On the Cultivation of Crocuses. 



i ( J3 



they appear to the greatest advantage in its company, 

 where its icy charms serve but as a foil to their gayer 

 colours. 



Hence they are commonly found planted together, and 

 carefully fostered, from age to age, along with Daffodils, and 

 Tulips; Polyanthuses, Primroses, and Auriculas; Anemonies, 

 and the earlier sorts of Hyacinths : lovely, fragrant assem- 

 blages, affording salubrious employment to declining years : 

 and thus descending in complete security from one genera- 

 tion to another : — from those memorable days in the annals 

 of British Horticulture, the days of Gerhard and John- 

 son, to those of Parkinson and his earthly Paradise 

 thence passing safely through those still more estimable ones 

 of Miller, " Horticitltural Prince,' 3 down to our own. But 

 for the laudable and happy care of these venerable gar- 

 deners, various other vernal beauties of the bulbous tribe, 

 which adorned in such profusion, the gardens of our fore- 

 fathers, would never have nourished in ours ; and many 

 varieties, which their industry had raised from seeds, ap- 

 pear, even as it is, irretrievably lost to us. But to cease 

 digressing, and return to the more immediate object of this 

 paper. 



It is not my intention to give a complete history of this 

 Genus with all its synonyms, &c. or any very minute descrip- 

 tion of its several species ; for such a performance would 

 occupy far more time, than I can at present spare. I shall 

 therefore only briefly recite the species known to me, with an 

 improved mode of raising new varieties of these plants from 

 seeds ; and of cultivating and encreasing the old ones. 



Not fewer than thirty seasons have revolved since these 



