retreats in which he has found them! All around this neighborhood, there are scenes that challenge the best efforts of the painter; and he who holds converse with the flowers soon learns the best points of view, and becomes a privileged spectator.
Among our native plants are many that deserve a place in the flower-border, and none more so than the lily tribe. The superb lily, which is rarely found in this vicinity, and the Canada and Pennsylvanian lilies, are among the most beautiful flowers that bloom. There is something exceedingly graceful in the general aspect of the Canada lily, when it assumes a good size in the rich soil of a garden. It rises with a clean stem, throwing off whorls of green and beautiful leaves, at regular intervals, to the height of five or six feet; crowning the whole with a pyramidal cluster of drooping bells. Many of the foreign lilies excel the Canadense in the beauty of their flowers; but none approach the delicate and tropical symmetry of its habit.
The superb cardinal flower will be remembered by every one: it is the ornament of our water-courses in the long days of summer. It has been cultivated to high perfection, and should always occupy a place in our gardens.
We have growing among us one of the neatest little garden hedge-plants that the earth produces, the little privet (Ligustrum). It is found abundantly on the road to Manchester. It is of beautiful foliage, and in summer produces spikes of sweet-smelling flowers, like miniature bunches of white lilac. In the days of Parkinson and Evelyn, this shrub used to be clipped into the forms of birds, beasts, and fishes, and nobody knows what. Time, however, has not diminished the estimation in which it is held. I have often observed it forming the screen hedges within the iron railings that, surround the public gardens in the great squares of London. For the formation of interior or garden hedges, there are few shrubs that approach it in appearance of neatness and beauty.
We have plants all around us of singular habits and strange propensities.
The Cuscuta, or Dodder, which is found in the moist land of this neighborhood, affords a specimen of the parasitic tribe
