The following letter to a distinguished botanist has been handed to us with the suggestion that the writer would perhaps find a reply in our pages. We shall have much pleasure in replying to any further inquiries, should these not be clear enough :

"Carrick, Pa.: I thought I would drop you a few lines asking you if you would be kind enough to give me the following information :

"What fire heat would you give carnations or roses night and day, also what sun heat to produce cut flowers, especially in winter.

" What amount of moisture ought to be kept in a greenhouse to grow the above? When growing wood to produce flowers, also when flowering, or "Which will produce the most flowers, and the quickest way? By growing plants (when first put in greenhouse) cold, and when they have formed their buds pretty well, to force them with fire heat, or to force them as soon as put in, until they have formed their buds; by having a moist atmosphere and then flower them with a dry atmosphere? For I have noticed that I get more flowers of my plants that are outside when a dry spell comes, but I have never been able to find out those points, for I either dry too much or not enough.

is it better to keep them flowering and growing at the same time, as I have a hygrometer.

" Has there ever been such an instrument, equally simple and efficient, as the thermometer, with which we may ascertain the proportions of its gaseous elements, so as to regulate the constituents of an atmospheric volume as easily as we can its heat?

" Now the reason I ask you these questions is this: I am a poor man and have started in the flower business on a small scale. I never was able to go and learn under some good man. I know nothing about botany; all I know I have studied myself, and if you will please be so kind as to give any or all the information you can I will be ever so much obliged. From what I have heard of you, you surely must know something about flowers, and I hope to be able to compensate you in the future should you do anything for me. For I never want a man to do anything for me for nothing. Perhaps you may know of some good books that I can get on raising carnations, roses, violets, hyacinths, and lily of the valley; or is there any books published on botany that would be of any practical benefit? Hoping you will do me all the favor you can, and that you will please excuse my inquisitiveness, as I am an entire stranger to you, I close for the present, hoping to hear from you soon and oblige."

[Winter blooming carnations do not like heat, but desire all the sunlight they can possibly receive. Nor do they like a moist atmosphere. Florists put in the cuttings about February or March, in boxes, and about May set the young plants out in a rich piece of ground, pinching them back several times during the summer to make them bushy. When frost is imminent, the plants are taken up with balls of earth, and set in benches in the houses. A temperature of 550 is quite enough to force carnations.

There is no instrument in use among florists similar in value to a thermometer for the purpose indicated. Cultivators have not found the need of any such instrument.

There are no especial works devoted to these flowers, but the correspondents of our Magazine keep the readers posted on all that is new on these topics, and are generally ready to give all they know of older matters whenever inquiry is made. - Ed. G. M.]