I have made a great discovery, and a somewhat disheartening one, and this is it : It isn't quite safe to believe everything those very fascinating and altogether delightful creatures, the flower cat-logues, say. I mean absolutely and implicitly, you know; something you would be willing to swear by - not about, if you were profanely disposed.

Now, I admire catalogues, and always read them from preface to finis. They have a fascination about them before which the most entrancing novel "pales its ineffectual fires." Their charm, like the wonderful marvel of creation, is new every spring. I confidently expect to go on reading them with ever fresh delight, to the end of the chapter, and of believing them, in a general way, but not specifically. For instance : What catalogue tells the unsophisticated reader of the disappointing, not to say exasperating, habit of Yucca filamentosa? It is very beautiful in flower, I admit. It ought to be, after you have waited two years - the usual time for a purchased plant - for the gratification. It is barely possible you may have a like gratification the following year, but the great probability is that when you are asked by all your friends if " that plant which bore such beautiful white flowers is dead?" (you secretly wish it was) you are forced to point to a mass of shabby leaves, about which are a few shoots and off-shoots, which you have learned by experience will take two or three years more of waiting.

They are all very well for large grounds, or to be planted among shrubbery, but if, in your confiding innocence (as somebody who shall be nameless, once was), you are led to plant them in a choice and sightly position, woe is you, for a more exasperating and unsightly mass would be hard to find.

And then there is the whole tribe of Clarkia, Nemophila, Leptosiphon and Godetia, which for general cultivation are utterly worthless. " In a land" - or a garden - "that the sun shines on" they are about as big a delusion as can be found.

But my pet grievance just now is the new (?) Salvia Bethelli. It is in all the catalogues, and is much praised as "a dwarf plant, with very showy pink flowers." I yielded to the seductive description, and bought one. Dwarf? Well, it depends upon what one compares it with. If, for instance, you were comparing it to the "big trees" of California, this Salvia might be fairly considered dwarf, but not otherwise.

Mine grew to between three and four feet in height before it gave a hint of flowering. It is very long-jointed - some four inches or more - and is as like, in both leaf and flower, to the old pink Salvia of ten or fifteen or more years ago as two peas. The flowers drop so quickly that there is never enough open at a time to make the plant at all ornamental. But the red spider thought it the most charming plant that ever grew, and came in regiments from all the region round about, and pre-empted homesteads, and increased and multiplied to an extent that was fairly alarming. Showering and washing made no perceptible difference, and so one day Salvia Bethelli and I took a walk in a lonely place under the trees, and S. B. never came back ! Possibly I didn't have the "true" sort.

Mr. H. B. Ellwanger, in his very useful book, "The Rose," devotes a chapter to "too much alike roses." I think this will apply to many other plants beside roses, and noticeably to geraniums. I bought last spring three pink sorts, each claiming to be very "distinct," and, so far as the flowers were concerned, there was not the faintest perceptible difference, and they were also just like an old sort I already had, save a slight difference in the zoning of the leaf.

I grew and flowered very successfully Clianthus Dampierii in the open ground last summer. The seeds were sown in March, in small pots, in soil two-thirds of which was clean sand. They were kept in ah ordinary living room till May, when the pots were broken and they were set in the open ground in a dry, sunny place. They grew finely through the rainy weather which prevailed in June. Early in July the drought set in, and was more severe than anything experienced in New England for many years. Ah, thought I, what a splendid season for the Clianthus to flourish! And so, while watering other plants, I was mindful of the directions, " never water," and looked to see it run wild with delight and luxuriance. But it did nothing of the sort; it just stood still. It had by the 20th of July a number of clusters of flowers, and buds at the axil of every branch, and nearly every leaf. Soon the buds began to turn yellow and blast, and one hot evening 1 found the whole plant limp and wilted. I threw "directions" to the wind, and from that time on watered it copiously every night, and the way it branched and ran rampant over everything was altogether astonishing, for a plant that had the reputation of " never drinking." After the September rains it grew even more luxuriantly, and when finally killed by the frost the last of October, had still many buds on it.

The glass went down to 200 Fahrenheit several times before it succumbed. It is much hardier than I had supposed.

I am much pleased with Canna President Faivre for room decoration as a winter window plant. The foliage is of very fine form, measuring five inches in breadth to fifteen in length, and is a rich shade of bronzy red-purple. It is fully as effective as the best Dracaenas, and is much more easily and quickly grown.

I have reserved the rankest bit of heresy of all, for the closing paragraph in these jottings. I really shouldn't dare write another, for I am aware that I am in a fearful minority, but I am going to ask, nevertheless, in all meekness and humility, that the various writers and catalogue makers put a foot-note at the bottom of their glowing descriptions of Hydrangea paniculata grandiflora, which shall read something in this wise:

"The flowers of this magnificent, unequaled and altogether unapproachable shrub soon fade to a dingy, dirty pink, in which condition it is, without exception, the most disreputable looking plant in cultivation."

There! it is said. Now let the axe fall.