The old gardening books are full of designs for these knots; indeed, no gardening book of the date seems to have been considered complete if it did not give the "latest designs," and they seem to have much tried the wit and ingenuity of the gardeners, as they must have also sorely tried their patience to keep them in order; and I doubt not that the efficiency of an Elizabethan gardener was as much tested by his skill and experience in "knot-work," as the efficiency of a modern gardener is tested by his skill in "bedding-out," which is the lineal descendant of "knot-work." In one most essential point, however, the two systems very much differed. In "bedding-out" the whole force of the system is spent in producing masses of colours, the individual flowers being of no importance, except so far as each flower contributes its little share of colour to the general mass; and it is for this reason that so many of us dislike the system, not only because of its monotony, but more especially because it has a tendency "to teach us to think too little about the plants individually, and to look at them chiefly as an assemblage of beautiful colours. It is difficult in those blooming masses to separate one from another; all produce so much the same sort of impression. The consequence is people see the flowers on the beds without caring to know anything about them or even to ask their names. It was different in the older gardens, because there was just variety there; the plants strongly contrasted with each other, and we were ever passing from the beautiful to the curious. Now we get little of quaintness or mystery, or of the strange delicious thought of being lost or embosomed in a tall rich wood of flowers. All is clear, definite, and classical, the work of a too narrow and exclusive taste."--FORBES WATSON. The old "knot-work" was not open to this censure, though no doubt it led the way which ended in "bedding-out." The beginning of the system crept in very shortly after Shakespeare's time. Parkinson spoke of an arrangement of spring flowers which, when "all planted in some proportion as near one unto another as is fit for them will give such a grace to the garden that the place will seem like a piece of tapestry of many glorious colours, to encrease every one's delight." And again--"The Tulipas may be so matched, one colour answering and setting off another, that the place where they stand may resemble a piece of curious needlework or piece of painting." But these plants were all perennial, and remained where they were once planted, and with this one exception named by Parkinson, the planting of knot-work was as different as possible from the modern planting of carpet-beds. The beds were planted inside their thick margins with a great variety of plants, and apparently set as thick as possible, like Harrison's garden quoted above, with its 300 separate plants in as many square feet. These were