long time
before you see your rose. The seed takes sometimes two years to
germinate, and then you have to wait a year or two before you get a
typical blossom. The growers hurry matters by cutting a very tiny bud
from the first sprout and splicing that on to an older stock. One of
the advantages of having your roses grown from seed and on their own
stocks would be that they could not produce wild suckers.

I have just seen a wonderful grove of Aquilegias, the glorified
columbine which has the centre of one colour and the outside petals of
another--sulphur with mauve or yellow with pink, and many other
varieties. The nucleus was grown from shop seed and the rest from the
seed of the first-comers. The only thing to choose between them is
that the new ones have produced a least one variety not represented in
the first batch. You may be sure that I am going to get some seed
from here and raise some Aquilegias for myself. Good reader, go thou
and do likewise.

G.G. DESMOND.

MIDSUMMER MADNESS.

We had come, "3.7" and I, to the Boundary, a white, unpaved road which
winds across the full width of Wimbledon Common, from the old Roman
camp to the windmill. Simultaneously we cried a halt, I because I
never cross that road without some hesitation, he because he wanted to
get out of the folding go-cart in which he had been riding and turn
it, with the aid of a small piece of string and a big piece of
imagination, into a 40-horse-power motor car.

On the map the road is not called the Boundary. If you want to know
why I call it so I can only say that once you have crossed it things
are different; I do not mean a difference merely of country or
scenery, but a difference of atmosphere; better, and more literally, a
change of spirit. To put it bluntly, I never knew the reality of
fairyland until I blundered across that road one grey gusty evening
ten years ago, and heard the tall grasses whistling in the wind. Since
then the road has always been a frontier, not to be crossed without
preparation.

As "3.7" tumbled out of his go-cart I looked at my watch and saw it
lacked but a few minutes to noon. It was just such a cloudless June
day as must have inspired Shelley's _Hymn of Apollo_. No smallest
cloud to break the dazzling blue; and, high above our heads, Apollo,
standing "at noon upon the peak of heaven."

If it had been Midsummer Day I should have thought twice about
crossing the Boundary. As it was, we were quite ne