212 THE FLORAL WOELD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 



thoughtful mind at this season. He is housing his tender plants for the 

 winter. He is resorting to various shifts to keep garden and greenhouse 

 as gay as possible, and he is procuring, potting, planting, etc., all sorts 

 of bulbs, corres, tubers, and roots for a grand exhibition of sjDring flowers. 

 "Whosoever is not doing this, must submit to be told that they have 

 scarcely vet began gardening. There may be always said so much as 

 this for s])ring flowers, that by universal consent they are the most pre- 

 cious of ail that the year produces, and if they are to be weighed in the 

 balance against summer bedders, will cause the last to kick the beam in. 

 respect of every possible feature of intellectual interest, sentiment, and 

 individual beauty. We select from the lovely .Erythroniums, Primulas^ 

 Doronicums, and the rest of the spring flowers, one which might claim 

 pre-eminence for beauty if it did not happen also to be one of the most 

 modest, and shall endeavour to carry the thoughts of our readers forward 

 by proposing the more extensive cultivation of the Cyclamen as a task 

 admirably adapted to the range of practice and means of the majority of 

 amateur cultivators, and as one of the best of all plants known for the 

 entertainment of lady gardeners. If the enthusiasm for bedding plants 

 would only leave its victims an hour of leisure, and a spare corner of the 

 brain for a thought about spring flowers, we should see as many cyclamens 

 as geraniums in all private gardens, the hai'dy kinds showing their 

 bloom in the borders in the first flush of the spring, and the tender Ivinds 

 filling stages and shelves in the greenhouse, and giving a coup de grace 

 to the dinner-table and drawing-room window ; for a few flowering 

 cyclamens beside one during a deluge in rebruary or a howling March 

 wind, enable us to antedate the summer when it is yet very far oif, and 

 experience some of the warmth and fragrancy already in oiu* plants. What 

 a matchless grace is there in the cyclamen, its deep green shining leaves 

 like a cluster of lairy shields, its delicately-tinted and deliciously odorous 

 flowers elegantly poised on their slender stems, like banners and beacons 

 for Puck and his playmates, the wonder is that it has not some such place 

 in story and song as the violet, the rose, and the primula ; and indeed it 

 would have had a first place, had Nature but have sprinkled its blossoms 

 on our j)lains as she has sprinkled them among the slopes of the Alps 

 and Pyrenees, and among the woods and wastes of Georgia and Cyprus. 

 Indeed, we can almost claim Cyclamen hedermfoliiim, the Ivy-leaved Sow- 

 bread, as a native, for it is said to be found growing wild in some Welsh 

 localities, and in Deakin's " Florigraphia," habitats are assigned it at 

 Bramfield, Sufi"oik ; Sandhurst Green, and Goudhurst, Kent. J)r. Deakin 

 says of this species : — " It is frequent in the woods and shady places in 

 various parts of Italy ; and so profuse in some districts about Pisa, as to 

 give the surface of the grou.nd an apparent clothing, at a distance, of a 

 delicate pink tissue." 



Species of Cyclamen'. — The Cyclamen takes its name from the Greek 

 kukA,os, "a circle," probably from the circles formed by the spiral pedun- 

 cles. In the natural system, it is classed with the Prlmulacecs, and is 

 only distinguished from the true primulas by its peculiar outlines and the 

 coiling of the peduncle, its formation being precisely the same, the sta- 

 mens being attached to the lobes of the corolla, instead of being alternate 

 to them, as in most other plants, and the capsule being only one-celled.. 

 The species may be classed as hardy and tender. The hardy kinds are 

 C. coum, C. JEurojpcBum, C. Jiedercefolium, C. ibericum, G. latifolium, C- 



