Pot-pourri from a Surrey garden

January fflnd. — I take back to London with me to- day, amongst other things, some Lachenalia aurea. All Lachenalias are worth growing. They are little Cape bulbs, which have to be treated like the Freezias, watered as long as the leaves are green, and then dried. They all force well, and L. aurea flowers earlier than the other Lachenalias, and is very pretty and effective. This variety has the great merit of being a true yellow by candle-light. Walking along the streets to-day, I stopped to look at c2 20 POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN a really beautiful large cross, entirely composed of moss dotted all over with the lovely little early single Snow- drops. Although I have the strongest objection to the modern use of flowers for the dead, natural and lovable as was the original idea, I had to admire this specimen. Gould a more beautiful winter memorial for a young girl be seen, or one which better carries out in these cold days the idea of the French poet Malherbe ? Elle 6tait du monde ou les plus belles choses Ont le pire destin ; Et rose, elle a vecu ce que vivent les roses — L'espace d'un matin. The French have carried the abuse of this fashion of funeral wreaths and crosses to an even greater extent than we have here. I shall never forget once in Paris going up to the Pere-Lachaise cemetery on a fine morning to visit the grave of a young and much-lamented woman. The wreaths were so numerous that they had to be taken up in a cart the day before. The night had been wet, and the surroundings of the grave were a mass of unapproach- able corruption and decay. Last April, when I was at Kew, the gardener there shook into my pocket-handkerchief a little seed of Cineraria cruenta, the type-plant from the Cape, and the origin of all the Cinerarias of our greenhouses. It has a very different and much taller growth than the cultivated ones, and I am most anxious to see if it will do in water, which the ordinary ones do not. It varies in shade from pale to deep lilac, rather like a Michaelmas Daisy. Get- ting seeds from abroad of type-plants is very interesting gardening. Pelargoniums of all kinds are weeds at the Cape, and, in order to be able to resist the long droughts, they have, in South Africa, tuberous roots like Dahlias. This is well seen in Andrews' 'Botanist's Bepository,' JANUARY 21 which I shall mention among the March books. Pelar- goniums, under cultivation and with much watering, no longer require these tubers, and they disappear. Seed was sent to me from some of the wild plants at the Cape, and even the first year, as the plants grew, there were the little tubers, quite marked and distinct. January 31s t. — With the high temperature we have had this year, one is apt to forget the horrors of a severe winter, till reminded just lately by two very cold nights. The frosted windows of my bedroom made me think of a charming little poem which appeared last year in the Pall Mall Gazette at the time of the very cold weather :- JOHN FROST The door was shut, as doors should be, Before you went to bed last night, Yet John Frost has got in, you see, And left your windows silver white. He must have waited till you slept, And not a single word he spoke, But pencill'd o'er the panes and crept Away again before you woke. And now you cannot see the trees Nor fields that stretch beyond the lane ;