BEDDING TLANTS. 



59 



an empty flower-pot, and in long-continued rains in winter, the same precaution 

 may be adopted with great advantage. In unfavourable localities it may even be 

 advisable to pot it in autumn, and preserve through the winter in a cold frame, or 

 turf pit, though this precaution will hardly be necessary south of the Tweed. It 

 may be increased by division in spring and autumn, and also by seeds which it 

 generally ripens ; if a few of these are saved annually, its protection will then be a 

 matter of less importance, as young plants are readily raised from seed, and, like a 

 large proportion of the Scrophulariacea, will often flower the first season. 



In our last number, we had occasion to point out one of the grand defects of the 

 Liimean system of Botany, that of associating, as it does, in the same class plants 

 of the most opposite affinities, whilst on the other hand, it sometimes separates 

 those belonging to the same genus. No two plants can be more diverse in their 

 character than the Wulfenia and Forsythia, figured in the present number ; though 

 being diandrous, they are, as our readers will see, both members of the second 

 Linnean class. 



There is one other species in cultivation, the W. Amherst iana; but not having yet 

 seen the flowers, we defer for a month or two any appreciation of its merits. The 

 genus is commemorative of F. Widfen, a German Botanist, author of a work on the 

 plants of Carinthia. 



BEDDING PLANTS. 



Otje readers will have already gathered from some remarks in the previous numbers 

 of this work, that we are by no means very zealous partizans of what is now by 

 common consent termed, ' the bedding system ' ; for however well adapted such a 

 style of planting may be to grounds of large extent, its adoption in small gardens is 

 incompatible with that variety which, in our opinion, constitutes one of the most 

 interesting features in any collection of plants. 



That there is less variety in a given space is not, however, the only objection 

 that might be urged ; it is evident that the larger the mass, the more important it 

 becomes that the plant or plants of which it is composed should flower throughout 

 the season, or at least during several months, for any interruption of bloom would 

 leave a blank far more conspicuous than in the case of those plants disposed in 

 smaller groups; this necessarily precludes the cultivation in large masses of all 

 those plants which are not continuous bloomers, and thence has arisen the disuse of 

 an extensive class of highly interesting subjects, many of them of great beauty, but 

 which ' will not pull well in harness.' Tried by the standard by which bedding 

 plants are now-a-days judged, the splendid Cantua dependents, Mitraria eoccinea, and 



