may again be shifted, but they ought not to flower the first season if you intend to make specimens of them. Those that grew freely last year, will now require a good-sized pot; prepare the mould the same as before, and mix with it a good quantity of crocks broken fine (many use charcoal); this will assist the drainage very much. As soon as they have done flowering, the seed-pods should be all removed, and they may again be placed in the warmest part of the greenhouse; give them a syringing with soft water, and shut up the house every evening about six o'clock for the next two months; after this, admit air more freely night and day; water more sparingly; the wood will soon begin to get firm, and the bloom to set. Introduce a few of the earliest kinds into the stove to forward them; and the others may remain in the greenhouse or conservatory, just kept from frost, and by the next blooming season you will have some neat flowering plants. Should you wish to keep any in bloom longer than usual, cut off the tips of the pistils, and the flowers will hang a week, or more, longer than they generally do. Continue to shift as they require it, and you will soon have fine specimen plants. The frontispiece to our present number is drawn from a plant belonging to Messrs. Ivery and Son, of the Dorking and Reigate Nurseries. It will, we understand, be ready for delivery to intending purchasers in the autumn of the present year. THE ACHIMENES. "Was it not ever one of Nature's glories, BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. How much of earthly enjoyment do we receive through the eye! and yet how few are they, comparatively, whose power of enjoyment by its means is well developed. Countless is the throng of human beings who derive but little, if any, gratification from the flower-garden. By far the greater number of those who live in rural spots pass unheeding by the myriads of wild flowers which bloom on every side. There needs a measure of education before we can take pleasure in looking upon them. We need to know some little of their history and their habits before we get interested in them; but when we have become attached to a few favourites, know well their features and their character, we forthwith begin to look upon every fresh acquaintance with curious eye, to consider in what it resembles and in what it differs from our old friends, and then we perceive its own beauties, though not the same as those we already admire; but thus our floral acquaintance increases, and we come to like each flower more and more, and to distinguish and cull out the peculiar admirable qualities of each. It is not many years since the Achimenes was rudely captured in Guatemala, and packed off to England to be reared and looked at. It was very tractable, grew, nay flourished, and astonished the eyes of florists, and made some think that it was deserving of greater admiration than the gayest of stove herbaceous plants; and indeed it is a most beautiful flower. Moreover, it is extremely easy of cultivation, and blooms with the greatest freedom for several months during the year, and can be increased rapidly and with the greatest facility; all which render it one of the most valuable additions to warm greenhouse plants. Dr. Patrick Browne appears to have been the first to discover this genus of plants. He speaks of two species in his "History of Jamaica," in which he calls them Achimenes. Subsequently, C. L. L'Héritier, a French botanical writer, named the genus Cyrilla, and one of the species referred to by Browne has long been cultivated in England, and is well known to admirers of beautiful exotics as Cyrilla pulchella. Linnæus had before given the same name to another description of plants; and as this new Cyrilla was very unlike it, botanists abandoned L'Héritier's designation, and adopted Trevirana, on the suggestion of Willdenow. De Candolle and others, however, rejected the last, and again applied to the genus the name originally |