We miss one gardener's friend here, but we escape the attentions of one enemy. Though frogs are common enough, toads are very rare. I remember to have seen only one during all the many years I have known the garden. On the other hand, whilst I have a dim recollection of having once found an old snail-shell, I cannot say for certain that I have ever seen a snail, though of shell-less slugs in all sizes there is no scarcity. II. WEEDS AND ALIEN PLANTS. A slight knowledge of botany adds greatly to the interest of a garden, and is besides often of practical value. With such knowledge, one forms a habit of looking even at weeds with some interest, and this has led to my finding several strange plants among them. I have for example come across the following in the kitchen garden: "Saponaria vaccaria," with its curious angled calyx and pretty pink flower. "Galium tricorne," very much like common goose-grass or cleavers, but rare in England, and quite unknown in this neighbourhood. Annual mercury (closely allied to the common perennial Dog's mercury), green and dull-looking, only of interest because it is rare. "Holosteum umbellatum," which again is rare and not much more attractive to the casual observer. "Draba muralis," allied to "Shepherd's purse," and not unlike it, but as rare as that is common. "Melilotus officinalis," a graceful yellow pea-flower. When this first appeared it was quite a stranger in these parts, but afterwards for several years it was continually turning up in different corners of the garden, indeed even in 1911, twenty-six years since its first visit, I found a stray specimen. "Ranunculus arvensis," a weak-looking buttercup with curious rough seed vessels. "Scandix Pecten-Veneris," an ordinary unattractive umbelliferous plant, but with extraordinary long beaks to the fruit, which are supposed to be like the teeth of a comb. Both of these are I believe common in other parts of the country, but they are unusual here. "Poa nemoralis," a stranger grass of elegant growth, came one year in the rougher part of a rock-border. It was made welcome and kindly treated, but though allowed to follow its own devices and though several seedlings sprang up round it, they were all gone in a year or two. A rarer grass still, "Setaria glauca," once turned up in a cucumber frame. In 1907, a seedling fig came up close to the wall of the house. It has now (1912) several shoots about eight feet long. The same year another seedling fig appeared in the kitchen garden, and that too I have transplanted to a warm corner of the house-wall, where it has made a nice bush. For several years we have found seedling tomatoes growing in the kitchen garden, and in 1911 we gathered seven pounds of green tomatoes from two plants to make into jam. [Illustration: Old Church.]