56 OUR ISLAND FLOWERS: THEIR POETRY AND ASSOCIATIONS. 
ina cool pit or frame for six weeks; then it is fully exposed till Sep- 
tember, when it is replaced in the pit or frame, and just kept from 
frost, also from cold draughts, or it will not be healthy long. 
To preserve the plant from red spider, it is occasionally laid on its 
side, and syringed with warm soapsuds. Water sparingly in winter. 
The plant is cut down to about eight inches in the following April ; 
this induces the production of young shoots, and when they push it is 
re-potted into a twelve-inch pot. In the above-named compost, a 
liberal drainage, and bits of charcoal—the size of a walnut, is mixed in 
the soil. The plant is then placed out of doors, in not too shady a situa- 
tion. The shoots are thinned, tied, and properly regulated, stopping 
the leads when necessary, to keep the plant bushy. If the points of 
the shoots be pinched off early in November, it causes the plant to 
bloom profusely in early summer. 
OUR ISLAND FLOWERS: THEIR POETRY AND 
ASSOCIATIONS. 
BY WILLIAM JOHNSTON, ESQ., BALLYKILBEG HOUSE. 
‘How shall we find words to express our sentiments on those exquisite 
beauties whose every petal is poetry, and whose images are entwined 
in the day-dreams of every mortal who is at all sensible of poetic asso- 
ciations? One is almost afraid, in this cold, calculating age, of 
uttering a thought concerning the graceful and the lovely, lest the 
demon of gold should crush them with his destroying hand, or with his 
pestilential breath dispel the idealities which make up so large a part 
of the joys of life. 
Of all earth’s pleasures, there is none so pure, or, shall we thus 
express it, so like the enjoyments of paradise, as that delight arising 
from sweet converse with flowers—those fairest of all ‘the Creator's 
works, and which, perhaps, have undergone the least change of all 
terrestrial things from the desolating effects of sin. 
Exists there an inhabitant of Britain, brought up among its hills 
and valleys, its woods and streams, who has not beheld with intense 
delight the first pale Primrosr—that earliest of vernal flowers, and 
favourite of life’s short spring-time—raising its fair head from among 
the green drapery of the bank? ‘Pale as the lunar rays, and, with the 
moon, sharing equally the devotion of the poets, it reminds one of the 
fair maiden who stoops to gather its blossoms, at the same time think- 
ing, perhaps, of some loved brother, who in childhood used to sit 
with her beside the Primrose bank; or dwelling, it may be, on the 
memory of a sainted parent, who has since gone to her home beyond the 
stars. F 
What a charm thére is about the Primrose! It attracts not notice by 
the gaudy lustre of its colours, nor secures attention by the strength of 
its sweet perfume; but as the dawn of morn surpasses in beauty the 
full blaze of a summer day, so the Primrose, the dawn of flowers, 
while gay exotics have each their coterie of admirers, enchants every 
one by its simple elegance, and recalls long forgotten images and 
