The Canada bell-lily needs the setting of meadow grasses to veil its long, stiff stalks, while the Turk’s-cap lily seems the most at home of all in garden surroundings, but it only gains its greatest size in the deep meadows, where, without being wet, there is a certain moisture beneath the deep old turf, and this turf itself not only keeps out frost, but moderates the sun’s rays in their transit to the ground.

Two lilies there are that, escaping from gardens, in many places have become half wild—­the brick-red, black-spotted tiger lily with recurved flowerets, after the shape of the Japanese roseum, rubrum, and album, being also a native of Japan and China, and the tawny orange day lily, that is found in masses about old cellars and waysides, with its tubular flowers, held on leafless stems, springing from a matted bed of leaves.  This day lily (hemerocallis fulva) is sister to the familiar and showy lemon lily of old gardens (hemerocallis flava).  If you have plenty of room by your wall, I should lodge a few good bunches by it when you find some in a location where digging is possible.  It is a decorative flower, but hardly worthy of good garden soil.  The same may be said of the tiger lily, on account of the very inharmonious shade of red it wears; yet if you have a half-wild nook, somewhere that a dozen bulbs of it may be tucked in company with a bunch of the common tall white phlox that flowers at the same time, you will have a bit of colour that will care for itself.

The lemon lily should have a place in the hardy border well toward the front row and be given enough room to spread into a comfortable circle after the manner of the white plantain lily (Funkia subcordata).  This last lily, another of Japan’s contributions to the hardy garden, blooms from August until frost and unlike most of the lily tribe is pleased if well-rotted manure is deeply dug into its resting-place.

As with humanity the high and lowly born are subject to the same diseases, so is it with the lily tribe, and because you choose the sturdiest and consequently least expensive species for your garden, do not think that you may relax your vigilance.

There is a form of fungous mould that attacks the bulbs of lilies without rhyme or reason and is the insidious tuberculosis of the race. Botrytis cinerea is its name and it seizes upon stalk and leaves in the form of spots that are at first yellow and then deepen in colour, until finally, having sapped the vitality of the plant, it succumbs.

Cold, damp, insufficient protection in winter, all serve to render the lily liable to its attacks, but the general opinion among the wise is that the universal overstimulation of lilies by fertilizers during late years, especially of the white lilies used for church and other decorative purposes, has undermined the racial constitution and made it prone to attacks of the enemy.  Therefore, if you please, Mary Penrose, sweet soil, sulphur, sand, and good winter covering, if you would not have your lily bed a consumptives’ hospital!