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LOBELIAS. 
Melbourne; dove, deep red and 
purple spots. 
Marquis of Salisbury; porcelain, 
spotted. 
Nimrod; porcelain. 
Orion; pale blue. 
Pluto; fine indigo. 
Peau de Tigre; porcelain, 
spots. 
Psyche ; white, rose spots. 
Queen Victoria ; velvet blue. 
Queen of Iris ; red spotted. 
Sappho; lilac. 
Theron; lilac, mottled with red. 
Tyrian Purple ; large and rich. 
Voltaire ; see plate. 
Vulcan; large, mulberry. 
CULTURE OF LOBELIAS. 
Haying been very successful through the last two or three 
seasons in the cultivation of the taller species of Lobelia, I 
forward you an account of my manner of growing them, that 
others may enjoy the beauty of these truly brilliant plants. From 
the unanimous concession of all who saw them, I may without 
egotism affirm they were splendid objects, of which the commonly 
stinted aspect of the plants will give but the faintest idea ; those 
of which I speak being at least four times the size of what they 
attain under ordinary circumstances. The bed in which they 
were grown was prepared in April, by taking out the existing soil 
to a depth of eighteen inches, and as the aspect was one open to 
the full influence of the mid-day sun, the first object was to 
ensure the plants an abundant supply of moisture; this was ef¬ 
fected by puddling the suh-soil of the bed (naturally a stiff loam) 
till it became almost water-tight, on this bottom was laid a 
stratum of nearly a foot of old hot-bed manure and fresh cow- 
dung, and the remainder of the space was filled up with loam 
and the rotten manure before spoken of, mixed together in nearly 
equal quantities; lest the young plants should suffer from the 
accumulation of water likely to take place in the early stages of 
their growth, the middle of the bed, or, in fact, all the space they 
occupied, was elevated four inches above the margin, by means 
of short piles or stakes driven into the mould, and the additional 
depth thus obtained filled up with the same kind of earth of which 
the main part of the bed was composed^ On this elevation the 
plants were stationed early in May, the most central having only 
