134 The New Globe Amaranth. 



with flower cultivation, bring back to us some of the richest, 

 though rather neglected, forms of vegetable beauty. Of 

 these, what hold a more prominent place in our memory than 

 the Crimson or the White Amaranths ? We used to think that 

 there must be something mysterious about them — in their 

 persistent blossoms — in their stiff and seemingly priceless 

 petal-like bractes — in their wooly seed-envelopes — and touch- 

 ing the proper time and best mode of sowing them in such 

 season as would ensure the richest and largest heads. We 

 even confess a homely and honest admiration of those linger- 

 ing attachments to these long known exotics, evinced in such 

 culture as often obtains in obscure or little visited places : 

 occupying the same window, or perchance some rude bench, 

 year after year, at some farmhouse, and becoming a sort of 

 perennial, and yet annually renewed, necessity or fixture. 

 The bold, flaunting dahlia has failed to supplant the elder 

 favorite, let it bear itself never so bravely in your very face 

 and eyes. Then, too, how our good old Globe Amaranth 

 graces that spoutless teapot, or makes us oblivious of that 

 ricketty wooden box, between whose fostering sides it persists 

 to glow with the same pride of its blossoms as it would do 

 in the choicest parterre of the most lordly garden. 



And what great difference, after all, the vehicle of the cul- 

 tivation ; it is the flower that we love. A new plant, too, — 

 one soon learns to love the most technical description of a 

 new plant. Should we despair of ever witnessing its rare 

 beauty, it may be of a gorgeous epiphyte, throwing forth its 

 bizarre wonders in the stove or hot house ; or the towering 

 height of some forest giant, which has grown by the centu- 

 ries' watchful care. Every flower, shrub, tree, — the trailing, 

 emerald-green, moss-like petites of the greenhouse, — the vig- 

 orous perennial, or the hardy annual, latest introduced to the 

 border, — forms a new link, binding in a common interest the 

 whole fraternity of kindred minds. 1 have even known a 

 most ardent friendship awakened by some little instance of 

 generosity of one amateur towards another in the first be- 

 stowal of a new variety of some rare and hitherto unheard 

 of floral production. And delightful indeed must be those 

 associations, which cluster around the memory of one's friends, 



