EARLY FLOWERING BULBS. 
29 
novelties with little else to recommend them, or confine them¬ 
selves to the commonest articles that have been supplied without 
intermission for a century : such men are among the first to 
complain of a want of business, while they seem to me to neglect 
the best means of increasing it. It is true there are some who 
should be expceted, but the stricture applies to a very great 
majority, to whom I would remark, that to retain the trade list 
in its old-fashioned limits, till repeated applications render an 
addition necessary, must be an error which, it is to be hoped, will 
soon be amended. 
In the following selection, I have been guided chiefly by the 
adaptability of each plant to pot culture; my object, when the 
list was originally made out, being to keep a supply of flowers 
in an ordinary greenhouse through the spring months, and ot 
such as should not require forcing, the means for which not 
being at hand, a natural succession therefore forms a principal 
feature in the group ; and it will be found, where all are treated 
alike as regards temperature, that some of them will be con¬ 
tinually in blossom through the period specified. 
Among the earliest to bloom, and particularly beautiful, are 
the Scillas; this genus is sometimes met with in old gardens 
treated as a hardy plant, which indeed it is, but its appearance 
then is meagre to what it puts on when grown in pots with the 
protection of the greenhouse. To mention them in chronological 
order, I shall begin with brevifolia , a white flowering species 
which opens its blossoms in January, and continues them for a 
couple of months. Soon after it the pretty siherica is seen, 
followed by the still prettier bifolia : the first has deep blue 
flowers, and of the latter there are two varieties, the one white, 
and the other cerulean blue. An enlivening contrast to these is 
afforded by carnea with pink flowers; and in March and April 
we have campanulata and its varieties, blue, white, and red ; 
verna and its varieties of the same colours ; the beautiful amcena 
with its nodding blue flowers ; the season terminating among 
these plants, with the large peruviana, and the lilac lusitanica. 
As one of the earliest, the little precox must be especially re¬ 
garded ; its flowers are often displayed under glass at Christmas. 
All of them have bell-shaped flowers, varying in size from those of 
a snowdrop, to others as large as an ordinary hyacinth. They 
