Mr. Stauffer having given a comprehensive account of the dandelion in the June number of the Horticulturist, I desire to add a word on that useful plant.

It is not "a Native American," and is known chiefly to professed botanists to be of European origin; by means of its feathery seeds, when separated from the disk, floating in the atmosphere, it is able to travel an immense distance.

Refined observations, particularly with the microscope, on portions of the atmosphere filtered through water, very often unfold a most motley group of travellers, among which are found the pollen of plants in large quantities, from an unknown distance, as none of the family were found where the observations had been made.

In a uniform state of the atmosphere, precipitation being prevented by the earth's motion, the myriads of floating travellers that come unsent for, are silently emigrating from one part of the globe to another, and thus we have the dandelion and other flora of the Old World, facing to the American continent, like members of the human family - many of them doing better here than at home.

Much has been said of the medicinal qualities of the dandelion, but chiefly of its root. I have known the Dublin Medical Faculty to have saved the life - or rather to have given length of days to many a consumptive by its use; but the prescription was, pounding the leaves in a mortar and squeezing its juice - dose, a wineglass full every morning.

Little has been done towards the cultivation of the dandelion, yet it is highly susceptible of improvement. Some three or four years since I brought from the open fields in spring-time a few plants of it, and planted them in the garden. They grew amazingly, so much so that they greatly exceeded my powers of consumption; and with a view to retard the growth, and therefore the bitterness of its leaves, I tied them together with a cotton thread and drew the earth up around them, and as they grew I kept the earth up to them just as I would blanch celery. The result was, in a few weeks the leaves thus covered became beautifully white, and instead of the coarse, bitter taste of the leaf when exposed to the open air, its crispy flavor was more like celery than dandelion. Its early appearance in spring gives it value as a vegetable, and if blanched as it grows, it will fully repay the labor and care bestowed upon it.

Last month I gathered a small quantity of its seeds., and sowed them in drills a foot apart in the garden in the manner of lettuce, and not knowing how they would germinate, I put a few lettuce seeds in each drill to show how the land lay, in case weeds should become troublesome, and now the lettuce and dandelion are equally forward, with promise of a fine crop of dandelion, upon which I intend to bestow the most distinguished consideration.!