Taking notes of our experiments as here advised is very necessary, if we really wish to profit by experience; for it is rarely safe to trust one's memory while trying experiments, and inaccurate information is worse than none. Old garden diaries have an interest of their own only known to those who have kept such. The comparison of one year with another, as to the time of plants flowering and birds beginning to sing, is sometimes curious from the diversity; but more generally I think one is struck rather with the fact of how short the difference in time actually is, even between a severe spring or an ordinary one. Records of changes made in the garden, a walk altered, a tree taken out, or one planted, a plot laid down in grass, or a new-border made, - all of these, if duly recorded in a garden-book, become matters of interest in after years, all the more when those who then wrought by our side are removed from us by distance or by death, recalling, as they do, happy hours passed away.

Another use to be made of these note-books is marking down what flowers are in bloom each month, and so making a memorandum of what we want as well as of what we have, and taking a note of the time the want should be supplied, whether it be by getting cuttings, or plants, or sowing the seed.

Much foresight of this kind is needed in spring, we are so apt to forget to sow or plant till we see the flower we wish in another person's garden; then comes the temptation of lifting it at a wrong season, and injuring its bloom, or sowing so late that it cannot bloom at all. An early sowing of some annuals is recommended, for the purpose of having small plants ready for bedding out, or for succeeding the spring bulbs. There is one I must mention as both ornamental and useful, from its branching habit, and the length of time it flowers, Silene pendula, a neat little rose-coloured flower; it may also be sown in autumn, and planted out in spring.

By the time, however, we get the length of planting out seedlings, we are aware that spring, with its opportunities, is passing into summer. Our early favourites have passed away, and a blank is sometimes felt between the last blow of narcissus, jonquils, cowslips, polyanthus, anemones, and the first blow of our summer flowers. A few days of drought often come on about this time, the white lilies fade suddenly, and lilac, laburnum, and hawthorn shed their withering blossoms on the ground. We can scarcely welcome summer thus accompanied by the passing away of spring, and mourn its departure as much as we welcomed its approach.

"Sweet season, appealing

To fancy and feeling, Be thy advent the emblem of all I would crave;

Of light more than vernal,

That day-spring eternal Which shall dawn on the dark wintry night of the grave "