objection to the severe currycombing which
the points of the scoriæ inflict on their mucous
hides.

Strong in bulbs is our friend V. H. There
are open-ground compartments filled with
modest dog's-tooth violets, with delicate ixias,
and with brightly-blazing incendiary tulips,
looking ready to set the place on fire, if they
were only put in contact with combustible
matter. A still better test of the practical
ability of the master-mind is the bulb-house
—a large, light, airy room—where the roots
repose during their annual holidays, on open
shelves and well-ventilated stages, with a
warm-water pipe running round the apartment,
to drive away all mischievous damps.
Muggy moisture stagnant in the air is worse
than the plague for torpid roots. Perhaps,
one of the strongest bodies of troops is the
regiment of picked calceolarias. The Bon
Jardinier justly declares that it would be
quite impossible for any good gardener not
to make mention of the success, in the raising
from seed, and the culture of herbaceous
calceolarias, which has been attained by M.
Van Houtte. These virgin's sabots, or slipperworts,
have been diversified, by art combined
with sportive nature, into an infinite
complexity of patterns and tints. Look over a
good collection of several hundreds, and you
cannot find two varieties alike. At the
proper time (the close of May), and in the
proper place (a cool and airy greenhouse),
the hybridiser plies his magic work, seated
on a wizard throne, which, more likely than
not, consists of an empty packing-case set on
end. He has before him, on a bench, a range
of the most beautiful, the most delicate, and
the choicest calceolarias. His only apparatus
is a pair of pointed tweezers that close with
a spring. With these pincers he simply
takes out the anthers of the full-blown flower
of one plant, and applies them to the top of
the pistil of the open flower of another plant,
and the thing is done—the charm works.
The seed produced will be the sure parent of
variegated flowers. It is not necessary to
extract previously the stamens from the plant
to be hybridised. To the pistils of the second
plant are again applied the anthers from a
third, and so on, till the whole select assembly
are thus made to interchange and
communicate their respective merits, to enhance
the perfection of the next generation. The
result, the following spring, is an assortment
of fairy purses that might have been cut out
of etherial tissues—webs of yellow, bronze,
cream-colour, pink, brown, crimson, and
white—speckled like toads' backs; printed
with notes, like music-paper; dusted with
gold; blotched with treacle; marbled with
rich plumpudding veins; daubed with lemon-
cream; peppered with spots stolen from
butterflies' wings; curdled into clots of
purple custard; covered with a network of
spider-web lace; stained with tears from eyes
that weep blood; stamped with coloured inks
from nature's secretaire; sealed with Flora's
private signet-ring; dipped, soaked, and
sodden in deep rich washes; splashed, as if
two or three rival painters had tried which
should lay on paint the thickest; embroidered
in patterns of most irregular regularity;
zigzagged with flashes of mimic lightning;
striped, like zebras; blotted and pot-hooked
like a schoolboy's copy-book; draggled
through the mud of a scene-painter's workshop;
dusted, blurred, everything, in short,
in the way of colouring—except a dash of
blue—which you can fancy happening to a
flower that patches itself like a harlequin,
and changes hue like a camelion.

Haste we past our out-door favourites, that
pleasant columbine, Aquilegia jucunda—
decidedly the flower of the family—and the
deliciously-scented hybrid single pæony, P.
Smotti; past the beds of seedling rhododendrons,
the harmonious union of azaleas, with
pink, cream-coloured, and yellow blossoms;
past Siebold's hardy polygonum, which
displays its bright red flowers in the sandiest
soils. Glance, then, at the useful carpenter's
shops. Peep into the seed warehouse, lighted
with gas, for storing flower, kitchen-garden,
and agricultural grains, which are deposited
along the walls, on shelves partitioned into
innumerable pigeon-holes, and where a sort
of long-drawn linen-horse, sprawls across the
centre of the room, shaped like the letter A
and hung with paper and canvas seed-bags.
Scramble next through the frame-ground,
full of sprouting balsams, China-asters,
stocks, and French marigolds. Close by,
are seed-sowing rooms; and around are
congregated a set of fruit-trees, the subjects of
operation on stated days, when three or four
hundred people come from diverse and
distant localities, to witness public lessons in
pruning, the Belgian government supplying
tickets at half-price along all their own (the
government's) railways.

We have reached the packing and
receiving-house, a cheerful apartment consisting
of a long parallelogram with windows
all round, heated and lighted by gas at night,
and surmounted by a capital light attic, or
grenier. It is a pleasure to receive a basket
of plants from V. H.'s, if only for the interest
of unpacking it. For short distances,
the travellers are placed in flat round
baskets, and covered with a tent of bast-mat
supported by sticks; but when the journey
is likely to last more than four and twenty
hours, they are secured in wooden packing-
cases. And, besides, every precious flower-
bud, as in the case of camellias, is enveloped
in paper; every straggling sprig is tied to
the central stem, which is held up by a
guardian stake covered with either paper or
cotton wadding, to prevent chafing and
bruises from the motion of their vehicle.
Sometimes a paper hood is made to shelter
each individual plant. But of wadding—
some gardeners say that it is good, and others