THE FLORAL WORLD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 71 



below the temperature of your room. To give plants colder water 

 than the air they live in chills their roots and checks their action, 

 ■which is a thing you must guard against. Therefore if the water is 

 coldish when you wish to use it, add a little boiling water to take 

 the chill off; sixty-five or seveuty degrees is the proper temperature 

 for watering with. The surface of the ball, every now and then, 

 shouH be pricked over with a pointed stick to allow the water to 

 percolate freely through the whole ball, for when the surface is hard 

 the water mostly rans down between the pot and the ball, and the 

 •heart of the ball is often left dry when you think the plant has been 

 properly watered. The plant by that state of matters leads a life of 

 bemi-starvation ; besides, when the surface of the ball is caked, the 

 air does not get free passage to the roots, telling greatly against 

 their healthy action. 



ISTow, dear readers, here we have arrived at an advanced stage of 

 our window gardening. We now have our plants potted, watered, 

 and placed in their positions, where we expect to enjoy all the beauty 

 and grace of the floral display we have been labouring for; hour by 

 hour and day by day they grow and bloom, yielding an amount of 

 pleasure, interest, and affection which we never imagined window 

 flowers to have the power of arousing, till we took their cultivation 

 under our care. Now we feel it to be really a labour of love when 

 we spend a few spare minutes attending to their wants. 



{To be continued.) 



DIELYTRA SPECTABILIS. 



EW cf our readers who are acquainted with this plant 

 will, we imagine, be disposed to dilfer from us, if we 

 venture to pronounce it not only the handsomest of its 

 order — the Fumeworts — but even of all spring-flowering 

 herbaceous plants. One species, D. formosa, is an old 

 inhabitant of our gardens ; but although a pretty, graceful plant, 

 it is altogether eclipsed by the elegant D. sjicctabilis. Adapted 

 equally for cultivation in the open border, for the window, or for 

 forcing in early spring, it possesses a threefold claim upon the lover 

 of flowers ; and there can be no doubt that it will soon gain as high 

 a place in the estimation of English gardeners, as it has long enjoyed 

 among the Mandarins of its native provinces. In suitable soil, the 

 plant attains the height of eighteen inches, the stems bearing both 

 leaves and flowers ; and by this circumstance, as well as by its large 

 Bize, it is distinguished from all the other species at present known, 

 which have radical leaves only. 



The handsome spreading foliage is biternate, with the leaflets 

 toothed, or cut into ovate segments. The flowers, each nearly one 

 and a half inch long, and one inch in breadth, are borne in racemes, 

 which are both terminal and axillary; but the terminal racemes of 

 an established plant will frequently consist of ten or fifteen blossoms ; 

 the axillary flowers are less numerous. The sepals, two in number^ 

 as in all the plants of the order, falling off at a very early stage of 



March. 



