LISTANTHUS PULCHER. 
167 
turned daily to tlie ligbt, that all sides may be 
alike. Nothing is worse than to let plants 
of any kind grow one-sided or one-fronted. 
They must have water pretty regularly, ac- 
cording to their wants. By this kind of 
growth you will find the branches come thick, 
the leaves close and shrubby, and the bloom 
infinitely more abundant than you ever had 
before. If any of the shoots take up to very 
vigorous growth, you must shorten them, that 
it may check that disposition. If there are 
too many shoots, rub some ofi^, but that is a 
doubtful case in many of the sorts, which are 
far too open : as these come into flower they 
will be robust and hardy, they will travel 
better, and sustain the heat of a room longer ; 
they will completely put aside their more 
tenderly- used neighbours, and completely 
prove that the v/hole family have been mis- 
grown, misunderstood. The soil in which 
they should be grown is loam from rotted 
turves and turfy peat, chopped up and run 
through a coarse sieve, no dung, crocks for 
draining one-third up the pot, and no shift 
to take place until the roots fairly begin to 
mat round the sides of the pots they are in. 
The pale varieties require shading, and almost 
to be deprived of air, otherwise the white 
turns foxy. If this be so, you must put oflT 
the confining of them till the flower -buds 
begin to swell ; the want of air is always 
detrimental to the strength of the plant, but 
the spoiling of the colour may be as bad, so 
that you must postpone to the latest period 
the shutting up and shading of the white 
varieties. When the pots are shifted, you 
must take care to put the soil down between 
the side of the pot and the ball of earth that 
comes out of the other, and the fibres must 
not be bruised by the stuffing of the compost 
down the sides of the pot. Those who will 
grow them once this way will soon see how 
far superior they are to the ordinary plants 
exhibited at shows. 
PINK BEDS. 
"We prefer making pink beds in the early 
autumn, as soon as the pipings have rooted 
well ; but for the convenience of those who 
begin in the spring, the bed should be made 
up of rich loam from rotted turves, and at one 
foot deep, two or three inches of well-rotted 
cow-dung should form a kind of bottom to 
which the roots may run. The easiest method 
of managing the bed is, to dig out a foot deep, 
put in the cow-dung, then the soil ; and if 
the planting has been delayed, so that the 
plants have a second move instead of coming 
direct from the striking-bed, they must be 
taken up without damaging the fibres, and 
\eyj carefully planted with the roots spread 
out. After being well watered in, they must 
be covered from the frost ; for freezing and 
thawing would disturb all the roots, and almost 
push the plants out of the ground. But the 
first thing to take care of in a pink bed is the 
drainage ; for if the bed be not well drained, 
in vain may we attempt to grow and bloom 
them in good colour : they may live and 
flower, but they will be small and rough and 
poorly laced. Some outlet must be found for 
the water, and a regular drain must be con- 
structed the whole length of the bed, if there 
be no others about the premises, but it would 
be awkward to be obliged to drain every bed 
separately. A whole garden should be under- 
drained at first, before any other operation is 
performed, and even before it is laid out. 
However, although coarse vegetables may grow 
well enough for use on undrained land, delicate 
florists' flowers, such as the pink, ranunculus, 
picotees, pansies, and nearly all others, will 
not ; and those amateurs who may complain, 
and do complain, that they are buying-in every 
year and yet cannot keep up their collections, 
(and this is the case with hundreds,) may find 
all the evil in their undrained gardens. The 
want of vigour, of colour, of increase, are 
natural consequences of growing florists' flowers 
on undrained land. On this account, there- 
fore, we must be understood to direct, that if 
no part of the ground be drained, there must 
be a drain the whole length of the bed, two 
or three feet below the surface, and that this 
drain must have a natural or artificial outlet, 
to secure a good bloom. By keeping oflT the 
frosts after the pinks are carefully planted 
nine inches apart, (for although six will do, 
nine is better,) the roots will keep steady and 
gain strength eveiy day ; by exposing them 
to frost, the ground, constantly shrinking and 
swelling, will break their roots, and in two or 
three alternate frosts and thaws heave many of 
them actually out of the ground. The best 
litter to keep off the frost is peas-haulm, for 
it may lay on thick without excluding the 
light. Another way is to peg a netting six 
inches- above them, so that waterproof cloth 
or matting can be thrown over at night. 
But if the plants are removed with care, with- 
out bruising their roots, the beds may be made 
up as late as January, February, or even March, 
if the proper time has gone by, and with care 
a good bloom may be secured. 
LISIANTHUS PULCHER. 
Lisianthus pulcher. Hooker (beautiful Li- 
sianth). — Gentianacea^ § Gentianeae. 
One of the finest of the genus Lisianthus. 
The habit is shrubby ; the flowers produced 
in terminal panicles, drooping, and of a fine 
scarlet colour. In shape they are not unlike 
