hat
plainly say how much it rejoices in his nurture of it, in its escape
from the frost and tempest that have assailed it for so many
generations.

But here we must be content to take a leaf out of nature's book, and
look for small results unless our experiments are broadly planned. It is
in great nurseries and gardens, not in little door-yards that "sports"
are likely to arise, and to meet the skill which can confirm them as new
varieties.

Japan has much to teach us with regard to flowers: nowhere else on earth
are they so sedulously cultivated, or so faithfully studied in all their
changeful beauty. Perhaps the most striking revelation of the Japanese
gardener is his treatment of flowering shrubs and flowering trees
disposed in masses. Happy the visitors to Tokio who sees in springtime
the cherry blossoms ready to lend their witchery to the Empress's
reception! Much is done to extend the reign of beauty in a garden when
it is fitly bordered with berry-bearers. Rows of mountain ash,
snow-berry, and hawthorn trees give colour just when colour is most
effective, at the time when most flowers are past and gone.

In the practical bit of ground where the kitchen garden meets the
flowers, Japan has long since enlarged its bill of fare with the tuber
of a cousin of our common hedge nettle, with the roots of the large
burdock, commoner still. In Florida, the calla lily has use as well as
beauty; it is cultivated for its potato-like tubers.

Much as the study of flowers heightens our interest in them, their
first, their chief enduring charm consists in their simple beauty--their
infinitely varied grace of form, their exhaustless wealth of changeful
tints. Off we go with delight from desk and book to a breezy field, a
wimpling brook, a quiet pond in woodland shade. A dozen rambles from May
to October will show us all the floral procession, which, beginning with
the trilliums and the violets, ends at the approach of frost with the
golden-rod and aster. But who ever formed an engaging acquaintance
without wishing it might become a close friendship? Never yet did the
observant culler of bloodroot and columbine rest satisfied with merely
knowing their names, and how can more be known unless flowers are set
up in a portrait gallery of their own for the leisurely study of their
lineaments and lineage?

A word then as to the best way to gather wild flowers. A case for them
in the form of a round tube, closed at the ends, with a