FEW CLEMATISES, with all their varied colors and freedom of growth, are seen in cultivation, where thousands should be. The price need not be any drawback now, as within the last few years it has been greatly reduced. A good two-year old plant which used to cost from two to three dollars can now be bought for fifty to seventy-five cents. Trained up the pillars of the veranda, over an outbuilding or any unsightly object, these plants are very decorative, but in the flower garden a bed of the different varieties makes an object which need only to be seen to be admired. Prepare a bed as if for roses, using plenty of such lasting materials as rotten cow manure and turfy loam, as the longer a healthy clematis is planted the more vigorously will it grow and the more abundant will be its flowers, and being gross feeders, clematises require an abundance of food within reach of their roots. In the beds spring-flowering and summer-flowering varieties should be associated, for just as the former are getting past their blooming periods the latter are beginning to flower, and inflorescence is thus kept up during a long season. The only drawback in growing the two kinds together is that they should be pruned at different times.

The spring-flowering kinds flower on the old wood ; while the summer-flowering varieties produce their flowers on the young growths; therefore while the latter are much benefited by being well pruned back in the spring, the former should be left untouched and pruned back if necessary after flowering. Still if the two kinds are not planted too closely together, the work can be easier done at the proper seasons. Associated with the clematises, nothing looks much prettier than a few plants of gladioluses or lilies which raise their flowers above the foliage of their neighbors, forming a beautiful bed, and if the late-blooming kinds of lilies are used, they help to prolong the flowering season.

Liquid manure is often of great benefit for this class of plants, and as soon as the bed in which they are growing becomes exhausted, the liquid should be applied, as well as a good mulching of rotten manure in the fall.

Some of the best spring-flowering kinds are: Lord Londesboro, deep mauve; Lady Londesboro, silver-gray with pale bars; Gem, deep lavender ; Miss Bateman,-pure white; Standishii, deep lilac; Victor Lemoin, violet, tinted with blue. Among the best summer-blooming kinds are the good old Jack-manni, from which have been produced some excellent seedlings, but none superior to the parent; also, Viticella rubra grandiflora, brick-red, fine variety ; Tunbridgensis, bluish-mauve; lanuginosa vivina, pure white; Star of India, reddish-plum, with red bars; Otto Froebel, greyish-white ; Magnifica, reddish-purple, and Lady Bovill, grayish-blue.

In Lincoln Park, Chicago, Illinois, I observed several very attractive beds planted with dwarf cockscombs and Centaurea gymnocarpa in alternate rows. The silvery-white of the centaurea contrasted well with the dark red flowers of the cockscomb. The beds were all oblong, but a circular bed of the same kind of plants would be more attractive. The cockscomb did not grow over seven inches high. Mansfield Milton.

Ohio.