Passing a friend's garden recently there they were in all their original loveliness, the wild English pansies! Small they were, to be sure, but still lovely. The single blooms were no larger than ordinary violets, but the purple upper petals were very distinct, and the lower yellowish-white petals well set off the purple lines that here and there stretched right through the length of them. We had to admit that they were miserable wild things, but still protest they were lovely for all.

Yet we suppose the popular taste will be for large pansies - the larger the better - and when in the spring the successors to the earliest begin to diminish in size, we shall have the request from our fair readers to tell how to keep them from degenerating. Vick tells in a recent number of his magazine how to give them a good start:

"A spot for pansies should be selected where it is a little shady, at least in the middle of the day, if such a spot is to be had, but if not, it can be where it is fully exposed; a place entirely shaded is not desirable. A light soil made rich with well rotted stable manure would be a place the plants would delight in, but if the soil is heavy it can be greatly improved by digging in plenty of the same kind of fertilizer. Seed can be sown any time the present month or the next to raise strong plants before winter".

And we would add to this, that the way to keep the spring flowers up to their full duty is to keep on with the feeding Vick suggests. They are happy diners. A lady of our acquaintance has her pansy bed nearly as lovely this first day of July as it was on the 1st of April, merely by giving a watering of soapsuds once a week. Some help they get from the cutting they receive. Hundreds of pansy posies were cut to give pleasure to friends; and she avers that the more were cut away the more bloomed to make up for the cutting. In most cases it adds to the freedom of flowering when seeds are prevented from forming.