THE MANSE GARDEN. 219 



ment, avoiding the roasting heat of a garret or the 

 rotting damp of a cellar. 



Auricula. Nature has given such a finish to the 

 finer specimens of this plant that art may well be 

 required to furnish them with the shelter of a roof. 

 Some of the family are hardy and beautiful as spring 

 flowers on the open borders ; but the more delicate 

 cannot endure the pelting of the rain which falls in 

 April, the season of their beauty. A glass frame 

 is therefore essential to the saving of the fine meal 

 with which the flowers and sometimes the leaves are 

 dusted, and which seems designed to moderate the 

 heat of the sun, but which has in itself no defence 

 against the washing of the rain ; and hence those 

 plants which are brought to great fineness by culti- 

 vation soon perish or grow poor when neglected. 

 The best specimens at first raised from seed are 

 quickly propagated by offsets from the roots ; and as 

 cultivators have great tenderness for such offspring, 

 though more numerous than they can rear, you have 

 only to open an asylum and it will soon be filled. 



It were vain to attempt particular descriptions of 

 five hundred varieties. As to the general properties 

 of a good plant, the stem should be of such length 

 as to carry its head of flowers erect and raised above 

 the foliage. About seven or eight pips, or single 

 blossoms, make a rich and close umbel of flowers. 

 The circumference of the border of each blossom 

 should be round, the anthers large, the eye smooth, 

 white, and circular; the ground colour should be 

 equal on all sides, defined next to the eye, and only 

 broken where it blends with the edging. The 

 favourite ground colours are black, purple, dark 



