which she is very fond. There are wallflowers of two different colours in her beds. One kind has bright golden blossoms, rather deeper in colour than any of those upon the wall; the other has flowers that are a rich dark brown.

These plants are sturdier and more bushy than those upon the wall, and there are more flowers on each plant. The flowers are finer, too, and have a stronger scent. If Mrs. Hammond had wished she could have sown seed to produce many different shades of brown and yellow Wallflowers. She might also have had a purple Wallflower, and even a Wallflower of so pale a yellow as to be almost white.

If you and I were clever gardeners and had plenty of time and patience, we could get purple or nearly white wallflowers from these yellow-flowered plants upon the wall. It would perhaps take us many years, but we should succeed at last. This is how we should set about it.

Suppose that we wished to have a Wallflower nearly white. We should look carefully along the wall in spring, when the blossoms are out, until we found the very palest yellow blossom we could see. We should mark that plant, and when the flower was over and the seed was ripe, we should collect the seed. Among the plants grown from this seed we should choose again the plant that had the palest flowers, and should save the seed from that. We might have to go on doing this for twenty years or more, but in time we should have a Wallflower so pale as to be almost white.

Quite white we should never get our Wallflower, for no pure white flower can be obtained from a yellow one. However pale our Wallflower might be there would still always be just a tinge of yellow or cream colour in it.

Red Valerian

If, on the other hand, we wanted a purple or a very dark brown Wallflower, we should save seed from those blossoms which were nearest to the colour we wanted--dark brown or with a tinge of purple in them. We should sow seed from the darkest blossoms again and again, and at last we should get what we wished to have.

Stinging Nettle	White Dead Nettle

Besides choosing seed from the lightest or darkest blossoms, we should tend our plants very carefully and well, giving them plenty of good rich soil. This would make them grow bushy and with many flowers, as we see them in Mrs. Hammond's garden beds.

Many of our garden flowers have been produced in this way, by selecting and improving wild flowers. Of course all flowers grow wild somewhere; some in England, but many more in foreign countries, where the air is warmer and the soil richer and better. The Pansy is a little English wild flower with yellow, blue, and red petals. From this little flower gardeners have produced large and beautiful pansies of many different colours and shades of colours--white, yellow, blue, and brown. This has been done by careful selection, just as we spoke of doing with the wallflowers.

But if the large single-coloured pansies of which I have told you, or Mrs. Hammond's dark brown wallflowers, were allowed to seed themselves--that is, were allowed to drop and sow their own seed year after year--do you know what would happen? They would gradually revert or turn back to their original form and colour. The flowers would become mixed in colour and less fine in size; at last they would be simple wild flowers again.

Pansy

Now it is June, and the blossoms of the Wallflower have faded and fallen. The old wall is, however, growing gay with another plant--the Red Valerian. We must be careful to remember that it is the Red Valerian, for there are other valerians. There is the Great Valerian which does not grow on walls or rocks, but in damp and shady places; its flowers are pale pink.

The blossoms of the Red Valerian on the wall are bright crimson, and they grow in rows on small stems which spring from a stout stalk a foot or two in height. Each blossom of five petals forms a little tube or corolla. The base or foot of each little tube appears as a point on the under side of the flower stem; the Red Valerian, like the Violet, is a spurred flower.

The leaves are long and pointed, and they grow in pairs, on opposite sides of the stalk. Sometimes the edges of the leaves are quite smooth; sometimes they are serrated, or toothed, like the edge of a saw. If we pulled a plant of Red Valerian from the wall we should find the roots very long and branching; they need to be so, for the plant often grows on rocks and other places where it is exposed to wind. If the roots had not a firm hold the tall stems laden with blossoms might be blown down.

The Red Valerian flowers all through the summer. Its clusters of crimson flowers are as great an ornament to the old wall as were the wallflowers in May.

Now let us go down the steps into the foldyard; there is a wall on either side of us as we descend. The wall which faces the north is nearly always in shadow, and there are ferns growing but of it between the stones. One of these is a beautiful Hartstongue fern, with large and shining leaves. We said just now, however, that ferns have no flowers, so we will turn to something that grows on the wall opposite.

This is the ivy-leaved Toadflax. It grows on walls and rocks, as the Red Valerian does, but it is a very different plant in appearance. The stems of the Red Valerian are tall and upright; those of the Toadflax are slender and drooping. There is a large mass of it on the side of the wall, and we find that the root is at the highest point of the whole mass. The stems with the flowers and leaves hang down below the root; it is a trailing plant.

Ivy-Leaved Toadflax

There are, however, other roots clinging to the wall here and there below the main root. The plant, like several others, is able to throw out fresh roots from the joints of its stems, and these give it a firmer hold.

The flowers are small, and their colour is a pale lilac-blue with a bright yellow spot in the centre. These flowers too are spurred. The leaves are smooth and thick--what is called fleshy. They are divided into five lobes or divisions, and are not unlike an ivy-leaf in shape. When we turn a leaf or two over we see that the under side of some is dark purple.

This little plant is usually said to prefer a damp situation, and to blossom from May till October. This wall beside the steps is certainly rather damp, for the moisture from the garden above soaks down to it. In my own garden, however, the ivy-leaved Toadflax grows on some very