cHAP. VIII.] BIENNIALS. 217 



The California!! annuals require peculiar 

 treatment. These plants are very hardy, and, 

 though many of them are of short duration in 

 flower, they may, by proper management, be 

 contrived to produce a brilliant effect during the 

 whole summer. For this purpose a well-trodden 

 path, or a piece of very hard ground, should be 

 covered about an inch thick with very light rich 

 soil ; and the seeds of any of the Californian 

 annuals should be sown in it. These will stand 

 the winter, and in February or March, when the 

 flower-beds have been dug over, and made quite 

 smooth, the annuals should be taken up with 

 the spade in patches and laid on the beds ; the 

 spaces between the patches being filled up with 

 soil, and the whole made quite firm and 

 compact, by beating each patch down with the 

 back of the spade. As soon as the patches 

 have been removed, fresh earth should be spread 

 on the hard ground, and fresh seeds sown in it, 

 the plants springing from which will be ready to 

 be transferred to the beds as soon as the first 

 series have done flowering ; and in this way a 

 succession of flowers may be kept up nearly 

 all the year, observing to dig over the beds in 

 the flower-garden, and to rake them smooth, 

 every time the old flowers are removed, in order 

 to prepare them for the new ones. 



Biennials are plants which do not flower till 

 the second year. They are generallv sown in 

 March, April, or May, and are transplanted in 

 September to the situations where they are to 

 flower the following year. The best known of 

 these flowers are, the different kinds of hollv 

 hock, snapdragon, Canterbury bells, wall- 



