A GARDEN OF SIMPLES.
A Garden of Simples. By Martha Bockee Flint. (D. Nutt. 65.)—An American volume of garden and folk lore makes a pleasant variety among the many little books of the same sort that English ladies have given us lately. In some of the chapters we almost forget that we are on foreign soil, so much of the tradition of " simples " and the legend of flora has been carried across the Atlantic. So many of our plants, moreover, grow in New England hedgerows and flower-beds. But every now and then we come upon a vein of Dutch tradition, or a chapter of Indian plant-names, or a page full of the glow of an American autumn, and then we realise that Mrs. Flint has something to tell us about flowers and flowering trees that is not to be learned in Surrey—or even Sussex—gardens. For our own part, we con- fess to finding a fascination in such a chapter heading as " Pa&S- Blumtje and Pingster-Bloem." Paas-blungje is the Dutch name of the anemone hepatica, and blooming at Easter, it has beco:ne the symbol of resurrection, or the pasque-flower. Pingster-bloern is the Rhododendron-Nuctiflora—described by Mrs. Flint as "the most beautiful of the azaleas "—growing "in secluded forest dells, where wood-soil is rich and damp, on the verge of black, peaty swamps, and even on rocky hillsides it is truly a rose- fl)wer, for the exquisite tints of the wild rose and the peach- blossom colour its clusters." Pin gster-bloem takes the place in calendar use of May-flower with us, and is used for Whitsuntide decoration and May-day merry-making. There is a good, store of old saws and rhymes about weather and health in Mrs. Flint's volume. And most of them are as much English as American. There is also abundant reference to the old English herbals, and affectionate quotation from • Spenser, Chaucer, and Shakespeare. "Honey," "The Secrets of a Salad," "The Potato Family," "Our Lady's Flowers," "Suffolk Country Strolls," are headings of chapters which give a good idea of the varied matter to be found within.
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