GENTIANA VERNA. 
181 
the spring, say the end of February, or the 
beginning of March, put such compost as I 
have described, viz. rotted turfs alone, or 
loam and vegetable mould in equal quantities, 
oi', if this cannot be had, loam and cow-dung 
mould, in shallow pans or boxes, well drained, 
with crocks at the bottom, and lay the surface 
very even ; then sow the seeds very thinly all 
over the surface, and with a fine sieve sift 
very lightly just enough of the fine soil to 
cover the seeds ; put them in a garden frame 
to be kept from the weather. Let the seeds 
be occasionally watered, (in fact they must 
never be thoroughly dry after once being 
sown,) to keep them moist, but not wet ; one 
of the patent syringes will throw water as 
fine as dew on anything, and if not so watered 
the seeds will be washed bare, or be disturbed, 
and this would be injurious. If you have no 
syringe, and cannot get one, take a common 
clothes-brush, dip it in the water, turn the 
hairs upwards, and by drawing your hand 
along them towards you, you will throw off a 
very fine dew that will answer all the pur- 
poses of the syringe, though not quite so quickly. 
I do not mean that when you do water you 
are to be too sparing, for you must let the 
water go through the soil, or the dry under- 
neath would absorb the wet from the top, and 
it would form a sort of crust ; Avhereas, if the 
soil is wet all through, the damp underneath 
will always rise and keep the seed moist. 
There is nothing I know of so thoroughly 
mischievous as frequently slight waterings, 
instead of few effectual ones, and this applies 
as much to out-of-door crops as to plants in 
pots. "When the seeds come up, and the 
plants are large enough to handle carefully, 
prick them out into pots of any size, but let 
the plants be a good inch apart; the compost 
to be the same, the draining good, and the 
watering to be observed ; the hot sun must be 
kept off by mats, but they can do no where 
better than in a frame, where the sun, air, 
and moisture can be regulated. In this way 
they may grow until the plants touch each 
other, or nearly so, and then they may be 
potted into separate pots ; but one season I 
filled a common garden-frame with proper 
compost (where the place was well drained) to 
within four inches of the glass, and as soon as 
the seedlings had got six good leaves I planted 
them three inches apart all over the frame ; 
they grew fast, and bloomed sooner than those 
in pots, but there was not a solitary plant 
worth keeping ; some were self's of no account, 
others had a thin paste, and all the rest of 
these flowers were green-edged without ground 
colour, or with so little as to be worthless, 
and none were half so good as some of the 
flowers they were saved from. However, 
this arose from the fact of their being saved 
where all the alpines and selfs were grown, 
bad as well as good. Still if I had a frame 
to spare, in a situation where it need not be 
disturbed, I should plant them fairly out in 
the proper compost, and take no trouble witli 
pots until I saw which varieties were worth it, 
and throw every one out that did not exhibit 
some property in perfection. It might not be 
upon the whole better, but it would be dif- 
ferent, and something would be allowed in the 
way of variety if the properties of some 
favourite were reversed. For instance, sup- 
pose instead of getting the flatness of the 
Eclipse you had the same colour not flat, but 
perfectly round, which Eclipse is not ; sup- 
pose you get old colour with new character, 
or new colour with old character, it matters 
very little what change takes place if it be not 
for the worse, but so much the better if it be 
so many improvements, and the sooner all 
that are not so good as we already possess 
are thrown away the better. I have not 
seen Mr. Dickson's new flowers in perfection, 
but I have no doubt they deserve the place 
assigned to them among show varieties ; and 
there is this much to be said in behalf of any 
new variety that can stand its ground at all 
with old ones — there are hundreds of old 
ones in cultivation, and few, (there can be but 
very few,) of the new ones ; and I have seen 
twenty of a favourite variety kept on purpose 
to show from, and perhaps not one of the 
twenty so good as it ought to be ; so that to 
hold any kind of standing among old flowers 
a new one must be both tolerably good and 
very constant, a quality much underrated in 
all flowers, but of the very highest importance. 
If a few amateurs would commence Auricula 
growing in good earnest, we should soon 
have great improvement ; and I know of no 
flower more likely to reward the enterprizing 
florist, because there is so much room for 
improvement. F. H. S. 
GENTIANA VERNA. 
WHITE SPRING GENTIAN. 
The genus Gentiana is remarkable for the 
dazzling beauty of some of the blue varieties, 
and the great beauty of all. The plant itself 
is handsome and dwarf, and most of the 
flowers are long and bell-shaped ; not so Gen- 
tiana verna, which is more tubular, but with 
a bold open mouth, which parts into five 
rather pointed divisions, like so many sepa- 
rate petals. Gentiana verna has a blue 
variety and a white one, which might have 
suggested an additional name. The first 
place at which the white variety was heard of 
was the Handsworth Nursery, near Birming- 
ham ; but as a variety it is a valuable acqui- 
sition to a tribe of plants already very 
