The scarlet geranium, as it is called, or Pelargonium zonale, has become a general favorite with all classes of people. Its various shades of color, from brilliant scarlet to pure white, are most attractive and highly valued. It is one of the leading ornaments of the garden in both city and country, and no lady thinks her window-garden complete without it. It is a perpetual bloomer, and unsurpassed in attractiveness when planted in beds or masses on a lawn. It is a tropical plant, and therefore will not stand much frost. It is easily propagated from cuttings and will grow tolerably well in any common garden soil.

After a bed of geraniums has been nipped by the frost and become unsightly, they may be dug up, the earth shaken from the roots, and after having been deprived of all their leaves may be packed in dry earth or sand in the cellar, where they will keep very well till time of planting out in spring. Sometimes they keep well hung up in a cellar where frost does not enter, but this cannot be depended on. Well rotted stable or barnyard manure makes them grow strong, tall and luxuriant, but is not conducive to fine large trusses of flowers. Whoever wants fine blooms and short stocky plants must have resource to fertilizers, and the best of these I have found to be pure bone-meal. No matter, almost, how poor the soil at the time of planting, if a handful of bone-meal be well mixed through the earth around each plant, it will cause it to flower profusely, and the flowers will be very much larger than those stimulated by stable or barnyard manure. If ladies would be particular to use more bone-meal when potting their geraniums in the fall or planting out in spring they would be well rewarded by a profusion of very large blooms, which is the chief end and object of all their care in nursing, both summer and winter, this very desirable plant called scarlet geranium. - Bone-meal is also valuable for many other flowering plants. - T. B., Trenton, N. J.

Spirea Trilorata.