble the old pictures of the Sun, could it be the plant we know as _Heliotrope_? The name of course means "turning Sunward," but again the name is no guide to us; the scented flowers of the Heliotrope do not, so far as I know, turn to the Sun, and in any case the plant is of Peruvian and not of European origin.

I then fell back upon the classical authors themselves. I got nothing very distinct from Theophrastus, and moreover it is Ovid, to whom we chiefly owe our knowledge of the story. He tells us that when her lover Phoebus left her, poor Clytie "still gazed on the face of the departing god, and bent her looks on him. It is said that she remained rooted to the ground; of her fresh bloom ('color'), part is turned by livid pallor into bloodless leaves, on part a blush remains, and a flower most like a Violet has covered all her face. Held firmly by the root, she still turns to the Sun she loves, and, changed herself, she keeps her love unchanged."

Pliny says the Heliotropium "turns with the Sun, in cloudy weather even, so great is its sympathy with that luminary. At night, as though in regret, it closes its blue flowers."

What then can this flower be, a blue flower, which turns towards the Sun?

I next examined the magnificent volumes of Sibthorp's _Flora Graeca_. There is there indeed a European "Heliotropium," "Heliotropium supinum," but this surely cannot be the flower of Clytie; the blossom is quite insignificant ("flore minimo") and _white_. Then there are two Crotons (Tinctorium and Villosum) which are also locally called Heliotropium, and which grow in Crete and Lemnos ("ex qua paratur Tournesol"), but their flowers again are hardly more noticeable and are _yellow_.

Foiled at every point, I thought I would at least see what in _England_ was the traditionary Sunflower, but I am hardly any wiser.

Gerarde says that Valerius Cordius calls the dwarf Cistus Helianthemum, and Solis flos or Sunne-flower. He quotes Pliny as calling it also "Heliocalliden, or the Beautie of the Sunne;" and adds, "which if it be the Sunneflower, yet there is another of the same name, but which may be taken for the right it is hard to tell (but that experience teacheth us), seeing Plinie is so breefe."

Gerarde has also a chapter on the "Tornesole," and says, "there be five sorts of Tornesole, differing one from another in many notable points, as in greatnesse and smallnesse, in colour of flowers, in forme and shape," and then he describes the varieties of "Tornesoles" or "Heliotropium."

He says, "the Graecians call it Heliotropium;"--"it is named Heliotropium, not because it is turned about at the daily motion of the sunne, but by reason it flowreth in the summer solstice, at which time the sunne being farthest gone from the equinoctiale circle, returneth to the same;" but he adds that the French and Italians call it "Turnesol," and says, "it is also called Herba Clitiae, whereof the poet hath these verses,

"'Herba velut Clitiae semper petit obvia solem,
Sic pia mens Christum, quo prece spectet, habet.'"

Cowley's Sunflower is called in a foot-note Chrysanthemum Peruvianum, but is probably a form of Helianthus. The flower is supposed to speak, and claims to be a _child_ of the Sun, for,

"My orb-like aspect bound with rays
The very picture of his face displays;

and again,

"I still adore my sire with prostrate face,
Turn where he turns, and all his motions trace."

So after all I am as much in the dark as ever. Was the mysterious flower, as some suggest, a Calendula (Marygold), or an Aster? I cannot tell, and only know that neither answers the description. On the whole then I am disposed to wonder whether either Ovid or Pliny knew much more about the matter than ourselves, and I may some day come to doubt whether Clytie was ever turned into a Sunflower at all.[13]

[13] One of our very best living authorities on such a subject has sent
me the suggestion that the common Salsafy, or possibly the Anagallis,
may be the flower, but he adds (agreeing with Gerarde), "the word
Heliotropium does not mean a flower which turns to the sun, but which
flowers at the solstice."

NOTE V.

FLOWERS AND THE POETS.

Both the flowers of the garden and what Campbell calls "wildings of nature" have had their bards, and in the case of certain flowers the association with a poet is so strong that the sight of the flower will recall the verse. Of course this is chiefly so as regards the less familiar flowers. No one, not even Sappho, has an exclusive possession in the Rose; but who would care to dispute Shelley's right to the Sensitive Plant, or Wordsworth's to the lesser Celandine? The poets, however, have sometimes more of a love than a knowledge of plants, and Milton talks of the "twisted Eglantine" in confusion between the Sweetbrier and the Honeysuckle.

It is interesting to see the different ways in which flowers are treated by the poets. Shakspeare, no doubt, loved them in his way, but after all, there are but few passages in which flowers are used otherwise than as an illustration or an emblem. There are, indeed, Titania's flowered bank, and Perdita's garden,--redolent of herbs and gay with Violets, Primroses, and Daffodils, but where no Gillyflower was allowed to grow,--and poor Ophelia's melancholy blossoms, and the song in _Love's Labour's Lost_, and that is nearly all. Shakspeare often speaks of Roses, but almost always, excepting in the scene at the Temple Gardens, by way of compliment or comparison. The _musk_-rose, indeed, appears in the _Midsummer Night's Dream_, and this Rose, which is now quite unknown to most of us, was evidently a favourite in Elizabethan gardens, for Bacon says of it that, next the white double Violet (which is also almost lost), the musk-rose "yeelds the sweetest smell in the aire."

But Shakspeare's favourite flowers seem to have been the Primrose, the Violet, the Pansy, and, above all, the Cowslip. He must often have recalled his boyish walks in spring along the Avon, and remembered how the low-lying fields of Stratford were all sweet and yellow with the Cowslip. And so it is within a Cowslip's bell that Ariel hides, and Cowslips are Titania's pensioners on whose ears the fairies must hang pearls, and when the fields of France are desolated the "freckled Cowslip" does not grow there any more, and the mole on Imogen's breast is "like the crimson drops i' the bottom of a Cowslip."

Before passing from Shakspeare, I should like to call the attention of the directors or managers of New Place to the absurdity of the garden, which they are supposed to keep up in remembrance of Shakspeare. I chanced to visit it a summer or two ago, and, instead of finding an Elizabethan garden with flowers associated with Shakspeare and his times, I saw little but a wretched ribbon border of starveling Calceolarias, scrubby Pelargoniums, and miserable Perillas. Such a garden is a mockery, and would be more suggestive and more pathetic if left wild to the growths of nature.

If Milton enjoyed more completely the luxury of gardens, it is safe to say that he knew less of separate flowers than Shakspeare. He not only speaks of the Eglantine as "twisted," but he calls the Cowslip "wan," the Violet "glowing," and the Reed "balmy." He makes Roses and Crocuses bloom together in Paradise, and Hyacinths and Roses in the gardens of Hesperus, while Lycid's "laureate hearse" is to be strewn with Primrose and Woodbine, Daffodil and Jessamine. Paradise and the gardens of Hesperus are, of course, ideal gardens, which may be superior to our times and seasons, but the same excuse cannot hold good for the flowers of the "Lycidas," and it is tolerably clear that Milton's special knowledge was somewhat vague. But, on the other hand, what a sensuous pleasure he has in gardens! He is not thinking of Elizabethan gardens, but such gardens as he may have seen in Italy, or read of in Tasso or Boccaccio. The west winds fling around the cedared alleys sweet smells of Nard and Cassia, or the covert is of inwoven shade of Laurel and Myrtle fenced by Acanthus and odorous shrubs. The rich rhythm of his lines seems to breathe perfume and delight.

And the reason why, in later years at least, the scent rather than the sight of flowers was dear to Milton, is known to all of us, for has he not himself told us how,

"Not to me returns
Day, or the sweet approach of ev'n or morn,
Or _sight of vernal bloom or summer's rose_?"

He could still drink in the perfumed air of gardens, though only memory could recall the form and colour of those flowers, which he would never see again.[14]

[14] I remember how years ago I was struck with a beautiful little poem
about a blind man, written by Mr. James Payn, the well-known novelist.
The lines are quite worth repeating, and will be new to many:--

"There an old man, far in his wintry time,
Sits under his porch, while the roses climb;
But the breath of its sweetness is all he knows
Of the glory about the fair round rose;
The lilies that sway in the brook beneath,
So cold and white in the beauty of death,
Are to him far less than the rushes tall
When the wind is bowing them one and all,
Like the voice of nature so soft and kind,
That whispers how fair she is to _the blind_."

Only one English poet has surpassed Milton in his love of gardens. Like Milton he probably knew little of particular flowers, but he revelled in the scent and colour of Roses and of Lilies. It is Andrew Marvell; who, it is to be feared, is far less remembered than he deserves to be. Marvell's gardens are all of the true English character, and his description of Lord Fairfax's, though somewhat quaint and fanciful, has many touches as natural as they are graceful. That the flowers should stand on parade, like soldiers, through the day, and fold up at night in tents, in which bees remain as sentinels, is a far-fetched conceit enough; but nothing can be better than many of his lines. Was it his own garden at Highgate of which he thought, when he spoke of the garden in which Sylvio's fawn was wont to hide?

"I have a garden of my own,
But so with roses overgrown
And lilies, that you would it guess
To be a little wilderness."

Cowley's love of a garden was of quite another kind. He cared about it as a horticulturist, and knew the various plants and their qualities; but he never luxuriated in it like Milton or like Marvell. His elaborate poem is interesting, if only to show the flowers that were cultivated in his day, and it is curious to find the Tomato (or love-apple) grown for beauty and not for use, and the _Canna Indica_, which is hardly common with us even now, mentioned as among the ordinary flowers of his time. On the whole, however, there are very few lines of Cowley about flowers (we are not speaking of anything else) which are worth quoting or remembering.

Herrick's use of flowers is very different. He loved them, no doubt, and is always talking about them, and making them useful.

"He twists his coronals of fancy
Out of all blossoms,"

if I may so misapply a line from Lord Houghton's _Letters of Youth_. He makes moralities out of Daffodils, and compliments from Carnations, and warnings from Rosebuds. Charming as many of his poems about flowers are, it is impossible not to feel that the motive of the poem is not the flower itself, but the Anthea or Sappho or Julia, to whom the flower is to teach a lesson of the power of love or the uncertainty of life.

It is, of course, impossible to speak of all the poets who have written about flowers, for probably the list would include them all; but the five I have mentioned are perhaps the most characteristic, though there are memorable lines in Chaucer, Spenser, Burns, and Keats, and more especially in Wordsworth.

From Byron there is singularly little to quote; but no English poet has given so perfect a description of a garden as has Shelley in "The Sensitive Plant." How delicately he paints each flower, and how he makes us see them all, as we tread with him

"The sinuous paths of lawn and of moss
Which led through the garden along and across;
Some open at once to the sun and the breeze,
Some lost among bowers of blossoming trees."

Of living English poets perhaps Mr. Tennyson alone shows any real love for flowers. And this love is scarcely shown so much in the well-known song in "Maud" as by little touches here and there--the "long green box of mignonette" which the miller's daughter has set on her casement edge,--the "wild marsh-marygold" which "shines like fire in swamps" for the happy May Queen,--or the water-lilies which blossom round the island of Shalott. And who can forget the stanza in "In Memoriam"?--

"Bring orchis, bring the foxglove spire,
The little speedwell's darling blue,
Deep tulips dasht with fiery dew,
Laburnums, dropping-wells of fire."

Of American poets, Mr. Longfellow has, rather strangely, written nothing very memorable about flowers; but there are some pretty verses of Mr. Bryant's, and an occasional good line of Mr. Emerson's, as where he speaks of the Gentian as "blue-eyed pet of blue-eyed lover."

As we once again look round upon the poets that have sung, it is clear that their favourite flowers have been the Rose and the Daisy,--the one recalling all the delights of the summer garden, the other all the freshness of the open field,--the one loved for its beauty, the other cherished for its constancy.

"The rose has but a summer reign,
The daisy never dies;"

says Montgomery, in one of the best known of his poems. Cowslips, Violets, Daffodils, and Pansies are probably the next favourites. Painters have done more for Lilies than the poets have; and Carnations and the later flowers of the year have never made much place for themselves in the poetry of England. The English garden of to-day still awaits its laureate, and, except where, in Mr. Allingham's "Therania,"

"Vase and plot burn scarlet, gold and azure,"

I scarcely know of a description of modern "bedding-out," and sincerely hope that the present fashion may disappear before the thankless task is undertaken.

LONDON: R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS.

* * * * *

Transcriber's note:

In general every effort has been made to replicate the original text
as faithfully as possible, including possible instances of no longer
standard spelling and punctuation, and variable spelling (notably,
Shakspeare/Shakespeare). Variations in hyphenation and compound words
have been preserved.

The following changes were made to correct apparently typographical
errors:

p. x "Mowing--Brds--The Swallow" Brds changed to Birds
p. 50 "There is another Lancahire" Lancahire changed to Lancashire
p. 66 "bed of Clematis Jackmanni" Jackmanni changed to Jackmanii
p. 92 "epithet of _filamentosa_."" quotation mark removed
p. 96 "can undertand how appropriate" undertand changed to understand