Chapter I: MAKE no claim that the house wherein I dwell is a perfect one; it is (4)

Just what emotion the caw of the crow conveys I am at a loss to determine, unless it be self-complacency—a harsh way of expressing it, it would seem. His notes sound more like anger; and in the woods he certainly does quarrel with the owls, the song-birds, and his own kindred. But his apparent anger may be only feigned, and his voice belie his real character. Assuredly, there was never a more self-complacent tread than the crow’s on a grain field. The farmer and the scarecrow at once become secondary to him, and pilfering becomes almost a virtue, he pilfers with such grace. His tread is as majestic as the soaring of the hawk, and though black as night and evil, his plumage glistens as brightly as light and purity. He seems a true autochthon of the soil. It is much in the way things are done, after all; boldness often passes for innocence, and self-confidence begets security.

Gladness, serene contentment, is most strongly expressed to me by the bobolink, the “okalee” of the starling, and the singular medley of the catbird. To be sure, the catbird frequently justifies his name, and is anything but an agreeable songster; but to make amends for his introductory discords he frequently gives us a delightful palinode. Plaintiveness, sadness over the departed summer, is conveyed by the blackbird’s warble fluted over fields of golden-rod; it is expressed in the trembling notes of the yellow-bird, as he scatters the thistle’s floss to the winds.

If we would carefully analyze the speech of external Nature, I doubt not we could trace some well-defined sentiment in nearly all animate sounds; assuredly in very many of the voices of birds, animals, and insects. For Nature’s moods and tenses are conveyed as strongly through the tympanum of the ear as through the retina of the eye. Their correct interpretation depends upon our inner sight and hearing. I am not sure that in man’s relation to Nature the sense of hearing does not contribute almost as much enjoyment as the sense of seeing. Certainly, Nature would seem but half complete without her characteristic voices. Think of her wrapped in the winding-sheet of eternal silence, a mere mummy, with no song of bird or whisper of wind to impart animation to her scenes. Color and form are but half the landscape; it is sound that gives it life, and renders it companionable. What is winter, in one sense, but absence of sound, not merely the absence of bird and insect voices, but the rustling of leaves and grasses, the murmur of waters, the life and movement of growing vegetation!

Are not the first signs of spring conveyed through sound? Ere yet a song-bird can find an utterance, or grass-blade impart a sense of resurrected life I hear the cracking of the ice and the gurgling of the frost-freed rills. The crow announces the change before the snowdrop comes, and the wild geese proclaim it from the sky before the sallows invite the precocious bee. No doubt the bee is already waiting for the flower, and winnows it into bloom; for no sooner is the corolla ready to expand than I hear his murmurous wings. High in the willow catkins; low down in the horn of the skunk-cabbage; bending the yellow bloom of the first dog-tooth violet, his hum of industry is heard. The bee is perhaps the first constant spring musician, though his is not the earliest vernal voice. The pushing daffodils of the perennial flower-border speak to me of spring, the choir of the toads and _hylodes_ announces it even more emphatically.

How we should miss the voice of Chanticleer were the domestic fowl to become silent! It never occurred to me how important a role he plays until the author of The Bohemians of the Latin Quarter makes him serve as a matutinal alarm to Schaunard in lieu of the time-piece he has pawned. And Herrick, too, in His Grange, or Private Wealth, has the domestic fowl serve a similar purpose:

Though clock
To tell how night draws hence, I’ve none,
A cock
I have to sing how day draws on.

We might rise and retire, indeed, with the clock of the cock, and at all times of day and at all seasons we would sadly miss his voice were he subject to laryngeal troubles. It is a cheery and companionable sound, the absence of which would cause an appreciable void. Many sounds not strictly belonging to outward Nature become complementary to her through familiarity, or through the surroundings amid which they are heard. Thus the hills and valleys speak through the roar of the railroad train, and the harvest fields find a fitting tongue in the thrashing machine. A domestic voice rather than a voice of Nature, the cock’s crow is, notwithstanding this, associated with Nature and rural scenes. It is more a voice of the country and a pulsation of the rural landscape than an expression of urban surroundings. The city hems it in; the country expands it. Orpheus might pause to listen to it when sounded from an autumnal upland, it is so resonant and sonorous. So much does the scene, or the conditions amid which sounds are uttered, affect the sounds themselves.

As a purely wild sound of Nature—the Nature of our own woods and fields—the cry of the owl is, perhaps, unrivaled. The bark of the fox has some analogy to it in point of wildness, except that his voice is always further removed. I hear it on moonlight winter nights following the undulations of the wooded hills—a short sharp bark thrice repeated at rather prolonged intervals. It is an eerie sound, the cry of the vulpine freebooter, ranging his native woods through the frosty winter nights. I never look up at the fox’s pelt slung across the _portière_-rod in the smoking-room without a feeling of regret for the lissom life that was slain. The grand brush that steadied him in his flight; the sharp pointed nose, once alive to every atom of the atmosphere; the fine soft fur, beautiful still in death, appeal mutely to me for a life wantonly sacrificed. I care not how many grouse and ground-birds may have fallen victims to his cunning—they were his rightful prey, the spoil of his domain.

The drumming of the ruffed-grouse imparts a sense of life and companionship to the woods such as few other sounds convey. _Bonasa umbella!_ there is a whir of vigor in his very name. Every one should be born a sportsman to appreciate his glorious _crescendo_; hunting is given to man of the gods, Xenophon rightly said. The grouse is the woodland guide, the alcaid who holds the keys to all its guarded recesses, the courier who knows every lane and passage that thread the forest depths. Accept his invitation, and you are conducted into hidden nooks, and presented glimpses of sylvan beauty of whose existence you would otherwise never have dreamed. His roll-call is a stimulus to exercise, an excuse to explore the covers. Onward and onward and still onward he leads; now amid a sun-flecked vista of tree-trunks, now through a thicket of intertwining saplings, now to a woodland antechamber frescoed with October colors, now up some lofty hillside overlooking the empurpled valley. A taste of the bitter he also mixes with the sweet, as when flushed for the third or fourth time, weary of pursuit, he leads to an almost impenetrable thicket of bramble, perchance to skim off unseen on hearing your approach, or to dive deep down into a precipitous glen, only to mislead by suddenly wheeling up the hillside in a long deceptive flight. Most noticeably in the spring, and frequently in the autumn, and on tempered winter days do I hear the music of his wings, far away in some sequestered glade, beating a sylvan tattoo—most picturesque of all woodland sounds; it is as if the woods themselves were speaking.

The squirrel’s bark is emphatically a sylvan expression. He knows its effect upon the listener, and selects a bland, sunshiny day when he may be distinctly heard. But only at a safe distance, for has not the fox taught him caution, and the grouse the wile of placing a tree-trunk between himself and the double-barrel? Were I to analyze the sentiment of the squirrel’s bark, I should term it an utterance of derision. Not altogether derision, however; for besides a snarling tone, it has a perceptible sound of cracking and crunching, as of nuts and acorns being husked and split by a rodent’s tooth.

An eery cry is the “ssh-p! ssh-p!” of the twisting snipe—two fifths a whistle, two fifths a cry, while to the nervous sportsman the other fifth is a jeer. A guttural cry, a strange raucous cry, a very voice of the treacherous ooze and the rustling sedge. It can not be put into words, and only the snipe himself can sound it. Most voices of the marsh are characteristic; it has its distinctive gamut of sound. The cheerful music of the woodlands is wanting; its speech is pitched in a graver key, in keeping with its solitary haunts where Syrinx ever murmurs through her murmuring reeds. How expressive its many-sounding tongues—the boom of the bittern, the harsh quack of the heron, the scream of hawk and kildeer, the multitudinous calls of water birds—

cries that might
Be echoes of a water-spirit’s song.

All through the spring and autumn nights countless wings are cleaving the upper air, bearing the hurrying voyagers in search of distant climes—flocks of plover and woodcock, skeins of snipe and shore-birds, throngs of ducks and geese, voicing their way through the darkness, league after league, hour after hour on their long journey of migration.

I look for drought and heat when the cicada shrills. The rhythm of the cricket’s creak tells me if the night be hot or cold. I see the gathering rain-clouds when the tree-toad croaks and the hair-bird trills. The bluebird warbles, “it is spring”; a thousand throats proclaim the summer. Sounds from the woods, sounds from the waters, sounds from the fields, sounds from the air! The infinite beauty of sound! Are not Nature’s voices one of her most endearing charms?

How the gas-burner and window-pane have led me to digress! But even from my comfortable room it is sometimes pleasant to look out beyond the storm and bask in the luminousness of the primrose band.

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VIII.

MY INDOOR GARDEN.

Tell, if thou canst, and truly, whence doth come
This camphire, storax, spikenard, galbanum;
These musks, these ambers, and those other smells
Sweet as the vestry of the oracles.
HESPERIDES.

CONTRASTED with the bleakness without, the greenhouses and conservatory possess an additional charm. Within their walls of glass reigns a luxuriance of leaf and bloom. Like the garden, however, the greenhouse will not care for itself. Many of the requirements necessary out of doors I find imperative within. And yet cultivation is on an entirely different scale, a mere pot of earth taking the place of barrowsful under out-of-door culture. In the garden I simply place a plant at the requisite depth and in the proper exposure and soil; in the greenhouse a finer discrimination is called for.

This small plant, bulb, or fern may not be plunged indiscriminately into any receptacle. I must measure the size and requirements of the plant; and not only place it in congenial soil, light or shade, but measure its needs with regard to the size of its prospective domicile. My small plants will fail with too much nourishment, my large plants pine with too little. Some will not thrive in soil at all, but must be cultivated on a block of wood, sustaining themselves merely on air and moisture. In the garden each plant draws from the largess of the earth just what properties it needs for growth and development, and the deeper the surface soil the better the plant will thrive. From some standpoints my greenhouses possess an advantage over my garden; in another sense the garden is more satisfactory. The one is artificial, the other natural; but the greenhouse is, possibly, more easily controlled. With proper care and intelligence I can count upon certain fixed results. I am not dependent upon the uncertain watering-pot of the sky, and have nothing to fear from frost or violent winds. But I must needs exert a keener watchfulness over my charges; Nature is no longer the warder. Just so much heat, so much air, so much sun, so much moisture they must have. For tender exotics, born of a milder clime, are among my nurslings.

My orchids, for instance. Some occur naturally on damp rocks in a cool atmosphere; others on trees in dense tropical forests; still others on high elevations where they receive much sunlight. Shade or coolness, which certain species demand, are injurious to others which flourish in warmth and sunshine. The different habitats of the species, therefore, must be carefully studied, and the conditions under which they thrive in nature imitated as far as possible under glass. “A juggler,” says the accomplished curator of the Trinity College Botanic Gardens, “not unfrequently keeps four balls flying over his head with one hand, and the successful orchid-grower has to deal quite as closely with heat, air, light, and moisture.” My greenhouse, accordingly, calls for its parlor and bath-room, its smoking-room and refrigerator.

I miss the breadth and sunlight of the garden; I gain immunity from the caprice of the elements. My glass house bridges over the dreary interval between the last wind-flower of autumn and the first primrose of spring. If I can not go to the tropics, if I can not have the summer, I can at least recall the one and counterfeit the other. Could I control the sunlight and inclose a sufficient space, I should scarcely miss my hardy flower borders.

In the greenhouse I have my charges nearer my eye; I can watch their development closer. Many of the insect pests that infest the garden come to prey upon the plants indoors. The same warfare I wage without, I must wage within. Care and attention are ever the price of the flower. The insects continue to multiply. They develop new races and people new countries. No sooner does one scourge become extinct than a dozen others take its place. For the weevil we have the army-worm, the potato-bug, the apple-tree borer, the codling-moth. I no sooner administer a soporific to the red spider than the aphides are at work, and these are scarcely subjugated ere the mealy-bug appears. Cockroaches bite the orchid roots, mice nibble the young shoots of the carnations. Mildew and blight likewise destroy, and snails emerge from unsuspected places to prey upon the succulent leaves.

My greenhouse gives me a bog-garden which the altitude of the grounds precludes without. My tank is a miniature bayou, a cage for aquatics. It is always pleasant to watch the growth of water plants, they seem so appreciative of their bath; the very fact of their growing from the water gives them a distinct individuality. These clumps of Egyptian papyrus and smaller variegated _Cyperus_, emerging from the ooze, are as beautiful as flowers. One of the easiest of aquatics to grow, the papyrus, or great paper-reed, throws out strong runners beneath the water, forming dense tufts of tall culms, crowned with large handsome umbellate panicles; indeed, it spreads so rapidly that it requires to be kept vigorously in check. The handsome variegated _Cyperus_ has a tendency to revert to the type, but this may be prevented by cutting out the green shoots that appear.

The great water-lilies, too—the _Nymphæas_ and _Nelumbiums_—are among the most accommodating plants for water culture, as they are unquestionably among the most beautiful of flowers. Equally handsome and fragrant, many of the species rival the terrestrial lilies, and are far less fastidious. Few, if any, of the species are more beautiful than the common water-lily (_Nymphæa odorata_), the white and perfumed cup that floats upon our ponds and sluggish streams. From my tank I may pluck its blossom without being mired, though I miss the kingfisher’s clarion and the sheen of the dragon-fly’s wings with which I associate it in Nature. I miss also the flapping of its pads when touched by the wind, showing the red under sides of the shields, lovely as the flash of trout that lurk beneath. Long must I search for a more delicious odor than that contained within its waxen folds. Begotten of the ooze, a stem shoots upward to the sun and air to unfold its chalice on some secluded pool. The first white water-lily, cradled on the water’s rippling breast! it is the floral embodiment of summer. It falls upon the sight like the tinkle of a woodland rill upon the ear, imparting its harmony to the mind, a thing to be carried away and perfume the memory. I would willingly exchange the Zanzibar species for it, if thereby I might cause the white lily to bloom in winter.

For winter blossoming the former are invaluable aquatics, with pink-purple and blue flowers respectively, opening during daylight. The deliciously scented pink-purple variety (_N. Zanzibarensis rosea_), almost an evergreen aquatic, is the strongest grower, its flat leaves also being large and of great substance. The night-blooming _Nelumbiums_, _N. Devoniensis_, _rubra_, and _dentata_, with pink, red, and white flowers respectively, are the best of their division. _N. speciosum_, the sacred lotus of the Nile, is a beautiful summer-flowering species with immense pink flowers; _N. luteum_ is the tall-growing yellow water-lily, its blossoms seven to ten inches in diameter. Balzac, in Le Lis dans la Vallée, associates the lotus with the old Hellenic sentiment, except that instead of the word country he substitutes love:

Cueillons la fleur du Nénuphar
Qui fait oublier les amours,

the _Nénuphar_ being the lotus of France, _Nymphæa alba major_. And those of us who do not know the lotus of the classics are all familiar with the lotus of Tennyson, “that enchanted stem” which whosoever did receive and taste, forthwith obtained rest and dreamful ease.

There exists some doubt, however, as to which lotus the old Greeks really referred to. The question, What was “lotus”? has been discussed intermittently for at least two thousand years. We must bear in mind that “lotus” was a term applied by the Greeks to several plants or trees. The Latin poets, and Pliny very likely, used the term more vaguely still, not being botanists as were some of the Greeks. For there is also the date-plum (_Diospyrus lotus_), a deciduous tree native of the coasts of the Caspian Sea, and cultivated and naturalized in Southern Europe, the fruit of which is edible. This has been held by some to be the lotus of the Lotophagi, or lotus-eaters. Besides, there is the prickly lotus shrub or jujube-tree (_Zizyphus lotus_), indigenous to the Libyan district and portions of Asia, to the sweet and odorous fruit of which has been equally ascribed the power of causing one to forget one’s home. It is still eaten by the natives, and a wine or mead is extracted from its juice. The term lotus was also applied to several species of water-lily—the Egyptian water-lily (_Nymphæa lotus_), the blue water-lily (_N. cærulea_), and more particularly to the _Nelumbium_ of the Nile (_Nelumbium speciosum_). The _Nelumbium_ is a native both of India and Egypt, though almost extinct in the latter country now; and in the ancient Hindoo and Egyptian mythological representations of Nature, as is well known, it was the emblem of the great generative and conceptive powers of the world, serving as the head-dress of the Sphinxes and the ornament of Isis. It was known, moreover, as the Egyptian bean, on account of its fruit, the cells of which contained a kind of bean employed as an article of food. Indigenous to China as well, the roots are still served there in summer with ice, and laid up with vinegar and salt for winter. Both the fruit and the root of _Nymphæa lotus_ were likewise eaten by the ancient Egyptians; while Horus, the divine child who personified the rising sun, is always represented in hieroglyphics as emerging from a water-lotus bud.

In the East, a belief in a divinity residing in the lotus has existed from the most ancient times, worship of this divinity of the lotus being the dominant religion in Thibet at the present day. The daily and hourly prayer, Wilson states in the Abode of Snow, is still, “_Om mani padme, haun_,” or literally rendered, “O God! the jewel in the lotus. Amen.” In Cashmere the roots of the water-lotus are pulled up from the mire and employed as an article of diet. The root is sweet, and was formerly used for making an intoxicating beverage, as the sap of the palm is still employed in some localities. In like manner the roots of the yellow lotus were used by the American aborigines as an article of diet, Nuttall recording that, boiled when fully ripe, they become as farinaceous, agreeable, and wholesome as the potato.

Research tends to show that it is the _Zizyphus_ rather than any of the other species of lotus to which Homer and Theophrastus ascribed the power of causing forgetfulness. Theophrastus and Dioscorides, Greek botanists, both describe different kinds of lotus, but their descriptions are not always trustworthy. Homer mentions yet another lotus, supposed to be _Melilotus officinalis_, the yellow variety of sweet clover common to this country where it has become naturalized from Europe. It was this plant which he describes as nourishing the steeds of Achilles. Authorities differ so greatly, however, that it is difficult to decide with absolute certainty which species of lotus is really the fabled plant of the Greeks, though the weight of opinion would point to the _Zizyphus_ as against the _Diospyrus_ and especially the _Nelumbium_. The poetical folk-lore of plants must not be expected to be literally true. Even the observant Greek, Aristotle, has many absurdities about plants. So has Theophrastus, but Pliny is full of the most ridiculous superstitions, which he relates with all the seriousness of a firm believer in them.

In attempting to place many plants and flowers of the ancient classic poets there is, therefore, always more or less difficulty and uncertainty. To identify the plants mentioned, without studying them in the country where those who wrote about them lived, is fruitless when there is such a great difference of opinion as to what the ancient Latin poets mean by “violet” or “hyacinth,” or “narcissus.” Sibthorp, who was Professor of Botany at Oxford, England, about eighty years ago and who was a fine classical scholar, went to live three years in Greece for the purpose of identifying the Greek flowers and plants mentioned by the classics. He returned with the conclusion that it is impossible to do it satisfactorily and he was quite certain, though the Greek language still remains in Greece very slightly changed, that what the modern Greeks call a “hellebore” or a “hyacinth” is different from the flowers that were called by these names two thousand years ago.

Herodotus (Book iv, p. 177) places the geographical range of the lotus-eaters from the recess of the Gulf of Cabes eastward to about half-way along the coast of Tripoli, which would correspond with Homer’s account. The former describes the natives as living “by eating the fruit of the lotus—the fruit about the size of the Pistacia nut, and in sweetness like the fruit of the date. From this fruit the lotus-eaters made their wine.” What Homer says regarding the lotus is this (Odyssey, Book ix, v. 82, etc.): Ulysses is recounting his adventures to the guests of the King of Corfu after dinner. He relates how he was on his way home from Troy, and was doubling Cape St. Angelo, when a storm from the north met his fleet and drove it from its course. After sailing southward for nine days, he sighted land and made for it, as the fresh-water supply was exhausted. The crews enjoyed the luxury of a meal on shore, and then began to wonder where they were. So Ulysses chose two good men, adding a herald with a flag of truce, a necessary precaution in those times when strangers were enemies, as a matter of course. These men were to inquire who the inhabitants of the land were. “The lotus-eaters received them kindly and gave them lotus to eat. As soon as they eat the honey-sweet fruit of the lotus they would not come back to bring me tidings, nor go away, but wished to remain where they were with the lotus-eaters, gathering and eating lotus and to think no more of going home. They shed tears when I dragged them back by force to the ships and tied them by ropes to the benches in the hold. Then I ordered the rest of the crews to go on board at once, for fear any of them should eat lotus and think no more of going home.”

To believe that the Homeric legend referred to the fruit of the jujube-tree does not necessitate our believing that the fruit had a sedative effect upon those who eat it. Rumors of a people leading a lazy and indolent life in a delightful climate and subsisting on the fruit of trees, and rumors that sailors accidentally landing there had given up the dangers and hard work of a seafaring life and deserted, would be enough to give the foundation of the legend. There is a story entitled The Mutiny of the Bounty, a true history, which gave the foundation of Byron’s tale The Island; and there are many points of similarity between this and Homer’s brief tale; but Ulysses, the man of many resources, proved a better match for his mutinous men than did Captain Bligh.

Tennyson’s lotus “laden with flower and fruit,” which is specified as being borne on “branches,” is evidently the _Zizyphus_ or else the _Diospyrus_; although the line—

The lotus blows by every winding creek

might lead one to suppose he referred to the _Nelumbium_, were it not for the former contradictory line and the fact that the water-lily grows in the water itself. At any rate, sufficient authority exists to render it certain that some species of lotus yielding an intoxicating product was regarded sacred because of an indwelling god. But whatever species was really referred to by the classics as the charmed nepenthe—whether the fruit of the jujube-tree, or merely a fruit of the fabled garden of Hesperides, to us the name lotus at once brings up the gorgeous water-lily that once rocked upon the Nile, with its grand pink blossoms and its great green leaves. The _Nelumbium_ has taken kindly to American soil, having increased in several marshy localities in New Jersey with astonishing rapidity, entirely crowding out the native growths of arrowhead, pickerel weed, and horsetail, where it has been placed and become established. With its great tendency to spread and multiply, it will soon supply the dragon-fly a classic flower to rest upon, and the great green frog a still more spacious paludal throne than that hitherto supplied by the shield of the native water-lily.

Suspended above the tank are numerous large plants of _Lælia anceps_ and _L. a. morada_, leaning their long lavender sprays over the pool, like flocks of hovering butterflies. With them are also suspended large specimens of the staghorn and the hare’s foot ferns. Ferns and orchids invariably look well in combination. Palms being somewhat stiff themselves, do not associate so well with orchids, which need the relief of more graceful foliage. The hare’sfoot fern is appropriately named, the innumerable twisting rhizomes being soft and woolly, like the foot of a hare, and the fronds fine and feathery. Of all the _Lælias_, _L. a. morada_ has the longest stems, and is among the largest and finest flowered. I grant the exquisite beauty and fragrance of the white form. Comparatively an inexpensive variety, the former is to be preferred to some others quoted at from ten to twenty times its marketable value. For in orchids, price very frequently does not represent intrinsic beauty of bloom; and mere rareties or orchidaceous curiosities are preferable in one’s neighbor’s collection. I am satisfied with fine specimens of a few of the easier grown and really beautiful species and varieties. A fine plant of _Cypripedium œnanthum_ which my neighbor values at a thousand dollars is not worth my _Lælia_ to me. Its flower is stiff in comparison, and its dorsal sepal, though strikingly rayed—white, striped with pink—has not the grace and beauty of the _Lælia’s_ velvety petals and the exquisite blossoms of many other species. After all, may it not well be questioned whether the hardy pink lady-slipper has a rival among the numerous species and hybrids of the big labellums and long-tailed petals?

My orchids, like my roses, have their parasites—the green and yellow fly, the black thrip, the mealy-bug, the lesser snail, the scale. Of late years the yellow fly has become more numerous, though, with the green fly, the rose is his especial prey. It is difficult to know what plan to adopt against my insect enemies. The rule of three will not solve the difficulty, for a mean proportional does not exist. If my houses are too hot or the plants too dry, the red spider and black thrip swarm; if too cold, the mildew comes; if the weather be muggy, it is a summons for the green and yellow fly. Tobacco stems placed upon the hot-water pipes banish the black thrip where fumigating is of no avail. Fumigating alone will disperse the aphides. The smaller snail I must bate with lettuce leaves; the larger one must be searched for at night with a lantern. For mildew I must place sulphur and lime on the pipes, and the scale and mealy-bug demand their periodical sponge-bath. The cockroach sips treacle and is lost in the sweets. Wood-lice come from underneath the benches, and the lesser snail, despite all precautions, will sometimes bite off a flower-spike six times larger than himself. It all reminds me of a passage in the Faerie Queen:

A cloud of cumbrous gnats do him molest,
All striving to infixe their feeble stinges,
That from their noyance he no where can rest;
But with his clownish hands their tender wings
He brusheth oft, and oft doth mar their murmurings.

Care and attention are ever the price of the flower.

It is hardly to be wondered at that orchids have their insects; the wonder is they do not possess them in greater numbers, the flowers themselves so resemble insects and strange creatures of the air. I can scarcely define which attracts me most, the singular flowers or the fantastic odors they exhale. Perfumes of lilacs and primroses—lilacs and primroses thrice intensified—greet me when _Oncidium incurvum_ and _Dendrobium heterocarpum_ are in bloom. The redolence of jasmines, jonquils, and cyclamens is combined in many of the _Cattleyas_, while _Odontoglossum gloriosum_ seems a whole hawthorn hedge in flower. I open the door of the warm-house when the _Vandas_ are in bloom, and I know not what subtle overpowering fragrance weighs down the air. What a sachet and censer of perfume! what a spice-box of the Orient! Cleopatra might have just passed through. Such strange odors! languorous, sensuous, all but intoxicating! I expect to hear a tom-tom’s beat, or the rustle of a houri’s skirt. Some of the _Stanhopeas_, how powerful their scent—a _pot-pourri_ of all the gums of Brazil! The suave yet pungent aroma exhaled by one of the _Oncidiums_ (_O. ornithorhynchum_), I can never get enough of. Its insidious, delicious fragrance defies analysis; it haunts me like an unremembered dream or a thought that has escaped. Intensely red flowers are seldom odorous; the brilliant _Sophronites_—some of them the purest essence of scarlet—are scentless. The _Phalænopsis_, too, although among the most floriferous of orchids, are likewise inodorous.

It is fascinating to attempt to trace the resemblance of some of the odors. G. W. Septimus Piesse would be at a loss to place many of them or to determine their combination. Some, on the contrary, are distinctly like many well-known and grateful odors, though generally much more pronounced. From _Dendrobium aureum_ and _Cattleya gigas_ there rises a triple extract of violets; from _Cattleya citrina_, a strong fragrance of limes; from _D. scabrilingue_, a delicious breath of wall-flowers; from _D. moschatum_, a pronounced musk-like scent. Besides _Odontoglossum gloriosum_, both _Burlingtonia fragrans_ and _Trichopilia suavis_ emit a perfume of hawthorn. One of the _Zygopetalums_ smells like hyacinths, one of the _Oncidiums_ like cinnamon, one of the _Catasetums_ like anise. The straw-colored flowers of _C. scurra_ have a pronounced perfume of lemons. _Cymbidium Mastersii_ is charged with the odor of almonds. _Dendrobium incurvum_ is distinctly jasmine scented. A mellifluous essence of cyclamen clusters about _D. Dominianum_. Not a few orchids smell like honey, while in others I can plainly trace the scent of elder flower, heliotrope, the wild grape, sweet pea, vanilla, tuberose, honeysuckle, lily of the valley, and various tropical fruits, like the pine-apple, banana, and _Monstera_. The majority of the _Vandas_ and _Stanhopeas_, and not a few of the _Cattleyas_, are puzzling to place.

Form is scarcely less strange than odor in many orchids, most of the species bearing a pronounced or faint resemblance to some form of bird, insect, or animal life. The _Masdevallias_ and _Maxillarias_, how like the walking-stick and water-skaters many of them are! My primrose-scented _Dendrobium_ looks like a flock of lovely buff-colored moths ready to take flight from the stems. The ivory-white flowers of _Angræcum sesquipidale_, whose perfume so strongly resembles that of the white garden lily, look like a starfish. These _Stanhopeas_, whose emanations are almost overpowering and whose spikes emerge from the bottom of their suspended baskets, remind me of serpents in the form and spots of their fleshy, purplish or orange-dyed flowers. The flowers of the species _Anguloa_ resemble a bull’s head; those of _Cycnoches Loddigesii_, a swan. In the white waxen flower of _Peresteria elata_ I trace the symbol of immortality—a dove with expanded wings; in the terrestrial _Ophrys_ I almost hear the humming of its bees. Many species closely resemble spiders and beetles; others seem almost an exact counterfeit of various moths and butterflies—there is no end to the strange resemblances.

Color is scarcely less strange than odor and form. These abnormal spots and blotches, these oddly tipped petals and painted sepals, I meet in no other flower. The lily, _Sternbergia_, and anemone have each been singled out as the candidate for the honor of being referred to in the twenty-ninth verse of the sixth chapter of St. Matthew. But was any one of these, or even Solomon himself, arrayed like _Dendrobium Wardianum_? The most gorgeous of its gorgeous tribe, it is perhaps the most gorgeous of flowers; and among the easiest grown species, it blossoms freely, suspended in the library from a block of wood.

I must watch long to see a blue or purple orchid in bloom, colors common enough among garden and other greenhouse flowers. True red and vermilion are extremely rare, yellow in its various shades being perhaps the most common color, green and white occupying an almost equal place. Brown-shaded or brown-spotted flowers are common, and there exist numerous pink-purples and crimsons. Magenta frequently creeps into the _Cattleyas_, staining the crest of the pearl or cream-colored lobe, or splashing the curled or fimbriated lip. But magenta lends itself better to orchids than to other flowers; and objectionable as it generally is, it may be pardoned in some of the _Cattleyas_. It is a tropical color and brings perfume. Apart from the strange odors, shapes, and colors of the flowers, the orchid still continues exceptional in the wonderful duration of its blooms both upon the plant and in the cut stage. Epiphytal or terrestrial, tropical or native, in all its aspects the orchid is strange.

How few, while admiring the gorgeous beauty of an epiphytal orchid, think of the price it has cost to transfer it from its tropical habitat! For very many of the numerous species have been obtained at the sacrifice of human lives—martyrs to hardship, exposure, and disease engendered while wresting a new species from its miasma-infested home. The accounts of many orchid collectors who have lived to relate their experiences read like the exploits of a Stanley or a tale of Verne.

If my orchids are chary of red, many foliage plants supply this color abundantly, and ferns the graceful leafage and lovely greens which orchids lack. I say nothing of the palm, the tree-fern, the _Monstera_, the _Musa_, and similar large plants that require special quarters where they may have ample space to do them justice. But color and form are supplied by many medium-sized foliage plants of comparatively easy culture; and in selecting these, like orchids, it is well to choose a few of the finest and most distinct, rather than crowd the stages with a mass of plants of only average merit. One can never cease to admire the brilliant mottling and veining of the Croton’s evergreen foliage, the grand purplish green leaves of _Maranta Zebrina_, the elegant markings of the _Calladium_, the velvety crimson-mottled leaves of the _Gesneras_, the polished bronze shields of _Alocassia metallica_, the bronze-green and satiny luster of the _Camphylobtrys_, the vivid exquisite red tones of the _Dracæna’s_ younger leafage, and the _Poinsettia’s_ fiery scarlet whorls. Perhaps no other red, even that of the pomegranate, is quite so intense as the flaming spathe and spadix of several of the great tropical aroids belonging to the species _Anthurium_, valuable for their fine foliage as well as for their startling flowers. An interesting foliage plant is the old _Strelitzia reginæ_, producing singular brilliant orange and purple flowers, one continually pushing up beneath the other from its magical wand. The _Imatophyllum_, or _Clivia_, is likewise a satisfactory foliage plant, apart from the showy florescence of its large umbel of twelve to fifteen coppery-red blossoms.

The variegated form of the pine-apple (_Ananas bracteatus_) goes farther than any other greenhouse plant in its combined appeal to the senses, its rich reddish foliage pleasing the eye, and its rich red fruit captivating the sense of sight, smell, and taste. I fancy the smaller fruit of this variety is of more pronounced flavor than that of the type; but this may be simply owing to its more inviting appearance. One needs no other odor in the greenhouse when the pine-apple is in fruit. It was a Huguenot priest who described the pine-apple, three centuries ago, as a gift of such excellence that only the hand of Venus should gather it. It might have fallen from the sky a larger and more delicious strawberry. No one who has tasted it only after it has been plucked green and subjected to a long voyage in the hold of a vessel, can conceive its ambrosial flavor when cut ripe from the stem. It is a fresh revelation to the taste; it almost renews one’s youth.

Some specimens of the _Sarracenias_ or pitcher-plants are interesting, though when suspended from their baskets they lack their native grace. I always recall the _Sarracenia_ as I first met it, its purple cups and rufous-green leaves fringing a deep black pool. Springing from the sphagnum, cotton-rose, and cranberry tangle of the swamp, it seemed to possess a conscious life of freshness and of color, callous to November frost and cold. The thick carpet of cranberry upheld the footstep on the quaking bog, and every tread spilled the water from the _Sarracenia’s_ brimming cups and leaves. Aflame with scarlet berries, a growth of black-alder skirted the outer edges of the pool; on the rising ground beyond, the gray boles and gilded foliage of a beech grove were illumined by the sinking sun. It was a study for a Ruysdael or a Diaz, if a Diaz could reproduce the mellow grays and reds of the sphagnum and the _Sarracenia_. Fontainebleau or the thickets of Bas-Bréau hold no such pool; it is alone the product of a wild New World swamp.

Of flowers grown for the sake of fragrance alone, or beauty of blossom and fragrance combined, it is difficult to specify which are the most desirable—so many are so beautiful. Such stiff, soulless subjects as the camellia and calla are worthless, and should be thrown out of the greenhouse—there are too many good things to take their place. A flower should have a meaning, or a sentiment attached to it; and the camellia and calla have none; they are frigid even for the grave. Many of the glaring blues, purples, crimsons, and magentas of the _Cinerarias_, and some of the agonizing reds of the Chinese primrose are equally to be avoided as so much rubbish for which the greenhouse has no room. The common pink begonia, which every one grows because every one else grows it, should likewise be left out in favor of many other better varieties of its class. Of roses there can not well be too many; and of these a well-grown Maréchal Niel or a Gloire de Dijon can scarcely be excelled for luxuriance, fragrance, and beauty of bloom.

I should hesitate which to pronounce the most satisfactory—the cyclamen or the lily of the valley, both are so sweet. The latter is much more easily raised; the former must be sowed from seed yearly; it does not propagate. The fragrance of the cyclamen is delicious and distinct. But it is of a variable quantity, some kinds being delightfully scented, and some odorless. Marie Louise violets—

The violet of March that comes with spring,

should, of course, be generously grown in frames connected with the greenhouse, to cut from _ad libitum_; there is no other indoor or outdoor flower to take the place of the violet. Neither can the carnation be dispensed with, this colored clove among flowers, which only demands a cool temperature to repay cultivation. And how could one be without the haunting fragrance of mignonette!

Tulips, hyacinths, and crocus, methinks, should not be raised indoors—their true place is in the April garden without, to herald the returning spring. A few of the white, salmon, and vermilion geraniums are showy and sometimes useful, especially the small double vermilion; the majority do not compare with many of the fine discarded pelargoniums which florists complain they can not sell, for the simple reason that they do not raise them. The fuchsia has some fine and striking forms; the majority are undesirable. The heliotrope is desirable for its fragrance, though it withers quickly when cut. The _Freesia_ is an easily grown and beautiful flower that should be forced as abundantly as the _Convallaria_ for cutting. _Daphne Indica_ and _odora_ one can not well do without, and equally valuable for fragrance are the climbing Madagascar _Stephanotis_ and some of the jasmines.

Among other desirable climbers possessing fragrance should be included some of the passion flowers and the showy yellow Brazilian _Allamanda_. A few specimen plants of the fragrant Chinese azalea are always ornamental, and useful for cutting; some of the rose-colored kinds are among the gayest of greenhouse flowers, notably the old variety “Rosette.” A somewhat difficult hot-house plant to grow is _Alstrœmeria ligtu_, with white and scarlet flowers appearing during February, and possessing a strong scent of mignonette. The pure waxy white flowers of the _Eucharis_, or lily of the Amazon, are invaluable for cutting, the robust bulbous plants being easily raised, and producing their flower-trusses in great luxuriance. For cutting, the numerous species of narcissus can scarcely be equaled; from the many beautiful bunch-flowered varieties of the _tazetta_, and the glorious blooms of the large trumpeters, to the smaller hoop-petticoat daffodil and golden campernelle jonquil. A plant seldom seen under glass, but an excellent plant, notwithstanding, is the common sweet-scented yellow day lily (_Hemerocallis flava_), than which few flowers are more beautiful either in the garden or greenhouse. Where one has sufficient space, the garden lilac may be advantageously grown in the greenhouse, care being taken not to force it too fast, or the trusses soon droop when cut.

Naturally, no greenhouse is complete without the chrysanthemum, which, defying the first frosts without, makes us forget the approach of winter within. I still grow the old-fashioned small-flowered white, yellow, and maroon pompons. Of recent years hybridizing has produced an innumerable quantity of large, loose _outré_ forms among the Chinese and Japanese sections. In many cases this has been done at the sacrifice of bloom and beauty of color. Dingy brown disks have crept into the flowers; and the chrysanthemum may be said to have deteriorated rather than improved under too much cultivation.

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IX.

A BLUE-VIOLET SALAD.

Ce fut un beau souper, ruisselant de surprises.
Les rôtis, cuits à point, n’arrivèrent pas froids:
Par ce beau soir d’hiver, on avait des cerises
Et du Johannisberg, ainsi que chez les rois.
THÉODORE DE BANVILLE, ODES FUNAMBULESQUES.

THE dining-room is large and lofty, having been planned with special reference to ventilation, spaciousness, and the attractive views it commands of the copse, the garden, and the rising and the setting sun.

If it is pleasant to dream in the well-furnished library, if it is a delight to muse and study amid harmonious surroundings, how much more important it is that the great nursery of a pleasing frame of mind, the dining-room, should by its inviting surroundings and the care and intelligence bestowed upon its adjuncts, the kitchen and the wine-cellar, contribute equally to the felicity of the house and home!

With the exception of the ball-room, the dining-room should be the most spacious apartment of the house. For is it not the most occupied and visited? Three times daily, at least, the inmates assemble here; and in the case of entertainments I observe it is invariably a shrine to which the guests repair with almost one accord. To be sure, the host and hostess are not entirely neglected, and the flow of conversation is never wholly restrained in the drawing-room. Yet I have never failed to notice, where a large assemblage of invited guests is present in any house, how powerful a magnet the dining-room possesses. This not only to the sleek and rubicund among the sterner sex—men who are known for their fondness for good cheer; but even to the slim and ethereal among the gentler sex, as well. Pale sylphs whom one would scarcely suspect capable of an accomplished play of a knife and fork, staid matrons, blooming rosebuds, and elderly dames, all seem no less fascinated with the charms of the dining-room. It is the source and dispensator of joy when its appointments are perfect—the one room of all rooms of the house which may not be abolished.

How may I enjoy the other portions of my house if the dinner be poorly served and the environments amid which it is partaken be dismal or unattractive? The dinner should be the diapason to pitch one in the right key for the evening, whether it be the perusal of a favorite author, a moonlight stroll, a ball, or a symposium with one’s friends. Carlyle’s dining-room, I venture to say, was a gloomy one; or his cook, lacking a happy turn for an _entrée_, served him with ponderous _pièces de résistance_, thereby the more intensifying his natural acerbity and want of geniality. Is the German invariably happy, overflowing with _Gemüthlichkeit_? He has three hundred and sixty-five soups, one for every day in the year. Is the Frenchman proverbially polite and effervescent? His delicate _ragoûts_ and fragrant Bordeaux are a constant tonic to his spirits. “Repose is as much the result of a well-organized digestion as of a quiet mind,” observes the axiomatic and irrefutable author of the 366 Menus. Thrice blessèd he who has a good conscience and a good cook. Your conscience may be as clear as a mountain brook, however, but without a good digestion life becomes a weariness.

A pleasant dining-room and a well-appointed kitchen, therefore, become among the most important factors in the happiness of the household—the best means of defeating that _ennui_ which, according to Schopenhauer, fills the moiety of a man’s life. The Savarins, the La Reynières, and the Baron Brisses can never be too many. “I regard the discovery of a new dish,” said the late Henrion de Pensey, the magistrate (according to M. Royer Collard), of whom regenerated France has most reason to be proud, “as a far more interesting event than the discovery of a star, for we always have stars enough, but we can never have too many dishes; and I shall not regard the sciences as sufficiently honored or adequately represented among us until I see a cook in the first class of the Institute.”

They manage these things better in France, though the art of gastronomy of late years has advanced as rapidly in this country, perhaps, as any of its sister arts. It is no longer a burden to approach the dinner-table; and while we may not have transposed the maxim that Harpagon deemed so noble, nevertheless, it may be affirmed, in the strict sense of the expression, that we no longer “eat to live.” For is not this among the highest of arts—a sauce “that, when properly prepared, will enable one to eat an elephant?” as Grimod de la Reynière observes in the Almanach des Gourmands. With an abundant supply of herbs and flavorings, a hygienic appreciation of their virtues, and a refined, discriminating taste, all is possible. The “palate is flattered” and the stomach is not fatigued. If the cook or the person who employs him would only carry out the advice the Almanach prescribes, in order that the cook’s palate may retain its exquisite sensibility, and the trained papillæ of his tongue forever command their cunning!

These fine savors, these subtle aromas of a delicious dish, delicate as the fragrance of a wild flower, and companions of the liquid essences of the Gironde, the Côte d’Or, the Marne, and the Rheingau—when conceived and executed by a true priest or priestess of the range, how they refresh the jaded spirits and turn the lowering winter sky into _couleur de rose_! It remained for a woman, the late Mrs. Mary Booth, to give to posterity the most delicious epigram that has yet been uttered regarding dinners and dinner-giving: “A successful dinner is the best thing which the world can do in the pursuit of pleasure. It is the apotheosis of the present, and the present moment is all we can call our own.” Neither let us forget for a single instant, where dinner-giving is concerned, the golden maxim of Baron Brisse: “A host whose guest has had to ask for anything is a dishonored man!”

Let the dinner be served in a well-lighted, spacious, and pleasantly furnished room; let the chairs be easy, the guests not less than eight nor more than ten (_les dîners fins se font en petit comité_), the linen spotless, the service faultless. Let the wines not exceed four—a light hock, redolent of the fruit of the Riesling; a glass or two of Montepulciano or of Pichon-Longueville, two _flûtes_ of half dry champagne (cider rather than “_brût_”) or sparkling dry Saint-Péray; and for the after-taste—the last taste of sweets—the perfumed sunshine of Sauternes, Lafaurie, or La Tour Blanche of a well-succeeded year, iced to snow. “A glass of wine,” Richard Sheridan used to say, “would encourage the bright thought to come; and then it was right to take another to reward it for coming.” Let the courses not exceed seven, including the salad; let the room be well ventilated; the flowers mildly stimulating rather than cloying in their fragrance; let the repast not exceed two and a half hours in duration—and, for the present at least, we are—

Notes in that great symphony
Whose cadence circles through the rhythmic spheres.

The senseless practice of decanting wine can not be too strongly condemned. A delicate wine seems never the same as when poured from the bottle in which it has ripened and in which it has concentrated its odors. The practice, moreover, is incongruous; for even he who decants his “claret” would not think of needlessly dissipating the bouquet of his hock. As for the matter of sediment being avoided by decanting, decanted wines are invariably seen in a clouded condition, their bloom having been brushed off by the very process of decanting. By laying all bottles on their side, with the label uppermost, while they remain in the repose of the cellar, and then placing them upright a day or a few hours before they are required, the question of sediment is at once disposed of. Then, if the wine be carefully poured, label upward, it wells forth as limpid as a woodland spring.

Equally to be censured is the increasing custom of serving wine in colored glasses—a fashion inaugurated by the gentler sex in order to add a supposititious life to the table. Apart from the great mistake of thus masking the color of the wine itself, and thereby impairing its attractiveness to the eye, there is no color produced by the most cunning artificer in glass which approaches the colors extracted from the skin of the grapes themselves.

What green Bohemian glass may equal in hue this golden green of Liebfrauenmilch that so enhances the flavor of these speckled trout which but yesterday were swimming amid the waving water-cresses of the stream?