The scarcity of red wild flowers is either a cause or an effect; at any rate it is said to be connected with the small number of humming-birds, who play an important part in the fertilization of many of the red flowers. There are no humming-birds in Europe; and the Aquilegia, red and yellow here, is blue there, and is then fertilized by the assistance of the bumblebee. Without humming-birds the English successfully accomplish one glorious sweep of red in the Poppies of the field; Parkinson called them "a beautiful and gallant red"--a very happy phrase. Ruskin, that master of color and of its description, and above all master of the description of Poppies, says:-- "The Poppy is the most transparent and delicate of all the blossoms of the field. The rest, nearly all of them, depend on the texture of their surface for color. But the Poppy is painted glass; it never glows so brightly as when the sun shines through it. Whenever it is seen, against the light or with the light, it is a flame, and warms the wind like a blown ruby." There is one quality of the Oriental Poppies which is very palpable to me. They have often been called insolent--Browning writes of the "Poppy's red affrontery"; to me the Poppy has an angry look. It is wonderfully haughty too, and its seed-pod seems like an emblem of its rank. This great green seed-pod stands one inch high in the centre of the silken scarlet robe, and has an antique crown of purple bands with filling of lilac, just like the crown in some ancient kingly portraits, when the bands of gold and gems radiating from a great jewel in the centre are filled with crimson or purple velvet. Around this splendid crowned seed-vessel are rows of stamens and purple anthers of richest hue. We must not let any scarlet flower be dropped from the garden, certainly not the Geranium, which just at present does not shine so bravely as a few years ago. The general revulsion of feeling against "bedding out" has extended to the poor plants thus misused, which is unjust. I find I have spoken somewhat despitefully of the Coleus, Lobelia, and Calceolaria, so I hasten to say that I do not include the Geranium with them. I love its clean color, in leaf and blossom; its clean fragrance; its clean beauty, its healthy growth; it is a plant I like to have near me.