nour list. Newer things and hybrids are now
endless, and may be tested and added, one by one, but it takes at least
three seasons of this adorably unmonotonous climate of alternate
drought, damp, open or cold winter, to prove a plant hardy and worthy a
place on the honour roll. (See p. 376.)

Before you plant, sit down by yourself with the packages spread before
you and examine the seeds at your leisure. This is the first uplifting
of the veil that you may see into the real life of a garden, a personal
knowledge of the seed that mothers the perfect plant.

It may seem a trivial matter, but it is not so; each seed, be it
seemingly but a dust grain, bears its own type and identity. Also, from
its shape, size, and the hardness or thinness of its covering, you may
learn the necessities of its planting and development, for nowhere more
than in the seed is shown the miraculous in nature and the forethought
and economy of it all.

The smaller the seed, the greater the yield to a flower, as if to guard
against chances of loss. The stately foxglove springs from a dust grain,
and fading holds aloft a seed spike of prolific invention; the lupin has
stout, podded, countable seeds that must of necessity fall to the ground
by force of weight. Also in fingering the seeds, you will know why some
are slow in germinating: these are either hard and gritty, sandlike,
like those of the English primrose, smooth as if coated with varnish,
like the pansy, violet, columbine, and many others, or enclosed in a
rigid shell like the iris-hued Japanese morning-glories and other
ipomeas. Heart of Nature is never in a hurry, for him time is not. What
matters it if a seed lies one or two years in the ground?

With us of seed beds and gardens, it is different. We wish present
visible growth, and so we must be willing to lend aid, and first aid to
such seeds is to give them a whiff of moist heat to soften what has
become more hard than desirable through man's intervention. For in wild
nature the seed is sown as soon as it ripens, and falls to the care of
the ground before the vitality of the parent plant has quite passed
from it. That is why the seed of a hardy plant, self-sown at midsummer,
grows with so much more vigour than kindred seed that has been lodged in
a packet since the previous, season.

My way of "first aiding" these seeds is to tie them loosely in a wisp of
fine cheese-cloth or muslin, leaving a length of string for a handle (as
tea i