236 
SHRUBS FOR FORCING. 
tendants who are willing to gratify us with an exhibition of their 
charms, in return for the care bestowed upon them. 
If flowers are not to be had out of doors, we must adopt 
measures that will ensure them within, for the march of civiliza¬ 
tion has advanced so far, that flowers are no longer luxuries, they 
are absolute and positive necessities. There are a goodly number 
now in our collections which are naturally so obliging as to 
display their beauties at a season we most covet them ; but still 
the horticulturist, avaricious as the most ordinary of human kind, 
desires more, and employs his utmost art to urge the coy ones to 
develop their richest treasures when they would reserve them 
for more genial seasons,—a contest ensues, but the plants are 
forced. Nature yields to art, and “there’s an end on’t.” Every 
one knows that roses and lilacs, and such things may be forced, 
and therefore all who have anything to do with the work, make 
provision of them to extent suitable to the means at command. 
My object is to show how the charm of variety may be introduced 
in this branch of gardening, by bringing into notice a few shrubs 
equally adapted for the purpose, and with which success is also 
equally sure, but which have hitherto escaped the ordeal, at least 
in a general way, some of them probably because they are yet 
too new to be spared by every one for the purpose, and others 
for just the opposite reason. Situated where novelty is indis¬ 
pensable as success, I have been lead to look for “ some new 
thing” to form a feature in each pursuit, and as a result in this 
particular division, the following addition to the ordinary stock 
of forcing shrubs, is offered : 
Bentzia scahra becoming tolerably well known, and esteemed 
for its beautiful snowdrop-like flowers in loose racemes, at the 
summit of the branches where they stand in beautiful relief 
above the dark green foliage, is only equalled by the compara¬ 
tively new B. staminea , a plant from the north of India, also 
with white belkshaped flowers which are exquisitely scented; 
both may he brought into bloom in March by merely keeping 
them in the greenhouse, or they may be forced with gentle 
treatment a month earlier. 
Andromeda jloribunda is of the same class and equally beautiful; 
the snow-white flowers are produced in great abundance under 
similar treatment. 
Forsythia viridissima , one of Fortune’s plants from China, 
