218 The China Aster. 



but which, through cultivation and change of soil, soon became, 

 both so doubled in petals and various in colors, that it now forms 

 one of the principal ornaments of the flower garden from July to 

 November. Mr. Miller tells us that he first received the seeds 

 from Paris, in 1731, from which he raised some plants with red, 

 and others with white flowers. In the year 1736, he procured 

 the seeds of the blue variety, but these were all single flowers. 

 In 1752 he received seeds of the double flowers, both red and 

 blue, and in the following year he got some of the double white 

 sort, since which time the varieties have been infinitely increased 

 by means of some kinds being impregnated with farina of others, 

 and thus we are presented with party-colored flowers of red and 

 white, blue and white, purple and white, pink and purple, two reds, 

 two blues, and all the changes which these colors are capable of pro- 

 ducing — on which account the China Aster is made the emblem 

 of Variety. The Chinese display a taste in their arrangement 

 of these star-formed flowers that leaves all the florists in the shade. 

 Even our most curious amateurs, says Phillips, have yet to learn 

 what effect these plants produce by their gay corollas when care- 

 fully distributed by the hand of taste. Let the imagination pic- 

 ture a bank sloping to a piece of water, covered with these gay 

 flowers, so disposed that they rival the richest patterns of the car- 

 pets of Persia, or the most curious figures that the artist in filagree 

 can devise — see these reflected in the mirror below, and some 

 idea of the enchanting appearance which these brilliant stars are 

 thus made to produce in the gardens of China may be conceived. 

 When the seed of the China Aster cannot be depended on as to 

 what colored flower it may produce, the plants should be kept in 

 a nursery bed until the first flower is expanded sufficiently to 

 ascertain its hue ; and then, with a transplanting spade, they 

 may be removed to such parts of the parterre as we wish to 

 embellish by any particular hue, or to the sites where we intend 

 to display the art of grouping colors. These plants should be 

 allowed sufficient room to extend their branches, but at the same 

 time be planted so near to each other as to hide the earth, and 

 form but one mass of flowers, and they may generally be planted 

 on 



The spot where Spring its earliest visit paid, 

 for by the time these annuals require transplanting, most of the 



