233 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, Jn.v 17, 1860. 
tinue to be the way in great nurseries ; but for private 
use in bedding out to any extent, the month of July and 
the very first week of it, if possible, are the right and best 
times to put in cuttings of these Lantanas for next year; 
and the reason why they are best is this—that ninety-nine 
out of a hundred places have no provision for getting 
spring cuttings of them in time for that season ; and that 
autumn-cuttings of them are worse than useless in such 
places; and also that ninety-nine out of every hundred 
amateurs cannot strike them in the autumn if they or 
the kind is worth striking—that is, if they are in full 
bloom. It requires a good, or thoroughly good gardener 
to make nice things out of flowering-wood-cuttings of this 
class of Lantanas late, or as late as September. But by 
the first or second week in July the bedded-out plants, 
whether young or old, have just got comfortably rooted 
in the free soil, and are making very comfortable and 
convenient shoots for blooming in August; and these, and 
none other , are the right kinds to propagate from when 
they are three or four inches long ; or, if longer, to take 
only the topmost three inches, if there are no flower-buds 
at the top, and shun all that have reached the flowering 
state, as they neither root so kindly or make good plants 
for keeping. The Lantanas are worse from cuttings of 
flowering wood than the Unique Geraniums — I mean 
worse for amateurs and all young beginners. Lantanas 
have been bedded for years and years, but it is very 
lately that we have had good bedding kinds from con¬ 
tinental seedlings. I have bedded them eighteen years 
back, and it is nearly as long since 1 saw a bed of Crocea 
better than I could manage it with Mrs. Bosanquet, after 
whom the Bose of that name is called. The place is near 
to the nursery of the Messrs. Paul, of Cheshunt; and I 
dare say the Messrs. Paul have seen Lantanas bedded 
there before I knew a Geranium from a Mallow, or red 
from rose, or scarlet from crimson. 
By-the-by, talking of Mallows brings up the French 
name of our Malva sylvestris , which is now in bloom in all 
the waste places in the kingdom. They call it “ mauve,” 
and you can see the two distinct kinds of natural mauve 
just now in the flower itself. The lighter part of the 
flower, or the ground colour, as one might say, is the 
medium or middle tint; the larger veins and stripes which 
run down to the bottom of the flower, and deepen as 
they recede from the eye, are the royal mauve; and the 
margin or edges of the flower as they begin to fade, are the 
light or lavender shade of mauve. The Lady Middleton 
Verbena will give this last tint of mauve. The gaily- 
coloured bracts of Bougainvillea are of the medium mauve 
tint in our hothouses ; but against the open walls in Lisbon 
they are royal mauve; and when the plant scrambles up 
in its native woods its colour is as a burning bush. The 
Prince of Wales Hyacinth is our nearest tint to royal 
mauve; but all of them may be got “by heart” this 
month from the natural source of mauve. 
Lantana cuttings, at the age and the condition recom¬ 
mended, will root as fast as Verbenas ; and the moment 
they are fit to part they should be encouraged to grow in 
a close, cold frame for six or seven weeks, and to be 
stopped all the while at every second joint, and to be 
wintered in a rather dry state. Of course, gardeners who 
can put old plants of Lantanas into foroing at the be¬ 
ginning of February, strike their first growth, and force 
them up to the end of May, will have plants in half the 
time ; but then they will hardly be more than one-half 
so good for bedding. Any sudden changes will cause 
the young of this family to sulk for weeks. I did them 
more than once from the February start, but it was an 
up-hill work to get them to look respectable in the beds 
before August was in, and I recommend the beginning of 
July for their annual propagation in general. 
Of all the bedding Geraniums of the greenhouse-class 
mentioned in the last number of The Cottage Gardener, 
none were missed in former volumes except Quercifolium 
Jloribundum and Blade Prince, and none ol them “by 
rights ” should ever be propagated in the summer and 
autumn, not but they would all strike in the open air if 
the cuttings were put in in July and up to the middle 
of August. Dentiis’s Alma and Dennis’s Lady Mary 
Fox, are the next best bedders of their class after Ignes- 
cens superbum, and for small places better than that 
Lgnescens, because they do not require so much room. 
None of the Quercifoliums or Lgnescens breed should be 
propagated in summer. All the Diadematums, except 
bicolor, may be propagated in the summer with less pre¬ 
judice to the future plant, and so may Sidonia; but when 
we know that three or four-year-old plants of all these 
races do better in the beds than younger plants, it 
becomes a matter of convenience to be able to make 
them into dwarf, bushy plants by closely pruning them 
in the autumn—a thing that one hardly could do with 
the lanky, long, why-legged plants which are made from 
the flowering shoots of such kinds. 
But I must go to the opposite point of tho compass at 
one bound, to tell of a cigar-box just received from the 
postman, with twenty queen’s heads on ; but the weight 
indicated that it was not from Havannah. It came up 
from Bradford Nursery, Shipley, Yorkshire, full of fairy 
Pansies, and such Pansies as you never saw before. They 
are quite new off the stocks, and Mr. William Dean who 
sent them, and who has 3000 more seedlings of the same 
strain to prove this season, says they are a Belgian race; 
but I well knew their grandmothers and great-grand¬ 
fathers in this country, between Messrs. Downie and 
Laird, of Edinburgh, and Mr. Salter, of the Versailles 
Nursery, London, before any foreign florist had ever set 
his eyes on one of them. We owe the entire breed to 
the indefatigable and far-sighted industry of Mr. Salter, 
who took them up “for their fantastic colours,” as he 
said, in his catalogues. He told me four or five years 
back, he had sold £10 worth of their seed to a grower at 
Erfurt, in Germany. I had also seen seedlings from that 
seed come back to England, and to the Experimental 
Garden, through Mr. Mallison, of Claremont, and the 
great-grandmother of Dandle Dinmort, and of Parpaillot, 
the two most “ fantastic colours ” in this collection be¬ 
fore me, are still at the Experimental. But the Belgian 
and other continental florists have taken to this strain, 
and fashioned them on the model of the British florist, 
with which model they can now vie in size and substance, 
and still with all the fantasticity of colour for which Mr. 
Salter called them his “ fancy Pansies.” Now they are 
as sweet as Violets, my table is covered with them, and 
the room is scented ; all the colours I have classified, as 
like planting Pansies for effect; and I vouch for it, from 
this private exhibition, that they will become just as 
great favourites with the public as the spotted French 
Geraniums have done. 
Mr. Dean, and all who may have them on sale, must 
exhibit them at all the shows. They only want to be 
seen by the public to be bought up for relief and for 
variety from our Ne Plus Ultra Pansies; and the only 
way to tell on the public eye is to exhibit them in variety 
instead of in mixtures, as our florists do. Variety and 
mixture are as different as chalk and cheese. Variety 
teaches the value of colours. Mixture confounds the best 
eyesight on earth. V r ariety begins by showing every kind 
with the same prevailing colour side by side, beginning 
with the lightest or darkest shades, and goes on natu¬ 
rally from shade to shade to the opposite of the be¬ 
ginning. Mixture begins by putting black and blue 
and brown and white and yellow and rose colours down 
in one uniform mixture, as they happen to come to 
hand. When I began in the Experimental, I was com¬ 
pelled to plant on the mixed system, because the plants 
kept coming in to near the end of the season, and they 
had to be planted anyhow; but I could make nothing of 
them for comparison the first season. The second year I 
planted on the principle of giving variety instead of 
mixture—all the pink colours together; all the blushes, 
