It seems to me that this very popular feature depends too greatly upon the character of the season to be truly successful as regards _ensemble_. Our border includes many subjects which have ideas of their own as regards the weather. A dry spring season may stunt (in its English sense) the growth of some dowers that occupy a considerable space, and are meant to play an important part in the design; whereas the same influence may develop a stunt (in the American sense) in a number of others, thereby bringing about a dislocation of the whole scheme, when some things will rush ahead and override their neighbours some that lasted in good condition up to the October of one year look shabby before the end of July the next. One season differs from another on vital points and the herbs differ in their growth had almost written their habit--in accordance with the differences of the season. We have had a fine show in one place and a shabby show next door; we have had a splendid iris season and a wretched peony season--bare patches beside luxuriant patches. The gailardias have broken out of bounds one summer, and when we left “ample verge and room enough” for them the next, they turned sulky, and the result was a wide space of soil on which a score of those _gamins_ of the garden, chickweed and dandelion, promptly began operations, backed up by those _apaches_ of a civilised borderland, the ragged robin, and we had to be strenuous in our surveillance of the place, fearful that a riot might ruin all that we had taken pains to bring to perfection. So it has been season after season--one part quite beautiful, a second only middling, and a third utterly unresponsive. That is why we have taken to calling it the facetious border. Our experience leads us to look on this facetious herbaceous border as the parson's daughter looks on the Sunday School--as a place for the development of all that is tricky in Nature, with here and there a bunch of clean collars and tidy trimmings--something worth carrying on over, but not to wax enthusiastic over. So we mean to carry on, and take Flora's “buffets and awards” “with equal thanks.” We shall endeavour to make our unruly tract in some measure tractable; and, after all, where is the joy of gardening apart from the trying? It was a great philosopher who affirmed at the close of a long life, that if he were starting his career anew and the choice were off not to wax enthusiastic over. So we mean to carry on, and take Flora's “buffets and awards” “with equal thanks.” We shall endeavour to make our unruly tract in some measure tractable; and, after all, where is the joy of gardening apart from the trying? It was a great philosopher who affirmed at the close of a long life, that if he were starting his career anew and the choice were offered to him between the Truth and the Pursuit of Truth, he would certainly choose the latter. That man had the true gardening spirit.