baceous border close to the house made a fine show in the evening light of a spring day. The scentless variety of this plant of fox-like odour was another Colesborne treasure.
The Eastern Jasmine, Jasminum Sambac, one of the most fragrant plants in the world, scented one of the warmer houses with its large semi-double flowers. It is the species used by the Chinese to give a scented flavour to the so-called Jasmine tea. Heeria elegans came to me from Colesborne, and year by year its almost too vivid crimson flowers bring back to my mind the house in which it grew. Babiana stricta, with its blue flowers and startlingly contrasting crimson eyes, has spread widely by now, but I believe all came originally from Colesborne. It is seven years since I was there, and I feel I have forgotten much that I should like to record.
One of the later developments at Colesborne was a series of low glass¬ houses connected with one another on sloping ground. In these plants were grown in beds on the staging on either side of the central pathway. I never saw a more varied and interesting lot of plants so well grown in so small a space. Iris Wattii, planted on the ground level in the top comer, threw up stems over six feet in height. Alpines with evil records for kindly response to cultivation flourished in the raised beds. Many species of Calceolaria, Oxalis, and other tender bulbous plants provided an unbroken succession of blossom. The lowest of these houses was finally devoted to succulent plants. There, and in a loftier house in another part of the garden, a wonderful collection of these strange drought-resisting plants was the chief interest of his last years, Mesembryanthemums resembling stones, Haworthias, Gasterias, Cotyledons, Crassulas, Mammillarias, and Euphor¬ bias of great rarity and weird forms and colouring met together there.
I take this opportunity of recording my gratitude to Henry Elwes for a score of years of pleasant friendship, many of the most beautiful and interesting plants in my garden, and especially for the inspiration and encouragement towards better gardening derived from his conversation and visits.
The garden-lover who can look ahead of all his many set-backs and failures, with the hope of better seasons, improvement among his seedlings, and a solution of his difficulties in. cultivation, will find his pleasure and interest increase as his years mount up. No one has exemplified this better than Elwes in his life and work.
In the last letter Elwes sent to Sir Frederick Moore he wrote: “I have, during my life, taken an active part in most outdoor sports and occupa¬ tions. I have crossed and recrossed the Himalayas and the Andes, ex¬ plored Siberia and Formosa, shot and fished in Norway, and, as I grow older, I find that there is more companionship, consolation and true pleasure in gardening and in plants than in anything I have tried."
