WE PRESENT a picture on page 321 which prettily represents a novel bit of aquatic and landscape gardening. As no landscape is complete without its vista of water, so all flower gardens need a refreshing variation in babbling brook or flowing fountain. In this case nature had been so chary in her gifts of soil, water and verdure, where we chose to locate in the Mohawk Valley, that the change from sterility to fertility has been all the more interesting. Only a stretch of three or four acres of slate and an inch or so of soil formed the foundation of the work. Grading, digging and quarrying, filling with soil, laying out the grounds planting a few trees, so disposed as not to obstruct the view, was the work of a few years in a quiet, easy way. But the little lake was not the result of an afterthought. The water supply comes from an artesian well half a mile away on the hill, and the water rights to all springs located there were included in the purchase of the property twenty years ago. All the work could not be done at once, and so the construction of the little lake was left to the last, and it is the crowning glory of the whole.

The gently sloping lawn leading down to the water's edge, the trees with green and sturdy plumes fitting so gracefully in the curved outline, or with arched and overhanging boughs casting their shadows in the water, form a pretty picture, all the more pleasurable because God did not make the scene, but inspired it.

The miniature lake is 100 feet long by 60 broad at the eastern end, gradually narrowing to 20 feet at the western. An embankment 6 feet high on the north side is required to keep the water at the desired level. In the broadest part, about 20 feet from the eastern end, was built an island about 15 by 20 feet, made of rough masonry below the surface of the water and above of shelving rocks, placed in about the same position they occupy hereabout in nature. This cemented rock-work was covered with rubbish and soil. The shrubbery planted on it serves as a natural shade for hardy cypripediums and other shade-loving plants. A fountain in the center plays during dry weather and keeps the place moist and green at all times. The lake shelves gradually from the edge down to the center, where it is from six to eight feet deep. The bottom is for the most part shale rock, which was covered with a heavy stratum of clay, pounded down; but millions of angle-worms bored inquisitively through this barrier, making it as porous as the nozzle of a watering-pot; but cobblestones and cement proved too much for them, and our lake is now worm and water-proof. Beds are made in the bottom by laying walls of stone and filling the spaces between them with soil ,in which are planted hardy water lilies.

On the sides and around the whole circumference indeed, are placed pockets at irregular distances. These are cemented, and some are filled with soil to within a few inches of the surface of the water and others to a level with it, according to the varying needs of water-loving plants. In some of them float islands of water hyacinths, in others flourish stately grasses, bamboos, sagittarias, pretty water poppies, seedlings of tender water lilies with delicate young buds and blooms, irises, and, in fact, everything which likes moisture and stands the sun. Around the island two feet under water is a bed about four feet in width, in which is planted the hardy Nymphoea alba rosea, the first to show the ruddy blush which comes with early rising. Also N. candidissima, so strong and sturdy in its cramped quarters that it pushes itself in huge upright bunches against the higher wall, hiding its blossoms between its stately leaves. Pontederia refuses to move away, but nelumbium runs about and intrudes itself wherever it gets a chance.

As the season advances and the temperature of the water rises, tender water lilies in tubs are sunk between the beds of hardy lilies, and this completes the planting of the water garden, and when the summer days have come, pink and lavender, red and purple mingle with large white lilies, their leaves overlapping, green and copper and brown, reaching out to one another, commingling tropical splendor and fragrance with the chaste and sturdy beauty of the temperate zone. Did ever the finny tribes disport themselves in smoother water or more refreshing shade, cast by dainty parasols that queens might envy, but never possess ; made without hands, yet fringed and fluted and perfumed in Nature's laboratory, and exhaling their fragrance without stint or pay ?