FEBRUARY. 61 



selected from well known florists and plant growers, and the Editor 

 has therefore given a descriptive list of all the plants and flowers that 

 have received an award from the Society during the past year, a list 

 that must be serviceable to plant purchasers. In addition to this, a 

 lengthened descriptive list of new plants of every description is given, 

 as well as carefully selected hsts of the best varieties of Auriculas, 

 Azaleas, Carnations, Cinerarias, Chrysanthemums, and various other 

 flowers. This wiU be a great guide to purchasers, as the hsts can be 

 relied on. Some sound practical remarks are appended to the list of 

 Chrysanthemums that should be read by growers of that plant. We 

 are often asked privately for selected lists of greenhouse plants that wiU 

 give a succession of flower throughout the year, and to such as are seek- 

 ing that information we heartily refer them to page 80, for a brief and 

 carefuUy compiled hst of greenhouse plants, stating the month in which, 

 under ordinary circumstances, they flower. Stove plants also are 

 similarly arranged. This is the sort of information sought after by the 

 reading portion of the gardenmg world, and we gladly recommend our 

 readers to judge for themselves. Mr. Wilkinson, of Kahng, discourses 

 pleasantly on new Roses, and our experience fully bears out all he 

 states respecting them. Mr. Edwards has throughout his pages paid 

 deserved praise to the National Floricultural Society, but we regret to 

 find he has condescended to notice so repeatedly the compiler of a con- 

 temporary almanack, who has for a series of years past made a point 

 of attacking both him and the National Floricultural Society. We 

 regret he has devoted so much space to so unworthy a subject, as the 

 writer in question is now almost a myth, and should be classed with 

 the old bogies of our infantine days. So much valuable space must for 

 the future be devoted to information, if Mr. Edwards wishes to retain 

 the popularity of his almanack. 



We have read somewhere complaints from one or more of the alma- 

 nack editors that j\[r. Edwards had copied them. The edition for the 

 current year is so completely in advance of all the gardening almanacks 

 of the past years, that it must be evident copying is not the Editor's 

 forte. There is striking originality throughout the book, particularly 

 in some of the Edwardsian phrases. 



Too much praise cannot be given to the Trade Directory portion of 

 the Almanack. We have, from our daily intercourse with the trade, 

 a tolerable knowledge of their localities, and although a few mistakes — 

 and they are very few — still are to be found in this portion of the 

 work, the list is, without exception, the most correct ever published, and 

 obtained only at considerable expense and trouble. The fault we have 

 pointed out rests, we fear, with the trade themselves, as they should 

 see to these errors and correct them. The Almanack is not entirely 

 free from errors that would have been avoided if a careful reading of 

 *' proof" had been attended to. Fifty-three pages of advertisements 

 are to be found in the work, comprising in themselves a supplementary 

 list of new things for 1855. 



The other Garden Almanacks for the present year have not come 

 under our notice, as we hesitate about paying our shillings for the 

 volumes of errors they have hitherto been, and they have not reached 

 us through any other channel. 



