December 4. 
COUNTIiY GENTLEMAN’S COMPANION. 
JO] 
as that to which the judge for the Horticultural Society 
gave the first prizes the other day. 
As there is no accounting for taste, however, I shall 
not dispute about it, but will go on to say, that my own 
Poinpones, this autumn, were, perhaps, the very best in 
the country; that many of them are very good indeed 
this very day, 27th November; that I shall have some 
equally good till the beginning of the new year; that 
not one leaf of them has, as yet, been under glass or 
cover, or shelter of any kind, from the day the)’- were 
rooted ; that I had by far too many of them for my 
own garden; and that I have ♦to thank some kind 
friends and neighbours for helping me to find autumn 
room and pasturage for so many of them, which eased 
my hands considerably, and thus allowed me more time 
to prosecute my studies on their merits, on the lan¬ 
guage of their names, on their family history, the 
phases through which some of them have and are 
passing, the most recent and most beautiful in their 
tribes; and the hopes, fears, and anxieties for their 
future improvement and rise in the world. Out of all 
of which, wlio knows how often 1 may be tempted to 
write about them. 
Last week, I said, I would throw so many of them 
away; but Mr. Salter, of tlie Versailles Nursery, Ham¬ 
mersmith, has since advised me not to be so rash ; 
but to keep one or two of all my sorts for another 
year. He says that this was a very bad season for 
them, and that I might repent, when, in a fine season, 
I saw the diflerence. I have been thinking all along 
that there never was such a good season for Pompones, 
judging from my own plants, which embraced forty-four 
kinds, two or three more kinds having opened their 
flowers since last week. 
Mr. Salter has the best collection of them in Europe, 
and knows more about them than all the j^eople with 
whom I have been hitherto consulting put together; but 
he does not grow them for “show” at all; merely to 
let you see the breed, the blood, and the various colours. 
He has very few of them in pots, having grown them 
out in the open borders all the summer, as I have done; 
he only took them in-doors as they were were coming 
into bloom, with balls to them; placed the balls on the 
hard floor of a large house, and filled in soil between 
them, and just sufficient to cover the balls, so that you 
might think they were growing in a conservatory bed; 
with walks running up and down among them, so as to 
get to see different kinds; and as every plant in the 
house is in bloom, and the collection is made up of the 
nicest and best of all the kinds of Chrysanthemums, 
large, small, and smallest hybrid and anemone-flowered 
kinds, it is not difficult to make a selection for one’s 
notes. 
The newest one in the house, a seedling, by Mr. 
Salter, himself, has just been named Mrs. Westwood, 
after the lady of the celebrated entomologist of that 
name, and one of “our own correspondents.” It belongs 
to the Lilliput section of them, and is a most profuse 
bloomer, and has very peculiar tints;—a silvery-blush and 
purple on the back, which shades up between the petals; 
—the centre of the flower is a little “ honeycombed.” 
But let me first show up the best flower-garden sorts 
out of my own older kinds. Louis Piton, without being 
a pure white flower, like Argentum, is the best white out- 
of-doors. It stands the cold and wet better than Cedo 
nulli, but both of them are not the le.ast hurt by five or 
six degrees of frost,—indeed, none of my flowers have 
suffered the least from that degree of cold. Cedo nulli 
would rhake a white bed better than Louis Piton, be¬ 
cause the white is more clear, and the flowers ar’e pro- 
the next nearest to white, and the gaj'est little flower in i 
the garden. It is a clear white, and every petal is deeply 
tipped with bright cherry—the only really chei'ry tipped 
(lower among them ; this is a very late kind, and flowers 
down to the ground, very nearly, by a peculiar treat¬ 
ment, which agrees with numbers of them, and which I 
shall describe some other day. If Ninon would keep the 
cherry-tips under glass, it would make a most agreeable 
pot-plant; but all of this class soon get too much 
bleached in-doors. A fact, which suggests another dis¬ 
tinct use for these Pompones, in addition to flower-beds 
and conservatory decoration ; which is, to have a selec¬ 
tion of them gathered together at the end of September, 
and to plant them in the best sheltered borders, or 
against walls in the kitchen-garden, so as to preserve 
them as long as possible for cut flowers for the rooms. 
They hold on that way much longer than any flowers I 
know; and, certainly, there is no comparison between 
many of the kinds, when cut, from the open-air and 
from in-doors. Take President Decaisne, for instance, and, 
in-doors, it soon turns to a faint lilac, and a second-rate 
flower; but out against a wall, it is, by far, the very best 
and richest of all the Pompones; say, one-half deep 
purple and one-half rich lilac; a larger flower than any 
of them, and fully as sweet, if not more so, than LeNain 
Behe; and the latter is more sweet from the open-air 
than in a pot. 
If I were'the Duke of Monte Montano, I would have 
my gardener to attend to this very thing from this very 
day. He would then look out in time for the right kind 
for cut flowers ; propagate them next spring to a largo 
amount; plant them out in whole rows along the walks 
and borders in a kitchen-garden along with the rest 
of them, for it is little short of mad extravagance to put 
any of them in pots before the last week in September, 
unless )'ou want them for a show; and there are quite 
enough, and more than enough, on the look-out for that 
sort of thing already, especially as they give the prizes 
for the greatest extravagance. A rgentum, not Argentine 
—as some spell it—although the best clear white in a 
pot, is not a good out door plant for show; hxxt Bijou 
d’ TIlortieulture —a creamy white flower—is very effec¬ 
tive out-of-doors ; and La Fiancee (the Bride) is a 
dwarf white, of great beauty in a border. Of lilac 
kinds. President Decaisne takes the first stand out-of- 
doors, and for cut blooms, although not quite a lilac. 
Le Nain Behe (the Little Baby) is the next to the 
President ; the French word Jiehe is pronounced very 
nearly like Baby; it is the best edging plant we have 
for a mi.xed bed of Pompones, and a sweet little flower; 
but it turns much paler in-doors, though not quite 
so much so as Surprise, which is the best lilac bedder 
of all of them. If you make a whole bed of it, with an 
edging of Le Nain Behe, but in the centre of a mixed 
bed, President is the best. D. Beaton. 
(To he continued.) 
LESCHENAULTIA. 
Tins genus is frequently written LecJienaultia, and is 
commemorative of a celebrated French botanist and 
traveller. The whole of the species are beautiful, low 
bushes, ranging, when well grown, from nine to 
eighteen inches in height, or more. All are natives of 
New Holland, and want the general treatment of hard- 
wooded plants from that quarter. The most beautiful 
are— Formosa, with small Heath-lilce foliage, and bright 
scarlet-like flowers; Sjdendens, bright scarlet flowers, 
and stronger growing; Ohlata, ov Baxteri, ovmge, and 
not growing naturally quite so dense, and, therefore, re¬ 
quiring more stopping than/oraos« ; Arcuata, yellow, 
j and the branches more bowed, but of which I know 
1 very little; and Biloha, bright blue,—one of the very 
i best, and the most difficult to grow into a fine, dense 
