"Are you talking of that?" Weeville inquired, giving the sacred flower a sacrilegious shove with the toe of his boot. "Why, what do you take that for?"

"What do I take it for? You may well inquire. I take it for the Verbena Barnwellii, the crowning glory-"

"Verbena fiddlesticks! It is nothing but a weed -a piece of wild sorrel, just like a dozen others hereabouts, for they seem to abound in your garden -only it is rather miserable looking, and is near about dead from some cause or other. But what has that to do with your city green-house?"

Explanations were unnecessary. Patrick had made a mistake; he had either taken up a weed for a verbena, or had potted a weed and verbena together, and the verbena had died early, for certain it was that my new seedling, the puzzling variety of an old species, was nothing but an ugly specimen of worthless sorrel. It died soon after. I was glad it did. Possibly scientific hot-house culture is not beneficial to weeds, but until it perished of itself I had not the heart to dig it up, and thus put a violent end to so many vain hopes and promising anticipations. The Verbena Barnwellii is still in the undiscovered future. Patrick had committed other errors; most

of the plants that he had taken up ought to have been left out, and most of those that were left out should have been taken up. The results of this practice convinced me that Weeville was right, and that it is cheaper to buy plants than to raise them, even with all the aids of modern science; and that, if any gentleman finds too many weeds in his garden, he has only to remove them to his green-house and cultivate them assiduously to exterminate them rapidly. M

CHAPTER XIX.

A GREAT RUNNER.

IN describing the unfortunate termination of my

efforts to winter our stock, I have advanced a little beyond the regular order of events. There was much other work to be done in the garden, even without referring to the masses of bedding plants and the quantities of new seeds that I had purchased. As the third season opened, a renewed energy took possession of me, and I went at digging and planting like a giant refreshed. There was no longer a sense of desolation around my place. The florists and nurserymen, under my careful instruction, had set out trees, and planted flowers, and got hedges in order, until Nature in my five acres was bursting from a smile into a grin. It is true that the cows of the neighborhood, which were invariably allowed to roam whithersoever they listed, had fed rather profusely on the evergreens, breaking down the tops and nipping off the ends of the branches; that here and there the hedges had died out, and left yawning gaps; but, on

the whole, there was a remarkable change. It was at this point that I bethought me of an omission from my flower garden which was as surprising as it was inexcusable; hitherto I had neglected doing justice to the gourd tribe.

I am great on gourds; they are my specialty. I will undertake to grow them against the world, and will meet Jonah in a fair field, and no miracles, any time; in fact, I am a perfect Jonah on gourds. In early youth, when my gardening was confined to a city yard, my gourds were the first, and fattest, and yellowest to be seen; and, from that remote period to the time of which I speak, I had always felt an affection for the beautiful fruit, and wondered why Nature did not put more in it. Of course there must be gourds in my garden, in spite of their being a useless production and very hollow-Weeville made a joke about their beating other fruit all hollowand, except to make fragile water-dippers (which, by the way, no one ever makes of them), quite worthless; so I not only planted the seeds in the open garden, but forced some in the hot-beds.

My special favorites were three seeds of an almost unknown variety, called Hercules' Club, upon the past history and future prospects of which I could get little information. I planted these little germs of

promise in a prominent place in the front beds, and watched with tender care till they came up. A pale, delicate, juicy little spear, guarded by its two seedlobes, pushed its way above ground, where it seemed ill suited to battle with the breeze and brave the sun, that threatened to break or consume it. My solicitude became greater when the feeble stem put forth a feebler leaf, not larger than one's finger-nail, and so thin that the tracing of the veins was like gossamer. My horror, therefore, can be imagined when I found, on the ensuing morning, that a squash-bug had fallen upon my tender nursling and eaten the leaf all up.

I killed that bug. He endeavored to slip into the earth, but I slew him without remorse. He was not an ugly bug in outward appearance; entomologists might even have called him handsome; his colors were a mixture of gilt and black, but his beauty was no protection. The next day another delicate leaf rewarded my protection, but the following morning another squash-bug devoured it; he met the fate of his predecessor; but, when a third leaf was disposed of in the same way, the result began to be doubtful; the question was arising, which would give out first, the squash-bugs or the leaves? Having heard that wood-ashes was good to drive away bugs, I was about