incapacity to retain moisture and to admit atmospheric gases as contributions to plant life. If a soil were composed of heavy clay, it would suit a few species, but, without mechanical porousness, it would disagree with the great majority, unless special provision were made for accommodating them. Plants, of course, need food, and they obtain the food they require from the earth in which they grow, and from the air above them, and from the rain which descends upon them. But however abundant may be the actual supply of food in air and water suited to the particular needs of the particular plant, the supply would be useless for assimilative purposes without such a condition of the soil-the medium in which the plant lives-as would enable the vital forces to reach the organs which they are destined to renew.

Nature in every part is rich in materials from which the most beautiful and delicate organisms are replenished. The mystery of creation and the almost equal mystery of growth are beyond our powers of understanding. We cannot comprehend the beginnings of plants, and, though we can trace their movements through all their stages, and though we do know beforehand-from experience of the workings of natural laws -the nature, direction, and object of those movements, we cannot fathom the secret of the power which

moves. Speculation on this head only leaves us lost in wonder.

It is, however, wild Nature that produces the greatest subjects for wonder; and there is no more interesting study than that of the marvellous manifestations of plant life upon what I may call, for instance, the arable soil of a garden. Let me take the case of a town garden, which has been left untilled for several years. It may have become covered with a mixed growth of cultivated and wild plants. Let the owner of such a garden order, if he please, the destruction, 'root and branch,' of every growing thing, and take pains to see that nothing has been left that is green. It will be all in vain. One season, in spring or summer, of rain and sunshine, will produce on such soil a marvellous crop of green wild things, without any seedsowing. In the same garden let a trench be cut several feet deep, and then let alone for a year or two. Upon the perpendicular sides of this trench there will appear forms of cryptogamic vegetation frequently quite foreign to the known or recognised flora of the immediately surrounding neighbourhood.

But if Nature thus liberally and spontaneously gives good things-for they are good, because beautiful —from her green lap, what may we not have if we take the trouble to seek, in wood, in lane, and in stream, for

the choicest wildings? When so many wild plants come unbidden into our garden enclosures, it is natural to assume that very many others, somewhat more coy than their fellows, would thrive in the same enclosures if provision were made for supplying to them their natural conditions of growth. And success in growing wild flowers and ferns in gardens depends upon the greater or less success attendant on an imitation of these conditions.

Two things, then, which may be said to constitute the first principles' of success, must be borne in mind in any attempt at wild gardening. The first is to study the natural habits of the plants to be grown in the garden, and the next is to make these plants at home,' by supplying normal instead of abnormal conditions of existence.

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VI.

MY GARDEN.

My house, like many others, lay midway between two gardens, one in front of it, and the other behind. When I entered into possession I found that the front garden was laid out very much after the manner approved by dwellers in houses. There were shrubs, flower-beds, and gravelled paths, and I determined to allow that arrangement to stand without alteration. The larger space in the rear, separated from the house by a short courtyard and enclosed by four walls, presented, however, a different aspect. My predecessor had apparently preferred a promenade to a garden, and he had accordingly been content to plant Lime-trees along its sides, leaving within them merely a gravelled enclosure with central turf and a few shrubs. With great good sense he had refrained from clipping, or, in any way, interfering with the Limes, and hence they grew in full freedom, and formed in spring and summer, by the interlacement of their twigs, a mass of foliage