I once had the experience of living next door to a friend who was smitten with the mania for rock-gardening, and from my study window I overlooked the process from start to finish--first the arrival of many tons of limestone blocks and chips; then the construction of artificial crags and gullies, moraines and escarpments, until a line of miniature Alps rose to view; and lastly the planting of various mountain flowers in the situations suited to their needs. Then followed many earnest colloquies between the creator of this fair scene and a neighbour enthusiast, as they walked about the garden together and inspected it plant by plant, much as a farmer goes his rounds to examine his oats or turnips. They surveyed the world, botanically speaking, from China to Peru. Yet somehow I felt that, just as I would rather see a sparrow at large than an eagle in captivity, so to be shown round that well-fashioned rockery was less entertaining than to show oneself round the most barren of the adjacent moors. "Herbes that growe in the fieldes," wrote a fifteenth-century herbalist, "be bettere than those that growe in gardenes."[8] [Footnote 8: Quoted in _A Garden of Herbs_, by E. S. Rohde.] This, however, is by no means the common opinion; on the contrary, there is in most minds a disregard or veritable contempt for wildflowers as being, with a few exceptions, "weeds," and quite unworthy of comparison with the inmates of a garden. In her _Haunts of the Wild Flowers_, Anne Pratt has recorded how she was invited by a cottager to throw away a bunch of "ordinary gays" that she was carrying, and to gather some garden flowers in their stead. I once took a long walk over the moors in Derbyshire in order to visit certain rare flowers of the limestone dales, among them the speedwell-leaved whitlow-grass (_draba muralis_), a specimen of which I brought home. This little crucifer is very insignificant in appearance; and the fact that anyone should plod many miles to gather it so upset the gravity of an extremely demure and respectful servant girl, when she saw it on my mantelpiece, that to her own visible shame and confusion she broke into a loud giggle, somewhat as Bernard Shaw's chocolate-cream soldier failed to conceal his amusement when the portrait of the hero of the cavalry charge was shown to him by its possessor.