124 THE FLORIST AND P0M0L0GIST. [June, 



strongest to prove the sorts ; but this year they promise to be wreathed with fruit 

 so as to resemble " ropes of onions." 



Welbech. William Tillert. 



THE BELGIAN PANSY. 



\EBE is a flower for everybody who has a garden, and one worthy of 

 a place in every garden ; nay, more, the garden that is without this 

 beautiful flower is very deficient indeed in its spring decoration, and lacks 

 one of the most useful as well as the most decorative of the plants avail- 

 able for that purpose. In this matter of spring decoration we have been too apt 

 to assume that none are useful but such as are self-coloured, and, consequently, 

 are adapted for masses, in this respect following too closely our stereotyped 

 notions derived from summer bedding, by which we are disposed to value flowers 

 only in proportion as they are adapted to produce striking masses of colour. 

 Thus many really beautiful plants are set aside or neglected, simply because they 

 will not produce that uniformity of effect so much desired. 



But variety as well as uniformity has its charms, and in no spring flower 

 can this great desideratum be so easily obtained as in the Belgian Pansy, which, 

 if raised from seed even by thousands, will afford just as many varieties 

 or shades of colour as there are plants. Of course, to perpetuate choice 

 kinds, propagation by cuttings is essential, but to those who prefer the easiest 

 mode of obtaining them, and are desirous of producing new and fresh faces, 

 the raising of them from seed will prove the most statable, as it will be also the 

 most pleasing. 



Perhaps some will ask why the Belgian Pansy should be thus lauded. Is 



not the English strain as useful for the purpose ? Possibly so, to those that 



like them best ; but from prejudice, or some other cause, I immensely prefer the 



foreign strain. I believe they possess a hardier constitution, and are more 



capable of resisting the heats of summer ; they seed more freely, cover more 



ground, and from their greater diversity afford more variety. I must confess 



that in looking over a collection of English named varieties, however rich in 



colouring or perfect in outline they may have been, I have always felt a kind 



of satiety, as though there was too much of one thing ; the yellow selfs were so 



much like each other, and the white and dark selfs also, and then the big staring 



belted kinds reminded me so much of men having broad clean-shaven faces, with 



a dark border of close-cropped whisker, and differing from each other only in a 



minute degree, that I have turned away from them to a bed of Belgians as if for 



relief, and have there found it. It may be that in these days of the rugged 



facial outline and picturesque beard of the human form divine, we have brought 



our ideas into closer union with the diversity of faces that is to be found among 



the Belgian Pansies ; certain it is, that those lovers of beautiful flowers whose 



floricultural tastes have not been too closely moulded in the school of the old 



