124 THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 



to bulbs. In February and March to hotbeds and seedsovving', 

 in later months to annuals and bedding plants. This would 

 all be well enough if any effort was made to vary the matter 

 relating to these subjects, but the same old tulips and hya- 

 cinths and narcissi form the subject of the theme in autumn, 

 while the education of the festive cabbage, the toothsome 

 radish and the succulent potato is certain to have the front 

 pages and top of column as regularly as the spring comes 

 round. It is hard to decide whether this is the fault of the 

 publisher or of his circle of readers. One may, indeed, ques- 

 tion whether a magazine devoted to the unusual flowers and 

 vegetables would be as successful as one that constantly harps 

 on the way to cultivate the commoner ones. Certainly the 

 general public rarely has a taste for anything out of the or- 

 dinary in gardening. Its predilections run largely to lilacs, 

 "syringas," bridal wreath and roses in the line of shrubs, and 

 peonies, bleeding hearts, phlox, and the common day lily 

 among perennials. Seldom does it get beyond the common 

 annuals — morning glories, asters, pansies and petunias. Here 

 and there on large estates where the planting has been done 

 by the landscape gardener we find the rarer shrubs and other 

 perennials, but elsewhere the nature of the planting indicates 

 that we are still far from ideal conditions. The great mass of 

 the people still need to be shown that there are better and 

 more beautiful plants than the few with which they are fa- 

 miliar. They need to know that there is more than one iris or 

 day lily, that the Canterbury bells have finer and more perman- 

 ent relatives, that in general perennials are far superior to 

 annuals and so on. But how are they going to find out these 

 things if the gardening magazines persistently stick to their 

 tulips and cabbages? 



