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mean looking plant, with dull yellow flowers forming but a small portion of the mass, and is evidently only cultivated for its faint fragrance. The yellow spotted mimulus is destitute of the musky smell, has very much larger flowers than either the musk plant or cardinalis, and is capable of being rendered a desirable plant for bedding out, or planting round the edges of ponds or in wet places. When in beds where it is subject to dryness, the foliage turns rusty, the flowers small, and out of character, and the plant is altogether stunted. The flower forms a deep cup, or a short tube, turning over at the mouth and deeply divided, variously spotted or blotched with deep red, or brown, or purplish red upon a yellow or straw coloured ground. It may be called an oddly shaped flower, and it is not every one who could make up his mind to what alteration would make it better; nor are we quite sure that it would be easy to attain the only feature that would improve it; however, it is certain that some few points are needful, and as nearly as we can we will mention them.

1. The petals should be thick, that is, of good substance and texture.

2. The turn-over portion, or mouth, should be large and circular, and conceal the cuts or indentations on the margin, which are natural to this flower, as well as to the petunia and some others, lapping over, and forming a round outline not reflexed.

3. The plant should be dwarf and creeping, or shrubby and bushy, and not of a doubtful habit. 4. The colour should be bright; the ground

pure; the marking uniform; pure white ground, or pure yellow, or straw, or cream colour, will be equally available, if all over alike, but the preference must be given to pure white as the most

rare.

5. The flowers must be abundant, and so disposed as to show the mouth and throat.

The Mimulus Cardinalis is a shrubby and very distinct kind of plant, but the flowers, although numerous, are pinched up into a very awkward and ineffective shape. It has frequently struck us that if these were hybridized with the large, flowering, yellow spotted mimulus, the produce would be something worth cultivating; for if the large flowers could be produced on the shrubby compact habit which many of the seedlings from M. Cardinalis possess, it would be a great acquisition. On the other hand, some of the colours of M. Cardinalis on those of the dwarf creeping habit would be desirable. However, being desirous of improving this exceedingly gay flower, we venture to say that it cannot be too large, nor too thick; and that the divisions of the mouth should be as much concealed as to give the appearance of an unbroken, circular, trumpet-mouthed flower.

PROPERTIES OF THE LILY.

In a family so numerous and so various, it is difficult to lay down a rule for establishing a standard, because there are distinct forms to the

different tribes, and we are obliged to conform to what can be done consistently with the peculiar nature of the kind we are treating of. The reflexing kinds, such as the lilium, speciosum and its varieties, which are unquestionably the best in respect to properties, are the principal to which we would call the attention of the florist. The blooms come out on footstalks which are on different sides of the stem, and therefore hang gracefully and tree-like, and not on one side as many spikes of flowers do. The plant is ugly in a general way, that is, it is very lanky, and the foliage is scanty, almost as scarce a good way up the stem as a carnation.

1. The plant should be only as high from the pot to the bottom flower, as it is from the bottom flower to the top one. The leaves should be long, and plenty of them at bottom, and gradually shorten and lessen in number as they approach the bottom bloom.

2. The individual blooms should be large, and composed of broad petals reflexing in the form of a globe, without separating at the points, or forming gutters, or uneven ribs, in the petals, but showing a fair round even surface, and exhibiting none of the backs of the petals.

3. The petals should be thick, rich in texture, free from notches or puckers, of pure ground colour or white. The blooms should be on strong footstalks. The lower flower further off the stem than the upper, and there should not be less than seven in the truss or spike, that although distant would form a tapering head of flowers.

4. The varieties speckled with the ruby-like

spots should be of pure white ground, and the spots bright scarlet; those with pale rosy ground should have black spots, and the more and the larger the better.

PROPERTIES OF THE LYCHNIS.

The habit of this plant is unlike that of almost It is tall and not handsome, with a any other. head of flowers, very narrow in the petals of the single, and very rough and confused in the double, crowding one another in both cases, and therefore ugly and ill-shaped.

I. The plant then, being by no means ornamental, should be as dwarf as possible, the more so the better.

2. The head should be large, circular, and rising on the face; the footstalks of the flowers long, strong, and elastic. The individual blooms round, smooth on the edge, and touch each other, but not lap over. The petals thick and smooth on the edge.

3. The double flowering should be in all respects like the single, with the addition of two rows of petals, each smaller than the other, and the larger one of the two, smaller than the principal.

4. The colour should be pure dense, and bright.

E

PROPERTIES OF THE DIGITALIS,
OR FOXGLOVE.

The plant below the flower should be only the same length as the spike of flowers.

1. The individual blooms should be as bright outside the tube as it is inside.

2. The tube long and large, the mouth wide, the petals thick, and free from notch or serrature in the margin.

3. The footstalks strong, that the flowers may stand out from the main stem, and rather droop.

4. Contrast in colours is desirable, as affording a greater variety, and the colours always bright and striking, as the great fault of the digitalis, or foxglove, is its dull, heavy, dingy colour.

PROPERTIES OF THE FUCHSIA.

Without going minutely into the properties of this flower, it is well, perhaps, that we should mention some facts which will be useful in selecting a few for purchase, especially as we have seen the most intolerable rubbish cultivated in great numbers.

1. First and foremost, it is absolutely necessary that the petals of the inside, or corolla, be a different colour from the outside, for contrast is essential; those, therefore, which are all of a colour are comparatively worthless.

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