obtaining one, and it seemed marvellous that any good plant was left in the garden.
I remember his disregarding all my protests and digging up his last remaining plant of the fine form of Podophyllum Emodi var. chinense, figured in the Botanical Magazine (t. 8850), to see whether it was possible to divide it, and ending by wishing me to take the indivisible result.
It was such an evident pleasure to him to call loudly in his splendid ringing voice for gardener, spade, and wheelbarrow, directly he learned that some noble Pæony or other large plant was not yet in his guest's garden. In *90! he wrote to me:
tc I shall hope next spring to have the pleasure of a visit from you, when I will take up all my Croci and give you anything you want.”
It would require several chapters for the mere enumeration of fine plants I have seen m flower at Colesborne, from the masses of snowdrops in great variety in early spring, to the fine varieties of Amaryllis belladonna flowering in late September close to greenhouse walls. Certain pictures that stand out in my memory are a group of Kniphofia caulescens and K . Northiæ on a wide ledge in the rock garden, both of them sprawling out over large blocks of stone, yet as healthy as I ever saw them anywhere; a wide stretch of a very good seedling form of Rosa spinosissima altaica , called after Mrs. Elwes—its white floweis are large, and I think contain more than the normal five petals of the oldei form; Rosa Moyesii in many shades of coral pink as well as the better-known rich red which glows against the sunlight and looks as transparent as a carbuncle; tall spires of Meconopsis Wallichii, some claret put pie, others a puce brown, contrasting with those of the usual sky blue colouring; Lilium chalcedonicum, as happy as ever after many years of life growing out of a dwarf bush; a tall Eucalyptus coccifera , blue as the sea in some lights, which, alas! was sadly broken by snow the last time I saw it; a form of Rodgersia pinnata with crimson flowers; the brilliant red young growth, and later the striped leaves, of Euphorbia sikkimensis; the dwarf pink form of Alstroemeria Ligtu known as var. Hookeri; Gladiolus Saundersii which spread about like a weed, making a grand show when the curiously hooded scarlet flowers rose above its glaucous leaves.
Besides these I like to think of the way in which Tropæolum Leichtlinii spread its long trails of orange flowers over the retaining wall on the south side of the range of greenhouses, and of the rows of giant spikes of many- coloured Eremurus—seedlings which could not be equalled elsewhere. In those days two plants of great rarity were Yucca rupicola, the only species with horny edges to the leaves hardy in England, and Pæonia cretica , with large white flowers.
A beautiful September picture was made by a large-flowered form of Clematis Flammula, falling down over a wall and mingling its snowy sprays with the metallic blue spikes and silvery foliage of a bush of Perowskia atriplicifolia trained against the wall to a height of six feet.
Fritillarias of many kinds grew better at Colesborne than elsewhere, and the fragrant F. obliqua with its nearly black flowers was one of the best, The large groups of F. imperialism the Crown Imperial, in the long her-
