The pentstemon requires a rich deep soil and an open sunny situation to ensure a full display of its beauties. It is a thirsty plant, and therefore in dry weather should be liberally supplied with water.

The best way to ensure a fine show of flowers is to purchase named varieties, and to raise a fresh stock of plants every year by striking cuttings in August and September. These should be kept in a frame or pit through the winter, and be planted out in April and May where they are to flower. Speaking generally, the treatment given to bedding calceolarias will suit them perfectly. When grown from seed, the seed should be sown in February, and have the help of a gentle hot-bed to start them. The plants may be brought on in a cold frame, and put out in beds in the month of May.

DAISY.

Aster amellus.

ICHAELMAS DAISIES are not in high repute, for they are not well represented in gardens. A certain number of coarse, weedy sorts have obtained entrance, and have spread far and wide; and when, by the artistic eye, they are weighed in the balances and found wanting, the whole race is condemned for their defects. But there are in cultivation some truly noble kinds, and many that are beautiful and useful if not noble; and their value is in some degree enhanced by the fact of their flowering late in the summer when the gaiety of the garden is overpast. From August to the close of the year is the season of the Michaelmas daisies; one of their number (Aster grandiflorus) is called the "Christmas daisy," because of its late flowering, and it is not at all uncommon for them to fight the frost night after night as the season wears on, and come out triumphant at last in unfolding to

the declining year all their starry flowers.

Dante alludes

to the struggle of flowers with frost in the second canto of the first book of the "Divine Comedy," as representing his own case when overcome by the inspiration of Beatrice: :

"As florets, by the frosty air of night

Bent down and clos'd, when day has blanch'd their leaves,
Rise all unfolded on their spiry stems;

So was my fainting vigour new restor❜d,

And to my heart such kindly courage ran,
That I as one undaunted soon replied."

Chaucer had made note of the fact as a theme for poetry, and it touched the vein of tenderness which was so peculiarly his :—

"But right as floures through the cold of night

Iclosed, stoupen in her stalkes lowe,

Redressen hem agen the sunne bright,

And spreden in her kinde course by rowe."

Troil, and Cress. II.

A large proportion of the plants classed as Michaelmas daisies are natives of North America, and therefore are hardy enough for any part of the British Isles. They may be more properly regarded as perennial asters, for such they are when their season of flowering, as remarked above, is of some four or five months' duration. They are among the most accommodating plants of their class known, being truly indifferent as to soil and situation, provided they have something to live on and are blessed with a glimpse of sunshine at some part of the day. But they are like many other accommodating plants in the fact that they make a far finer show of their flowers in a good soil, a pure air, and a sunny situation, than when overshaded by trees and with exhausted earth for their sole sustenance. The larger and bolder kinds are