strange flower-trees; mammoth Rhododendrons; Azaleas of every Azalea color,--all surrounded by walls of the golden Banksia Roses, and hedges covered with Jasmine and Honeysuckle. The Azaleas are the special glory of the garden; the bushes are fifteen to twenty feet in height, and fifty or sixty feet in circumference, with rich blossoms running over and crowding down on the ground as if color had been poured over the bushes; they extend in vistas of vivid hues as far as the eye can reach. All this gay and brilliant color is overhung by a startling contrast, the most sombre and gloomy thing in nature, great Live-oaks heavily draped with gray Moss; the avenue of largest Oaks was planted two centuries ago. I give no picture of this Drayton Garden, for a photograph of these many acres of solid bloom is a meaningless thing. Even an oil painting of it is confused and disappointing. In the garden itself the excess of color is as cloying as its surfeit of scent pouring from the thousands of open flower cups; we long for green hedges, even for scanter bloom and for fainter fragrance. It is not a garden to live in, as are our box-bordered gardens of the North, our cheerful cottage borders, and our well-balanced Italian gardens, so restful to the eye; it is a garden to look at and wonder at. The Dutch settlers brought their love of flowering bulbs, and the bulbs also, to the new world. Adrian Van der Donck, a gossiping visitor to New Netherland when the little town of New Amsterdam had about a thousand inhabitants, described the fine kitchen gardens, the vegetables and fruits, and gave an interesting list of garden flowers which he found under cultivation by the Dutch vrouws. He says: "OF THE FLOWERS. The flowers in general which the Netherlanders have introduced there are the white and red roses of different kinds, the cornelian roses, and stock roses; and those of which there were none before in the country, such as eglantine, several kinds of gillyflowers, jenoffelins, different varieties of fine tulips, crown imperials, white lilies, the lily frutularia, anemones, baredames, violets, marigolds, summer sots, etc. The clove tree has also been introduced, and there are various indigenous trees that bear handsome flowers, which are unknown in the Netherlands. We also find there some flowers of native growth, as, for instance, sunflowers, red and yellow lilies, mountain lilies, morning stars, red, white, and yellow maritoffles (a very sweet flower), several species of bell flowers, etc., to which I have not given particular attention, but _amateurs_ would hold them in high estimation and make them widely known." [Illustration: Fountain Path in Preston Garden, Columbia, South Carolina.]