70 THE CARXATIOX MAXFAL. 



The Yellow-Ground Flowers are like a race 

 apart from all the rest. Their richly varied and 

 picturesque character makes them general favour- 

 ites, but the difficulty experienced in maintaining 

 healthy growth in so many of them in ungenial 

 seasons — especially during a succession of cold, wet 

 summers such as we have had for the last four 

 years — is a great hindrance to their general culti- 

 vation. Dry cold in winter does not appear much, 

 or at all, to affect them when the plants are healthy 

 and sound to start with. 



A long winter, followed as we had it in 1887 by 

 a long, dry summer, suits them perfectly, and they 

 grow in such case mth the greatest vigour. In the 

 exceptionally long and severe winter of 1890-91 a 

 lot of Yellow-Ground Carnations, of his own seed- 

 lings, received from Mr. Dodwell, together, also, with 

 some of his newer varieties sent me by Mr. Douglas, 

 were wintered in a cold frame with air always on, 

 and were frozen hard all through that long winter, 

 yet not one succumbed or failed to flower last 

 summer, though many a one '' went under " before 

 that season was out. Again, during the past long 

 winter, among Yellow-Grounds of my o^vn stock, 

 and those received from various sources, all of 

 which have been grown with the general stock 

 without the slightest favour shown them, there has 

 not been a plant that has not come through in 

 sound health so far. 



