VICK’S
ILLUSTRATED MONTHLY
MAGAZINE.

Devoted to the Profitable Culture of Flowers and Vegetables.

Vick Publishing Co.
Fifty Cents Per Year.

ROCHESTER, N. Y., MARCH, 1894.

Volume 17, No. 5.
New Series.

COUGHS AND COLDS

are only the beginning. Lungs are weakened next, the body becomes emaciated, and then the dreaded Consumption Germ appears.

Scott’s
Emulsion

the Cream of Cod-liver Oil and Hypophosphites, overcomes Coughs and Colds, strengthens the Lungs, and supplies vital energy. Physicians, the world over, endorse it.

BABIES AND CHILDREN

and Weak Mothers respond readily to the nourishing powers of Scott’s Emulsion. They like the taste of it, too.

Don’t be Deceived by Substitutes!

Prepared by Scott & Bowne, Chemists, New-York City. Druggists sell it.

ORGANS $27.50 up

PIANOS, $175 up

FREE:

Our large 24-page Catalogue, profusely illustrated, full of information on the proper construction of Pianos and Organs. We ship on test trial, ask no cash in advance, sell on instalments, give greater value for the money than any other manufacturer. Send for this book at once to

BEETHOVEN ORGAN CO.,

WASHINGTON, N. J. P. O. Box 280

☞ SAVE MONEY

Single Harness $3.75, $5.25 and $10, same as sell for $7, $10 and $18, Double Team Harness $12, $17, $20, same as sell for $20, $30, $35. We ship anywhere to anyone at WHOLESALE PRICES with privilege to examine without asking one cent in advance. Buy from manufacturers, save middlemen’s profits. World’s Fair medals awarded. Write at once for catalogue and testimonials free. CASH BUYERS’ UNION, 158 W. Van Buren St., B3, Chicago, Ill.

Death to High Prices!

Buy Direct from the Factory

and save agents’ and canvassers’ commissions. Hereafter we shall sell the Majestic direct to the consumer at factory cost. The Majestic is recognized as the best machine for family use, and has always been sold by our agents for $60. For a limited time we shall sell it for $22 and furnish all attachments free of charge. Shipped on approval anywhere. Send for a sample of its work and catalogue.

THE TILTON S. M. CO., 275 Wabash Av., Chicago, Ill.

Few men have ever really known,

And few would ever guess

What our country means by marking

All her chattels with U.S.

We see it on our bonds and bills,

And on our postal cars,

It decorates our Capitol

Shadowed by Stripes and Stars.

In all our barracks, posts and forts,

It plays a leading part

And the jolly sailor loves it

And enshrines it in his heart.

It may stand for United States

Or yet for Uncle Sam,

But there’s still another meaning

To this simple monogram.

Now, have you guessed the message

Which these mystic letters bear?

Or recognized the untold good

They’re spreading everywhere?

Echo the joyful tidings

And let the people know

That the U.S. of our nation means

We Use Sapolio.

AGENTS $10 a day at home selling LIGHTNING PLATER and plating Jewelry, Watches, Tableware, Bicycles, etc. Plates finest jewelry good as new, and on all kinds of metal with gold, silver or nickel. No experience. Anyone can plate the first effort. Goods need plating at every house. Outfits complete. Different sizes, all warranted. Wholesale to agents $5 up. Big profits, good seller. Circulars free.

H. F. Delno & Co. Dept. No. 6, Columbus, O.

HALM’S ANTI-RHEUMATIC AND ANTI-CATARRHAL CHEWING GUM

Cures and Prevents Rheumatism, Indigestion, Dyspepsia, Heartburn, Catarrh and Asthma. Useful in Malaria and Fevers, Cleanses the Teeth and Promotes the Appetite. Sweetens the Breath, Cures Tobacco Habit. Endorsed by the Medical Faculty. Send for 10, 15 or 25 cent package. Be convinced.

Silver, Stamps or Postal Note.

Geo. R. Halm, 140 W. 29th St., New York

Montbretias for Spring Planting.

An order of plants belonging to the Iris family, are natives of Africa, and their general appearance is that of the gladiolus, 18 inches high. Bloom profusely from July to October, throwing out spike after spike of beautiful blossoms. Hardy south of the Ohio; North, lift in fall and keep in dry sand.

Crocosmiflora. This is a hybrid variety, having scarlet flowers about one and one half inch in length, borne numerously in a long panicle standing well up above the foliage, considered hardy.

Pottsii. Flowers bright yellow, flashed on the outside with brick-red; very ornamental and hardy.

Rosea. Flowers rose colored. Mixed. All colors.

Named varieties 5c. each; 6 for 25c.; 12 for 40c. Mixed 5c. each 6 for 20c.; 12. for 35c.

POPULAR SELECTED COLLECTIONS.

To all who want good sensible Collections for the Flower and Vegetable Garden we can recommend either of the following. All of the seeds contained in them are our regular sized packages, and first class in every respect. They give to our customers a good assortment, best adapted to produce a continued succession of the most useful kinds throughout the year.

Several thousand of our Collections are sold annually, and to the same people, which shows that they are perfectly satisfactory.

FLOWER SEEDS.

• No. 1—Twenty Varieties Choice Annuals, $1.00.
• No. 2—Forty Varieties Choice Annuals, $2.00.
• No. 3—“Beauteous” Collection of 60 Varieties of the Finest Annuals, Biennials and Perennials, $3.00.
• No. 4—“Perfection” Collection of 100 Varieties of the Finest Annuals, Biennials and Perennials, $5.00.

VEGETABLE SEEDS.

• No. 5—Twenty-three Varieties, for Small Garden, $1.00.
• No. 6—Forty-six Varieties. All Leading Vegetables. $2.00.
• No. 7—“Giant” Collection ($4.00 worth) of Finest Varieties of Vegetables for Family Garden, $3.00.
• No. 8—“Mammoth” Collection ($6.50 worth) of Finest Varieties of Vegetables for Family Garden, $5.00.

FLORAL GUIDE, 1894,
The PIONEER CATALOGUE
of Vegetables and Flowers.

Contains 112 pages 8 × 10½ inches, with descriptions that describe, not mislead; instructions that instruct, not exaggerate.

The cover is charming in harmonious blending of water color prints in green and white, with a gold background,—a dream of beauty. 32 pages of Novelties printed in 8 different colors. All the leading novelties and the best of the old varieties. These hard times you cannot afford to run any risk. Buy Honest Goods where you will receive Full Measure. It is not necessary to advertise that Vick’s seeds grow, this is known the world over, and also that the harvest pays. A very little spent for proper seed will save grocer’s and doctor’s bills. Many concede Vick’s Floral Guide the handsomest catalogue for 1894. If you love a fine garden send address now, with 10 cents, which may be deducted from first order.

$360.00 CASH PRIZES FOR POTATOES.

JAMES VICK’S SONS, Rochester. N. Y.

Vick’s Magazine.

Vol. 17. ROCHESTER, N. Y., MARCH, 1894. No. 5.

MARCH

Shifting winds and lowering sky—March.

Bleak and bare the brown fields lie—March.

Winter’s spectre now is laid,

Yet Spring lingers, half afraid.

Haste, oh Spring, your tasks are set, March!

You are late, do you forget? March!

Long before this time last year,

Bluebird and his mate were here.

—J. Torrey Connor.

MABEL RAY’S LESSON.

BY ROSE SEELYE-MILLER.

Times had been hard, harder than common this past year, and it seemed to Mabel Ray as though there was little bright to look forward to, and less to encourage her in trying to do right, trying to be the Christian she wanted to be some years ago. She had married Harry Ray three years previous; he was a thriving young merchant, but the past year it had seemed to the young wife as if he had grown taciturn and almost fretful if she wanted money for any little thing which she deemed necessary. Only this morning he had refused her money for the fur cape that she really needed so much, especially if they were going to her folks for New Year’s day. She had always had what she wanted when at home, and if Harry begrudged her the necessities of life, why, she almost believed she had better go back to that home, for she was an only daughter and was idolized by her parents. She sat and thought, and thought, of her wrongs until the tears came, and then, after having a good cry, she went into the conservatory and began picking flowers for the church decoration in which site was to take part. There was to be a concert and recitations and such entertainments, and the funds were to go to help the needy ones in the parish. For there were many who needed, many men were out of work, and their families were destitute indeed. Mabel was always ready for work of this kind, it relieved the tedium of the days when Harry was at the store, and then, be it known to you, although Mabel would have blushed had she realized it herself, she liked the notices in the city personals about the charming and philanthropic Mrs. Ray who took such a prominent part in every good work.

Her time was her own; there were no little ones for her to care for; her household was managed by a competent housekeeper who looked well to the domestic arrangements; so, altogether, Mrs. Ray rather needed something to give her an idea of usefulness. She was selfish, I am sorry to say, but when you think that she was an only child, reared in luxury, with everything she desired procured for her, it is no wonder that she learned to think that what she wanted was the first thing to be considered.

Harry Ray really loved his wife, but he was bearing a heavy burden of financial care, and then, besides, he did not possess the means that Mabel’s father had. He would do anything, sacrifice anything for her, but she seemed thoughtless about his sacrifices, and did not realize that perhaps she too had a duty to perform.

She came home from decorating the church that afternoon in better spirits, but was almost vexed when Harry assured her it would be impossible for him to attend the Charity function with her that evening. “Wrap yourself up well, Mabel,” Harry said thoughtfully, “and let the coachman await you.” He looked almost wistfully at her bright young beauty and longed for a word of sympathy and help from her, but none came. He looked worn and worried, and a thoughtful wife would have noticed this long before, but Mabel had not been taught to notice others in that way.

So Harry went to his work in his office, and Mabel, dressed richly, went to the Charity function, where she expected to sing. The evening passed pleasantly to Mabel, for she loved a brilliant scene and the compliments she always received.

The next day she was one of a committee to dispense the various gifts among the poor. She rose early for her, and with several others she visited such haunts of misery as she had never dreamed of. Poverty had always been a rather pleasant thing in her mind where people were always holding some sort of meetings to relieve it, and where kind hearted women were taking chicken broth or cups of jelly to others who lay in bed; she never really thought that perhaps it would be pleasanter to make one’s own chicken broth or furnish one’s own jelly, or that perhaps the one who lay in bed might do something besides just simply lie there; she did not realize the tragedy of many of those lives where poverty binds and sickness holds with chains invincible beyond all human aiding.

There was more wretchedness depicted in the squalid homes she visited than she had ever dreamed of, there was not only poverty but there was dirt, and there was suffering, and she began to wonder if there were not other things needed by the poor besides chicken broth and jelly; she thought soap would not be misplaced, and that clothes would find lodgement, she was sure flowers would be welcomed by some, and she went home with her heart really aroused from its selfish stupor. Harry did not come home to tea, and it was so late before he did come that being very wearied she retired, and soon fell asleep. But here, even, she was not free, she seemed to be in the midst of a white-robed throng who went about ministering to the needs of others, and when she spoke to them they only said “Even Christ pleased not Himself,” and winged their way on their errands of mercy, and then she seemed transported to the sunny fields where flowers bloomed and birds sang their sweetest carols; there were certain ones gathering the flowers and when she spoke to them they said “Even Christ pleased not Himself.”

And then she was transported to the city and into the haunts of misery and she saw a wan-faced woman going into a poor hovel with a blossom in her hand that she had picked from where it had fallen from some fair lady’s bouquet. She placed it carefully in a pitcher with a broken spout and turned the fairest side of the flower toward a sick one lying upon a pallet of straw, and when she looked a halo seemed to surround the flower and a voice said “Even Christ pleased not Himself.” And suddenly she seemed to be in her husband’s office, and there sat Harry, his face was haggard, and there were tense lines about his mouth, and he seemed trying in vain to make the accounts tally in the ledger before him, and ruin and disaster embodied seemed looking in upon him as he worked, and finally he laid down his pen, saying “I can do no more—if it were not for Mabel.”

Then she was in her own beautiful home and everything seemed going on strangely; the flowers in the conservatory had withered and died because they lived to please themselves, and so it seemed with everything in the house; the housekeeper was keeping house to please herself, the cook was not going to serve the dinner because it did not please her to do so, and so it

went, and she reached her room and there she found herself in ease and luxury, taking no thought for others, and seeking only how she might please herself; and then there seemed to be the roaring of a fire and she saw the house and all therein consumed, but she saw the woman who had carried the broken flower to the sick child coming to help her, and then Harry took her in his arms, and she knew that these were safe because they had not lived to please themselves.

After awhile she woke and hearing a step upon the stairs she slipped on a warm dressing gown and went out softly to meet Harry. He was surprised and there was that anxious look upon his face that she had seen in her dream. She drew him into the parlor and seated him in an easy chair, and then smoothed the wrinkles from his brow and begged him to tell her of his troubles. So the husband and wife conferred together, and both bearing the burden it grew lighter, and after a time it passed away. Mabel seemed different thereafter, her dream was so realistic that her very heart seemed changed, and upon its tablets were written in indelible letters, “Even Christ pleased not Himself.” She did not care to figure in charity functions where she would be praised of men, but she sought out the needy and tried faithfully to aid them. Her aid was given so unostentatiously, and with such humility and earnest sympathy, that the poor soon learned to love her, and her flowers bloomed not in vain, for they bloomed for the sick and sinning, for the poor and needy, and I trow that in sowing good seeds upon earth she will reap a heavenly harvest that will surprise her. For she has learned the sweetness of the words “Even Christ pleased not Himself.”

CURIOUS ARCHITECTS.

There is no topic in natural history so interesting as the architecture of birds; in the building of their nests they are exceedingly ingenious. We may well learn a lesson from the patience, diligence and perseverance which they display. Just as men are skilled in different mechanical employments, so we find in the bird tribe miners, masons, carpenters, weavers, basket-makers and tailors.

HUMMING BIRD’S NEST.

The humming bird constructs its nest of the finest silky down, and of cotton, or if these are not available, some other similar material. The inside is lined in the most delicate manner with soft substances; the outside is covered with moss, usually the color of the bough or twig to which the nest is attached, thus giving it the appearance of an excrescence. The delicacy and ingenuity of workmanship and skill could hardly be excelled by human art.

The humming bird is the “fairy of the feathered race”—the smallest and most beautiful—and they are found almost all over this continent. Most of them, however, dwell in the far South, where flowers are ever in bloom, and summer reigns all the year round. One species alone visits our chill Northern States—the humming bird with the ruby throat. It comes to us in July and is very shy; its stay is very short, for toward the first of September it departs to a warmer climate.

WOODPECKER DRILLING A HOLE FOR A NEST.

It is only in tropical countries that the several species of humming bird are seen in their abundance and variety. The islands between Florida and the main land of South America literally swarm with them. In the wild and uncultivated parts they inhabit the magnificent forests overhung with rare plants, whose blossoms vie in beauty with the jewel-like brilliancy of these animate gems of the air. In the cultivated portions of the country they abound in the gardens and seem to delight in society.

Lovely and full of nervous energy, these winged gems are constantly in the air, darting from one object to another, and displaying their gorgeous colors in the sunlight. When on a long journey, as during migration, they pass through the air in long undulations, raising themselves to a considerable height and then falling so as to form a curve. When feeding on a flower they keep themselves poised in one position as steadily as if suspended on a bough—making a humming sound with the rapid motion of their wings.

In disposition these little creatures are bold and pugnacious. In defending their nests they will attack birds five times their size and drive them off. When angry, their motions are very violent and their flight as swift as an arrow. Often the eye is incapable of following them, and their shrill, piercing note alone announces their presence.

Among the most dazzling of this brilliant tribe is the bar-tailed humming bird of Brazil. The tail is forked at the base, and consists of five feathers, graduated one above another, at almost equal distances. Their color is of the richest flame; the upper part of the body is golden green, and the under part emerald.

There are more than a hundred kinds of these birds, and all are noted for their surpassing beauty. What a beautiful conception in the author of nature were these exquisite little creatures! It is as if the flowers had taken wings, and life, and intelligence, to share in the sports of animal life.

NESTS OF THE BOTTLE BIRD.

The nest of the golden-crested wren, a most beautiful bird found in England and other parts of Europe, is a fine example of weaving. It is made of moss and lichen, and lined with feathers; it has a very small entrance at the top and the interior of the nest is also small, bearing no proportion to the size of the structure. The weaving of this nest is a work of great labor and assiduity, and compared with the bulk of the bird, it is of large dimensions.

NESTS OF SOCIAL WEAVERS.

The nest is suspended from the under surface of a fir branch, thickly clothed with foliage, by which it is almost entirely concealed and partly protected from the rain. Thus, beneath a natural canopy, this little bird rears her brood, whose cradle swings to and fro with every breeze. The eggs are from seven to ten in number, and of a pale brown color.

A naturalist who watched a nest containing eight small birds with a powerful opera glass, observed that the parent birds came to the nest with food every two minutes, or upon an average thirty-six times in an hour; and this continued full sixteen hours a day, which, if equally

divided between the brood, each would receive seventy-two feeds, the whole amounting to five hundred and seventy-six!

NESTS OF THE SAND MARTIN.

The woodpeckers are carpenters; they not only bore holes in trees in search of food, but they also chisel out deep holes in which to deposit their eggs and rear their young. They generally build their nest in May, selecting an old apple tree in the orchard; the boring is first done by the male, who pecks out a circular hole; as the work progresses, he is occasionally relieved by the female. They both work with great diligence, and as the hole deepens they carry out the chips, sometimes taking them some distance to prevent discovery or suspicion. The nest usually requires a week to build, and when the female is quite satisfied she deposits her eggs, generally six in number and of a pure white color.

A bird called the grosbeak builds a nest shaped like an inverted bottle with a long neck, through which it passes up to a snug little chamber above. The nest is skillfully constructed of soft vegetable substances, sewed together in a wonderful manner, and suspended from a twig of a bush.

The social weaver is found in the south of Africa. Hundreds of these birds, in one community, join to form a structure of interwoven grass containing various apartments, all covered by a sloping roof impenetrable to the heaviest rain, and increased year after year as the population of the little community may require.

A traveler, returned from a journey through South Africa, writes: “A tree with an enormous nest of these birds was quite near where our party camped for the night. I dispatched a few men with a wagon to bring it to the camp that I might open the hive and examine the nest in its minutest parts. When it arrived I cut it to pieces with a hatchet, and saw that the chief portion of the structure consisted of grass, without any mixture, but so compact and firmly woven together as to be impenetrable to the rain. This is a canopy under which each bird builds its particular nest; the canopy projects a little, which serves to let the water run off when it rains. The nest contained three hundred and twenty nests, and it was calculated that the number of birds would exceed six hundred in this one nest alone.”

The bottle-nested sparrow is a basket maker; it is found in India and is a very intelligent bird. It resembles our native sparrow in some particulars, but its color is brown and yellow. It associates in large communities and builds its nests on palm trees. It is formed in a very ingenious way, by long grasses woven together into the shape of a bottle, and it is then suspended at the extremity of a branch, in order to secure the eggs and young birds from numerous enemies, such as serpents, monkeys and other animals which infest that part of the world.

These nests excel in the neatness and delicacy of their workmanship. They contain several apartments intended for different purposes; in one the female deposits her eggs; in another is stored the food which the male gathers for his mate during her maternal duties, and a third is the sleeping apartment for the male bird.

The sand martin is a most curious member of the swallow tribe. It appears in the spring a week or two before the common swallow, and it is fond of skimming swiftly over the surface of the water. This bird makes a hole in a sand bank, sometimes two feet deep, at the extremity of which it constructs a loose nest of fine grass and feathers, in which it rears its young brood. The beak of the sand martin is like a sharp little awl, very hard, and tapering, suddenly to a point.

The tailor bird is not the least interesting of the bird family; it has a curious bill which it uses like a needle, and it forms its nest by sewing the materials together instead of weaving.

NEST OF TAILOR BIRD.

“The tailor bird,” says Darwin, “will not build its nest to the extremity of a tender twig, but makes one more advance to safety by fixing it to the leaf itself. It picks up a dead leaf and sews it to the side of a living one, its slender bill serving as a needle, and its thread some fine fibers; the lining consists of feathers, gossamer and down; its eggs are white; the color of the bird light yellow; its length three inches; its weight three-sixteenths of an ounce; so that the materials of the nest and the weight of the bird are not likely to draw down a habitation so slightly suspended.”

The different methods of nest building evidently result from the peculiarities of the birds themselves combined with their surroundings. Will these styles of architecture be changed or further developed?

Henry Coyle.

VICK’S FLOWERS.

What radiance do I see?

What color-wave outflows,

Making the wilderness rejoice

And blossom like the rose?

From sea to sea it pours,

From east to western strands,

Softening the stern Atlantic shores,

Brightening Pacific sands.

The South-land grows more sweet;

By broad blue Northern lakes,

Fair as auroral flushes fleet

The fragrant flower-tide breaks.

Our fertile vales make room

For this benignant grace;

The prairie’s wealth of native bloom

Gladly to this gives place.

O, lovely enterprise,

Refining where it goes,

Making the wilderness rejoice

And blossom as the rose!

—Virginia Westwood.

“Only the Scars Remain,”

Says Henry Hudson, of the James Smith Woolen Machinery Co., Philadelphia, Pa., who certifies as follows:

“Among the many testimonials which I see in regard to certain medicines performing cures, cleansing the blood, etc., none impress me more than my own case. Twenty years ago, at the age of 18 years, I had swellings come on my legs, which broke and became running sores. Our family physician could do me no good, and it was feared that the bones would be affected. At last, my good old

Mother urged me

to try Ayer’s Sarsaparilla. I took three bottles, the sores healed, and I have not been troubled since. Only the Scars remain, and the memory of the past, to remind me of the good Ayer’s Sarsaparilla has done me. I now weigh two hundred and twenty pounds, and am in the best of health. I have been on the road for the past twelve years, have noticed Ayer’s Sarsaparilla advertised in all parts of the United States, and always take pleasure in telling what good it did for me.”

Ayer’s Sarsaparilla

Prepared by Dr. J. C. Ayer & Co., Lowell, Mass.

Cures others, will cure you.

LINES TO A SKUNK CABBAGE.

Oh, life grotesque! How, whence did spring

The thought that gave thee blossoming?

How comes thy strange offensive bloom

Near knolls that give sweet violets room?

Sweet violets, which fill the air

With perfumed incense of a prayer

That, floating to the world above

Calls blessings from the soul of Love.

But thou, mephitic bloom! thou hast

A thought in thee of ages past,

When songs of love were all unknown,

Ere earth had into beauty grown,

Ere rippling brook and soughing pine

Had turned her prose hills into rhyme;

When all was dark, and cold, and bare,

Thou hadst, perhaps, a mission there;

And that is why, ’neath spring-time snows

Thy curious spathe so early grows.

Hast thou no mission now, strange flower,

Happier to make spring’s early hour?

Hark! from thy close-wrapped heart doth come

The working bee’s glad, soundful hum,

Where loads of pollen he doth find

His waxen honey cells to bind.

So, thou hast place in fields of use,

And vain are now words of abuse—

Giving the best thy heart doth hold

To help the workers of the world.

And giving thus, with patient grace,

Doth baser qualities efface,

And in a better, higher sphere

Thine inner beauty doth appear,

And thy developed soul shall be

Violet-sweet eternally.

—Beth Max.

These lines were suggested by a spathe of the skunk cabbage sent me by my brother, W. S. Ripley, of Wakefield, Mass., who mentioned in his letter to me when the specimen was sent that he stopped “to watch the bees go in at the aperture on one side of the spathe, and listened to their loud humming inside, as they laid on their load of pollen.” In Thoreau’s “Early Spring in Massachusetts,” page 172, in writing of this plant he says: “All along under that bank I heard the hum of honey bees in the air, attracted by this flower. Especially the hum of one within a spathe sounds deep and loud.”

THE NEW FRENCH CANNAS.

I do not know of any class of plants that have attracted so much attention or have been so much admired during the past season as the new large flowering French cannas. And for effectiveness on lawns in large beds or masses, or as single specimens in the mixed border, nothing can be more tropical and impressive. They are really plants for everybody as they are entirely free from insect pests, and require but little care and attention to grow them to perfection. They succeed well in all kinds of weather, wet or dry, and are not injured in the least by the severe storms of wind and rain that we so often experience during the summer season.

They bloom without intermission from June until they are destroyed by frost; the spikes of large flowers somewhat resemble gladiolus but are really more effective and showy as their brilliant colors show so grandly against their tropical foliage. Most, if not all, of the varieties grow on an average about three feet in height, and the flowers range in color from deep crimson to pure yellow, including all the intermediate shades, many being so beautifully marked that they are frequently compared to orchid flowers.

To grow these cannas to perfection as well as to enable them to properly develop themselves, they should be given a very deep heavily enriched soil, and as soon as hot, dry weather sets in mulched to the depth of at least two inches with good stable manure, and if the opportunity offers, water copiously during seasons of drought. With this treatment a single tuber will make a clump three or four feet in diameter in a single season; this will give one some idea of the immense amount of foliage and flowers a single specimen will produce.

The plants should not be planted outside until the weather becomes warm and settled, which in this vicinity is about the tenth of May, and as soon as the foliage has been destroyed by the frost it should be cut off, and the tubers dug and stored underneath the greenhouse stage, or in some other situation, where a temperature of 55° is maintained, until the time arrives for planting them outside again.

Or the plants can be lifted on the approach of cold weather, divided, potted up, and grown on for decorative purposes in either the greenhouse or window garden. This is a very safe way to winter over the large flowering cannas or any other variety of which one’s stock is limited.

When grown as pot plants for winter decoration the cannas should be given a compost consisting of two-thirds turfy loam, one-third well decayed manure and a good sprinkling of bone dust, mix well and use the compost rough. The plants should be given as light and sunny a situation as possible and a temperature of 55° to 60°. They should also be freely watered both overhead and at the roots, and as soon as the pots become well filled with roots a little liquid ammonia can be given occasionally or else they must be shifted into larger pots.

Propagation is effected by a careful division of the clumps, and where the plants are to be kept in a state of rest the operation should be performed when they are being planted out in May. In dividing leave two or three eyes or shoots to each plant.

Of the many varieties now listed in catalogues the following are the most desirable and distinct:

Alphonse Bouvier is the grandest deep red variety known, both truss and flowers being very large, and the plant makes a most luxuriant growth of deep red foliage. In color the flowers are of a rich velvety red.

Capt. P. de Suzzini has handsome light green foliage and is the most beautiful of all the spotted varieties. Its flowers are of a rich shade of canary yellow beautifully spotted and dashed with red.

Francois Crozy has bright green foliage and very large flowers which are of a bright orange bordered with a narrow edge of gold—a very rare and desirable color in cannas.

Madame Crozy grows about three and a half feet in height and has broad bright green foliage. The flowers, which are produced in massive spikes, are of a bright crimson scarlet beautifully bordered with gold. The plant commences to bloom when about one foot in height.

Nellie Bowden, in all respects this is identical with Madame Crozy except in the color of its flowers which are of a rich golden yellow. One of the most distinct and beautiful of cannas.

Paul Marquant has dark green foliage and very large handsome flowers of a bright salmon scarlet. A very showy variety.

Star of 1891 is so well and favorably known as to require no description. It is the best of all for pot culture, as it is of dwarf growth and very free-flowering. The flowers are of a bright orange scarlet occasionally edged with yellow.

Floral Park, N. Y.

Chas. E. Parnell.

THE DIFFERENCE.

It makes all the difference between nice thrifty plants or scraggly looking ones whether we read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest a floral magazine. In walking on the street, the appearance of the windows or front yards tells you whether the postman leaves a floral weekly or monthly. Six weeks ago I saw a row of empty pots right in the sun, and often an old man was poking up the soil with his penknife to see if his bulbs had started. You see he didn’t read up about hyacinths, but potted them and put them right in the sun. I can imagine his saying to his wife, “It’s money thrown away to buy bulbs; they probably are too old to grow and I’ve been cheated.” So the poor seedsman gets the blame, and not his own ignorance. Here is a window with leggy looking geraniums in it, just a few leaves on top of the long stems. Now a little reading in a floral magazine would have shown her, after blooming all summer, the place for them is the cellar. Ah! here is a window that shows intelligence. The hyacinths and jonquils are showing their buds, moved to the window from the dark corners where they have been for weeks forming vigorous roots. Here are primroses in bloom, and oxalis, and a scarlet nasturtium makes the room bright on a cloudy day, and in a corner I can see the Palm Latania. She takes the magazines and knows what are good winter plants for amateurs.

In summer one can pick out the magazine lawns and gardens. Here is one where the man has two shapely maple trees in front, and has pruned his “Jac” rose so that it is loaded with blossoms, and in a circular bed he has put a caladium in the center, and this shows off the gladiolus in every shade around it. But the next front yard is enough to set one’s teeth on edge. Actually, here is a large square bed with a tall candidum lily in each corner and, inside, petunias, zinnias, asters and marigolds in one blaze of color. The whole effect is like a crazy quilt thrown over an old fashioned four-posted bedstead. One sees the roses eaten of worms and bugs, or planted by the sunflowers and looking ashamed at their surroundings; whereas the magazines tell us again and again that roses need to be watched continually and sprayed to keep off the insects, and to plant by themselves. Now for the moral. Let us all show, and lend our florals, and urge the people to subscribe.

Anna Lyman.

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A COTTAGE LOT.

When a tradesman can indulge in a suburban home or a summer cottage it will often happen that he will desire to keep a family horse. If he doesn’t want a horse he will often want a cow or chickens. In the accompanying sketch A is a site provided for one or other of these animals, and it is designedly given a prominent position that its architecture may receive treatment in consonance with that of the residence, that it may be in unison with the surroundings, and that it may supplant the useless and ugly pavilions frequently seen.

The approach to the house is direct and convenient for all points, unless the architect is perverse enough to put the coal cellar on the opposite side.

The boundary hedge is of Norway spruce with room enough to grow and room enough to get between it and the fence to clip it. I saw a hedge on paper recently—between two groups of shrubbery—which was not allowed room to stand on end.

There is a small vegetable garden, 13, with a border around it for blackberries, currants, raspberries, strawberries and such like, and at the end, 14, either a few fruit trees or flowering shrubs. The porches, both back and front, are but a single step above the roadway. The rooms may or may not be another step above them, depending somewhat upon the character of the subsoil, etc. I have not arranged any special drying ground, for cedar poles may be set up in the center of any of the round beds, 1 to 8, and clothed with Japanese ivy, Euonymus radicans, climbing hydrangeas and so on, and have wires between them.

Now these beds may be further filled with either bedding plants or select herbaceous plants. I will assume that it is a summer cottage, and I would then plant the ground as follows, which would result in a very different how d’ye do from that usually seen in such places: 1, Begonia Evansiana; 2, Funkia grandiflora; 3, Echinacea purpurea; 4, Aconitum Napellus variegata; 5, Lobelia cardinalis; 6, Sedum Sieboldii; 7, Veronica longifolia subsessilis; 8, six distinct varieties of Phlox paniculata. These beds may be varied greatly, but nothing of unreliable character should ever be planted in them. Number 1, for instance, might have a tub of nelumbium in place of the begonia, not that it is greatly better, but for variety and fancy.

Numbers 9, 9, 9, are shrubbery groups composed of the following summer-flowering material, disposed in such manner that all sides may be seen, and mowed around, and giving the longest possible margins for the space occupied. There are but few trees to bloom after July, they are chiefly Rhus semialata Osbeckii and R. glabra; Dimorphanthus Mandschuricus; Koelreuteria paniculata and Clerodendron trichotomum. None of them are large. Of shrubs there are a number, and it is strange that they are so seldom used effectively. Garden shrubbery looks more devoid of color in August here than English shrubbery in midwinter. This should not be with a list such as the following to draw from and utilize. Just fancy what we have—and the great artists we have—and tell me if it should be.

There are the altheas, lots of them; Buddleia Lindleyana; Calluna vulgaris; Clethras in variety; Callicarpa purpurea; x Clematis in variety; Clerodendron viscosum; Desmodiums; Dabœcia polifolia; Daphne cneorum; Erica vagans; Euonymus Sieboldianus; Hydrangea Hortensia varieties; Hydrangea paniculata grandiflora; Hypericum in varieties; Hibiscus roseus, etc.; Indigofera Dosua; Kerria Japonica; Lespedeza bicolor; Leycesteria formosa; Lagerstrœmia Indica; x Lonicera Halleana; x Periploca græca; Polygonum cuspidatum; Potentilla fruticosa; Rubus odoratus; Rhodotypus Kerrioides; Rhus copallina; Rosa rugosa; R. Wichuriana, and several hybrids; Spiræa salicifolia, S. tomentosa, S. Douglassii, and S. Bumalda if it is pruned after flowering in spring; Tamarix Chinensis; x Tecoma radicans; x Tecoma grandiflora; Vitex agnus-castus; Vitex Negundo incisa, and a large number of sub-frutescent plants of large size, which may be substituted for such of the shrubs as are tender north of Philadelphia. Numbers 10 and 11 are prepared borders which may well be planted with Hydrangeas Hortensia, Thomas Hogg, etc., and interspersed with the pink and white varieties of Lilium speciosum. Numbers 12, 12 are plants of Sciadopitys verticillata.

PLAN OF GROUNDS.

Climbers are marked x. South of Philadelphia Bignonia capreolata, Magnolia grandiflora and evergreen roses may be grown on walls.

Trenton, N. J.

James MacPherson.

ROSE LEAVES.

My rose bushes are almost as much admired for their beautiful foliage as for their lovely roses. “I never saw such handsome leaves, why they look exactly like wax.” This is an exclamation I am growing quite accustomed to hear from friends, and it is really true; but I think any one who grows roses as house plants may have just as handsome foliage if the proper care is taken of the plants. Once or twice every week (just as is most convenient) I wash every leaf with clean, weak soapsuds, under side as well as upper side. With the small-leaved Polyanthas it is too tiresome to wash each leaflet individually, but the foliage can be sprayed well, and then very carefully and gently a branch of leaves may be wiped at once, and in this manner one can go over quite a number of plants in half an hour. The leaves may be left without wiping, of course, but the foliage is apt to be marred unless it is done, as the soapsuds dries on the leaves in white, unsightly spots. Roses treated in this way will very rarely be troubled with pests of any kind, and such rich waxen green foliage as they will possess is more beautiful than many flowers.

It is something quite remarkable here, where the thermometer falls to 40° and 50° below zero, to see roses blooming outside of a conservatory, But mine have been doing beautifully in the bay window all winter, and small as the plants are they have flowered wonderfully well. At night the plants are moved away from the window to a place where they are secure from frost Queen’s Scarlet seems to make a special effort to surpass itself each time some other rose comes into bloom, and every rose it produces is, I think, more beautiful than its predecessor. It is in every way one of the loveliest of roses, and although lacking in the rich fragrance of many others, it yet possesses a delicate sweetness of its own. The first time that American Beauty bloomed for me it bore two exquisite roses, and the little bush was barely eight inches high, one of the shoots which produced a flower being only four inches out of the soil, and the rich, exquisite sweetness of these large, deep pink roses is surely unsurpassed by any other.

Sometimes when the buds seem very slow about unfolding I take a cup of lukewarm water and gently bending each bud give it a few minutes immersion. This certainly hastens their development and in no way injures them. If I could only have one rose Queen’s Scarlet would be my choice; if I could have others American Beauty would certainly be the next one.

Mrs. S. H. Snider.

Care of Seeds.—The smaller the seeds the less covering required. Fine seeds may be scattered on the moist soil, or at most have a sprinkling of sand over them.

PAYSON’S INDELIBLE INK

Has a Record of Half a Century.

☞ For Marking Personal and Family Linen.

☞ For Marking Clothing of any Fabric.

It has been in constant and regular use in

• U. S. Gov’t Hospital, Washington, D. C., 50 years.
• U. S. Hotel, Boston, 40 years.
• Miss. State Lunatic Hospital, Jackson, Miss., 33 years.
• Fifth Avenue Hotel, New York, 31 years.

Received HIGHEST AWARD at WORLD’S FAIR, 1893.

Sample bottle mailed on receipt of 25 cts. if you cannot obtain it at druggists or stationers.

A. L. WILLISTON, Northampton, Mass.

Letter Box.

In this department we shall be pleased to answer any questions relating to Flowers, Vegetables and Plants, or to publish the experiences of our readers. James Vick.

Lady Washington and Other Plants.

I see by your September Magazine that you want the experience of anyone that has had good success with Lady Washington geraniums. I had good success with mine. I used as a fertilizer ground oil cake worked into the soil. It was a year-old plant and had five bunches of bloom with five pansy-like flowers in each bloom. They only bloom once a year. I also used the oil cake on an ivy-leaved geranium and its growth was beyond my expectations, for in a year’s time it was eighteen feet long. All plants I have used it on have done exceedingly well.

Mrs. N. G.

Lane, Kansas.

Roses in Kansas.

I would like to know what manure that the farm can furnish to use for the bed of Monthly roses, also, must they be pruned or cut back the first year, and what treatment must I give them in the winter here in Kansas? Must I cut off all branches and cover the roots or wrap the branches?

Mrs. M.

Dig into the bed every spring a heavy dressing of well rotted stable manure. Protect the plants in winter with a covering of leaves or branches of evergreens, prune in spring and when needed at other times, so as to get a good growth of new wood.