replenished from time to time to make good the loss by
evaporation, the water garden needs no attention until autumn.
Then the tub should be drained, and removed to a cellar, or it
may be covered over with a thick mattress of dry leaves to
protect from hard freezing. In their natural haunts, water lilies
sink to the bottom, where the water is warmest in winter.
Possibly the seed is ripened below the surface for the same
reason. At no time should the crown of the cultivated plant be
lower than two feet below the water. If a number of species are
grown, it is best to plant each kind in a separate basket, sunk
in the shallow tub, to prevent the roots from growing together,
as well as to obtain more effective decoration. Charming results
may be obtained with small outlay of either money or time.
Nothing brings more birds about the house than one of these water
gardens; that serves at once as drinking fountain and bath to our
not over-squeamish feathered neighbors. The number of insects
these destroy, not to mention the joy of their presence, would
alone compensate the householder of economic bent for the cost of
a shallow concrete tank.

Opening some time after six o'clock in the morning, the white
water lily spreads its many-petalled, deliciously fragrant,
golden-centered chalice to welcome the late-flying bees and
flower flies, the chief pollinators. Beetles, "skippers," and
many other creatures on wings alight too. "I have named two
species of bees (Halictus nelumbonis and Prosopis nelumbonis) on
account of their close economic relation to these flowers," says
Professor Robertson, who has captured over two hundred and fifty
species of bees near his home in Carlinville, Illinois, and
described nearly a third of them as new. Linnaeus, no doubt the