And the tiresome, tasteless ribbon-beds of our day were preceded in earlier centuries by figured beds of diverse-colored earths--and of both we can say with Bacon, "they be but toys, you may see as good sights many times in tarts." The promise to Noah, "while the earth remaineth seed-time and harvest shall not cease," when heeded in the garden, brings various interests. The seed-time, the springing-up of familiar favorites, and the cherishing of these favorites through their in-gathering of seeds or bulbs or roots for another year, bring pleasure as much as does their inflorescence. Another pathetic trait of many of the old-time flowers should not be overlooked--their persistent clinging to life after they had been exiled from the trim garden borders where they first saw the chill sun of a New England spring. You see them growing and blooming outside the garden fence, against old stone walls, where their up-torn roots have been thrown to make places for new and more popular favorites. You find them cheerfully spreading, pushing along the foot-paths, turning into vagrants, becoming flaunting weeds. You see them climbing here and there, trying to hide the deserted chimneys of their early homes, or wandering over and hiding the untrodden foot-paths of other days. A vivid imagination can shape many a story of their life in the interval between their first careful planting in colonial gardens and their neglected exile to highways and byways, where the poor bits of depauperated earth can grow no more lucrative harvest. The sites of colonial houses which are now destroyed, the trend, almost the exact line of old roads, can be traced by the cheerful faces of these garden-strays. The situation of old Fort Nassau, in Pennsylvania, so long a matter of uncertainty, is said to have been definitely determined by the familiar garden flowers found growing on one of these disputed sites. It is a tender thought that this indelible mark is left upon the face of our native land through the affection of our forbears for their gardens. The botany tells us that bouncing-bet has "escaped from cultivation"--she has been thrust out, but unresentfully lives and smiles; opening her tender pinky-opalescent flowers adown the dusty roadsides, and even on barren gravel-beds in railroad cuts. Butter-and-eggs, tansy, chamomile, spiked loosestrife, velvet-leaf, bladder-campion, cypress spurge, live-for-ever, star of Bethlehem, money-vine,--all have seen better days, but now are flower-tramps. Even the larkspur, beloved of children, the moss-pink, and the grape-hyacinth may sometimes be seen growing in country fields and byways. The homely and cheerful blossoms of the orange-tawny ephemeral lily, and the spotted tiger-lily, whose gaudy colors glow with the warmth of far Cathay--their early home--now make gay many of our roadsides and crowd upon the sweet cinnamon roses of our grandmothers, which also are undaunted garden exiles.