AMONGST the many pleasures a townsman may look for when rambling through a country village, the discovery of exquisitely beautiful flowers in the gardens of humble cottagers may be reckoned as of some account. You have, perhaps, been revelling for years amidst bedding plants and stately trees, and other fashionable and genteel items of a proper garden. But you have for a season quitted these rural scenes to find rest in things rustic, and in an idle mood you lean upon a fence and look over. Stars and planets ! What a blaze of flowers of sorts unseen till now has this humble horticulturist accumulated! Here are masses of colour that compel one's lip to curl with contempt for all ordinary bedding, and combinations and features that to the unaccustomed eye, well rested from the wear and tear of town, appear to over-pass the reach of art, and often, of course, are the result of some happy accident. But there are cultivated amateurs who appreciate such things and form collections, and find therein delights that are certainly different and doubtless higher in tone than a mere following the fashion would afford, unless, indeed, it became the fashion to render the garden truly representative of the infinite variety and beauty of the vegetation of the world. The subject before us illustrates the case. You may find the scarlet avens and perhaps two or three sorts of potentillas in the country garden, and you may, again, find them in the garden of the eclectic collector; but in the garden "of the period," where carpet colouring, and evergreen clipped into round balls, are prominent features, such things are utterly unknown.

The earth is plentifully furnished with beautiful plants, and it is a matter both for surprise and thankfulness that an immense proportion of the happy throng may be grown to perfection in our gardens. The species of geum that have been introduced to this country as hardy plants, adapted for the open rockery and border, number over thirty, and they are natives variously of North America, Chili, Kamtschatka, Russia, Volhinia, the Alps, the Pyrenees, the Carpathians, and the hills of Greece. That very few of them are now to be found is no fault of the plants, for if they were all re-introduced and displayed with judgment, they would be found as beautiful as ever, and as fully as ever entitled to reproach men for their perversity in neglecting the simplest and cheapest and most lasting and ever-changing of all garden pleasures.

The avens is a rosaceous plant, and the picture might almost pass as representing a rose from the hedgerow. We have two wildings of the tribe--the common avens (Geum urbanum), producing yellow flowers like those of a potentilla, and the water avens (G. rivale), which has nodding flowers, curiously combining purple and orange in their colours. The scarlet avens is a native of Chili, and there are two or three varieties of it in cultivation. We adopt Lindley's name for our heading, but the plant is also known as G. chiloense.

Where space can be found for a few other species, we can recommend the yellow mountain avens (G. montanum), which produces yellow flowers; the creeping avens (G. reptans), also producing yellow flowers; and the three-flowered avens (G. triflorum), which differs from the others in its diminutive growth. To these may be added the two British species. The ordinary soil of any good border or well-made rockery will suit them all perfectly. The best of the bunch are G. coccineum and G. montanum, as may be learned sometimes at a horticultural exhibition. It happens occasionally that prudent promoters of flower shows offer prizes for collections of hardy plants; and these two beautiful geums often appear in such collections, their fresh distinct beauty rendering them "show plants," in the proper sense of the term.

Having mentioned the potentilla as a near relation to the avens, it is but just to another charming plant, as also to the reader who can love such things, to mention the white mountain avens (Dryas octopetala), an extremely beautiful and scarce British wilding, which betrays its geographical relations in all its characteristics. It is the way of mountain plants to have short stems and a close tufted leafage, and flowers very large in proportion to the open parts. This lovely dryas conforms to the rule. Its evergreen leaves are deeply cut, and on the under side clothed with woolly down. The large flowers are like white anemones, the purity of the petals and the bright yellow stamens in the centre assisting in completing the resemblance to Anemone nemorosa. The white mountain avens needs a moist peaty or sandy soil, and must be protected from slugs and snails. If planted in common soil it is not likely to live long.

Geum coccineum is figured by Sweet in the "British Flower Garden" (p. 292) as Geum quellyon, and he there refers to another plant, a native of Greece, which he remarks "is doubtless a species of sieversia." The present species, according to Feuillee, is a native of the sides of mountains in Chili, and has not been introduced there from Greece, as has been supposed. It makes a valuable addition to the flower borders, thriving well in the common garden soil.