Whilst on my daily visits to my beds of these fairy lilies, I was astonished to find specimens that had four calyxes and four corollas instead of the regular number, three, and have taken them up - and carefully put in a box - and by advice kindly given me by Prof. Sereno Watson, Harvard University, Mass., I am going to attempt the - to me - difficult task of making it a permanent variety. I find eight or ten plump seed pods now, and would be very grateful for any hints as to the proper mode of procedure, either from the Editor or others. This bulb is the most wondrous seeding variety I have ever met, scarcely a flower fails to make its seed pod, and I propose saving in quantities and seeing if " Improved Zephyranthes Ata-masco " also cannot be had by raising from seed; as a florist claims that he has improved Zephyranthes Treatae. (Mr. Watson says, " we have no real Amaryllis native here.") I have just examined these seed pods, and one is four-celled instead of three; all the rest are three-celled, and I would reason it out that the four-celled will be the one to set my double variety.

[All the early botanists made this plant an Amaryllis, but as the knowledge of plants extended a new genus was made out of the old, and thus we have Zephyranthes. Amaryllis, it may be remembered in classical story, fled from Zephyrus; and it seems too bad that after the many thousands of years since the gods dwelt on Mount Olympus, that Zephyrus should get Amaryllis after all. The seed ought to grow easily, in your soil and climate, in sandy soil, sown at once. - Ed. G. M.|