A Large Puff Ball

This fungus grows to an enormous size sometimes - that is, the species known as Lycoperdon giganteum. Prof. R. C. Call found one in 1877 in Herkimer county, New York, 5 feet 4 inches across in its largest diameter. As stated in the Gardeners' Monthly some years ago, when taken young, cut into slices and fried in butter with a little pepper and salt, the puff ball is one of the most delicious vegetables known.

Diseased Roses

"F. G. K.," Ottawa, Ills.:

Your rose roots are covered with the galls of the root aphis. The branches injured no doubt suffer from the weakened vital power through the trouble at the roots.

New Book On Gardening In The South

S. W. Peek, of the Hartwell Nurseries, in Georgia, will soon issue a work entitled, " The Nursery and Orchard." It will be of 200 pages, and illustrated.

Platycodon Grandiflorum

Herbaceous plants have - many of them - strange habits of dying unaccountably, and leaving their places in the flower border without our knowledge. But there are some very beautiful things that have the faculty of holding on in spite of all vicissitudes, and one of the bell-flowers, Campanula grandiflora, or Platycodon grandiflora, as botanists prefer to call it, is one of these. There is a white and a blue variety.

Fringed Petunias

These are coming into popularity. The edges of the corolla are fringed like soma pinks, and being double they have a unique appearance.

Improvement Of The Wall-Flower

This old and ever popular favorite is getting a good turn from French hands, and is being improved in a wonderful way. They have many classes of them. Under their name of '"giroflee " all Frenchmen make a pet of the wall-flower.

Another Upright Poplar

Last year we saw a new introduction that grew upright and as close as the Lombardy poplar. It is a variety of the common white or Silver poplar. It appears in foreign catalogues as Populus Bolleana.

Lily Disease

"Mrs. K.," Baltimore, Md. - The Gold-banded Lily, and other lilies, "get weaker every year and finally die" because of a fungus. No known cure has been discovered. It may be the same or a close ally of the one that causes rust in the gladiolus.

Cedar Of Lebanon In Virginia

Mr. J. Hotchkiss says: "We have a fine Cedar of Lebanon growing here in Staunton on our limestone hills. It was planted about 30 years ago, and is now about 40 feet high".

A Double Lilium Speciosum

A correspondent from Ottawa, Canada, sends a photograph of a lily that had twelve petals and twelve stamens. This is not a double lily in the usual meaning of the word; but the double number of the usual parts, without any change of stamens to petals, is perhaps of still more interest to the botanist, though the florist may not see as much.