Dear Sir - The varieties now cultivated of the Portulacca splendens, are four in number, viz: the crimson, the scarlet, the whit?, and the yellow. The white is subject to the freak, not uncommon in florist's flowers, of bearing different colored flowers upon the same stalk. Sometimes every flower will be a pure white, and occasionally two petals crimson, and two white; occasionally a dash of crimson in one or more petals, and so on. I have even seen a pure crimson flower, on the white variety. But the yellow has, for the three seasons I have raised it, been pertinaciously yellow, although I have made many attempts to cross it with the crimson and scarlet. I have at last succeeded in obtaining a new and exceedingly beautiful variety between the crimson and yellow, and what is quite interesting, it has occasionally a pure crimson flower upon the same stalk. It has not yet borne a pure yellow, though by analogy it should. Thus far, the mixed flowers have the yellow and crimson nearly equally distributed, the crimson generally predominating a little. Two petals are generally crimson, and two yellow, slightly spotted or dashed with crimson.

The different colored petals are sometimes opposite and sometimes in pairs.

C. G. P

Washington, Sept. 1,1851.

Foreign and Miscellaneous Notices.