Mrs. Wellcome's letter in the June number has touched so many chords of memory that I must respond; and as, doubtless, many of the readers of the Gardeners' Monthly have the same associations, I trust our kind Editor may give me space in its pages.

Those "Hundred-leaved Roses," how well I remember them in the garden of my childhood's home, among the hills of Vermont. I have never seen any like them since. Some of the Hybrid Perpetuals remind me of them, but they are not the same. ' They grew in great thickets in that garden, receiving no care save an occasional cutting of the old wood, yet coming forth every year in prodigal profusion, and all so perfect. My recollection of their color is, that they were deep, clear rose, like the deepest shade in "York and Lancaster".

We had a neighbor who had Damask Ro3es, and her little daughter used to bring them to school to exchange for mine, yet, though we both loved them with our whole childish souls, we never exchanged plants. I don't know why, unless it was the changeless condition of everything in that old New England town, the old houses, and orchards, and gardens, the same year after year, and we were not yet prepared for innovations.

And the wild flowers ! To use Mrs. W's words : " Ere the snow was fully melted I went in quest of them." For on those dear old hills Winter comes early and lingers long. And O, how I used to long for the coming of spring with her bright train !

The Hepaticas came first, then the blue Violets and the spring beauties, the Trilliums and the Adder Tongues (Erythronium), and many more close at home. In a neighbor's woods there were Blood-root and Columbine; in another grew the beautiful little Chickweed Wintergreen (Trienta-lis), and still farther away, towards the river, under the Pines, the lovely Trailing Arbutus. And the Wood Violets! I see them yet, fair and stately, and pure, though more than thirty years have passed since my eyes beheld them. A relative (another exile), to whom I wrote of them, says, "When I think of those Wood Violets as they grew in our Maple grove, they seem like beautiful, intelligent spirits standing there." What would I not give to have them here ! Not even those Roses could be more dear.

And this brings me to a theme near my heart - the culture of wild flowers. In the first flower-bed I made in that old home garden I gathered my wild-wood favorites. The Violet and Hepatica, the Blood-root and Columbine grew side by side with the few common garden flowers, which were all I knew of then. Since then, in all my wanderings, I have carried out my childhood's plan. In my Iowa home were gathered treasures from many States; mementoes from many floral friends. In my brief sojourn in California I gathered bulbs of her beautiful flowers, and they smile on me now as I write. Bulbs gathered in winter from the plowed fields of Oregon grow beside them, and in another bed are lineal descendants of the Iowa flowers I sent long years ago to a friend in Michigan. What could be better keepsakes or memorials ? Have not they, who keep through all their years the love of flowers, found one fountain of perpetual youth ?

One item more. A newly- arrived immigrant came here on some business a day or two since. A plain man of fifty, a native of bleak Finland, but now just from Liverpool, which had been his home for fourteen years, rather oppressed by the strangeness of everything, and full of care about getting settled in his new home. While waiting, he walked down into my little flower-garden, and came back with a shining face. "It vas so pretty," he said; " I vas in de pig gardens in Liverpool; dey vas pigger, but dey vas no prettier, I tink I like my missus to see it. She tink she like flower-garden some time." Of course I invited him cordially to bring her, and when she is ready for that garden she shall have bountiful contributions. There is a free-masonry among flower-lovers, and that word, "flower-lover," is the magic password.

La Centre, Washington Territory.