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It bears tiny bunches of bright rose-coloured flowers, and these look all the more charming owing to the miniature size of the shrub, its average height being about 12 inches. A very interesting and valuable rock shrub, and one that no doubt about its perfect hardihood need be entertained. S. CANA. Hoary-leaved Spiraea. Croatia, 1825.

"I have got a pleasant surprise for you." She flung open the drawing-room door, and pointed. In the middle of the table stood a spiraea, a most handsome and graceful plant. It stood in one of the best saucers, with some coloured paper round the pot, and the general effect was very good.

Rhododendron arboreum becomes plentiful at 5000 to 6000 feet, forming a large tree on dry clayey slopes; it is accompanied by Indigofera, Andromeda, Spiraea, shrubby Compositae, and very many plants absent at similar elevations on the wet outer Dorjiling ranges.

One species, blooming freely along the woodland paths, is from two to three inches in diameter, and more fragrant than any other wild rose I ever saw excepting the sweetbriar. This rose and three species of spiraea fairly fill the air with fragrance after a shower. And how brightly then do the red berries of the dogwood shine out from the warm yellow-green of leaves and mosses!

Flowers red or rose-coloured, and arranged in short, thyrsoid panicles. It flowers in July and August. S. salicifolia carnea has flesh-coloured flowers; S. salicifolia paniculata has white flowers; and S. salicifolia grandiflora has pink flowers as large again as the type. From Siberia, and flowering in autumn. From North America. S. SORBIFOLIA. Sorbus-leaved Spiraea. Siberia, 1759.

In cool, shady amphitheaters at the head of the trail there are groves of white silver fir and Douglas spruce, with ferns and saxifrages that recall snowy mountains; below these, yellow pine, nut-pine, juniper, hop-hornbeam, ash, maple, holly-leaved berberis, cowania, spiraea, dwarf oak, and other small shrubs and trees.

For planting on the rockwork or in the front line of the shrubbery, this is an invaluable shrub, and soon forms a neat and pretty specimen. It is perfectly hardy. White Beam-leaved Spiraea. North-west America, 1827. This forms a dense, erect shrub about 6 feet high, with elliptic-oblong leaves, and clothed beneath with a whitish tomentum.

I have spoiled one of my meadows by cutting away the bushes. It formerly bore grass four feet high, because many umbelliferous plants, such as Heracleum spondylium, Spiraea ulmaria, Laserpitium latifolia, etc., grew in it.

A hardy shrub, nearly allied to Spiraea. It produces a profusion of umbel-like corymbs of pretty white flowers, that are succeeded by curious swollen membraneous purplish fruit. N. opulifolia aurea is worthy of culture, it being of free growth and distinct from the parent plant. N. THYRSIFLORA, Nepaul, 1850, would seem to be quite as hardy as N. opulifolia, and is of more evergreen habit.

We arrived in Esquimault Harbor, three miles from Victoria, on the evening of the fourth day, and drove to the town through a magnificent forest of Douglas spruce, with an undergrowth in open spots of oak, madrone, hazel, dogwood, alder, spiraea, willow, and wild rose, and around many an upswelling moutonne rock, freshly glaciated and furred with yellow mosses and lichens.