82 FAMILIAR GARDEN FLOWERS. 
seeds and leaving too many plants in a clump, for, being 
crowded, they never acquire a proper degree of strength ; 
and hence, if they flower freely, the flowers are small and 
are soon over. When walking round the kitchen garden, 
you will sometimes see a stray plant of parsley in the 
cabbage or onion plot, and it is sure to be robust and 
handsome, so that a punnet may be filled with its beau- 
tiful leaves, and still leave the plant looking pretty well. 
The reason this stray plant is so strong, while the parsley 
sown in the row next the walk is quite lean as compared 
with it, is that it has enjoyed plenty of air and light, as is 
the way of vagabonds; and hence their rude health and easy 
endurance of circumstances that would kill the pampered 
ones right away. Now and then a stray plant of Virginia 
stock may be seen in like manner, and then what a plant it 
is! We have met with single plants measuring six to nine 
inches across 
a dense mass of healthy herbage, completely 
smothered with flowers half as large again as those produced 
on the thin, wiry plants where they are crowded in clumps 
on the regulation pattern. And yet this lesson, so obvious 
and so forcibly taught by nature, amateur gardeners are 
very slow to learn, and they will go on sowing Virginia 
stock and mignonette as if they would pave the ground 
with the seed ; and, when the plants are up, will throw 
away the second chance of success by refusing to thin 
the plants, as they should, to from three to six inches 
apart. 
Annuals are occasionally grown in first-rate style, and 
if well selected are, in the early part of the summer, re- 
markably effective. There is almost only one point of 
importance in the practice, and it consists in sowing the 
seeds 2 the autumn. 
