extend around the sides of the main hall, which will enable visitors to look down on the entire display of fruits, flowers, &c. The hall will be lighted with a triple row of brackets, having three to five gas jets on each, and extending around the sides of the hall. This will leave a clear space, in the middle of the hall, of seventy feet wide, fifty feet high, and nearly two hundred feet long. This will include the “Foyer,” - a beautiful room of seventy by thirty feet, with thirty feet ceiling (opening into the main hall), in which the monthly meetings of the society will be held, and in which its valuable library will be placed. The annual displays of the society will be held in the main hall. It is not yet decided when the formal opening of the hall will take place, but probably in the spring of 1867. The ladies of the society intend to hold a grand bazaar, for the sale of horticultural, floricultural, and fancy articles, on the 29th of May next; at which time the society will hold its spring, rose, and strawberry show and competition together, forming a fine horticultural display. The proceeds of this enterprise will be devoted to frescoing and otherwise decorating the hall.

LITERARY NOTICE.

THE BOOK OF ROSES. BY FRANCIS PARKMAN. Boston: J. E. Tilton & Co. 1866. Pp. 225. A new edition.

As there are certain books that no gentleman's library should be without, so there are certain flowers that his garden cannot dispense with; and chief of these, by common consent, is the rose.

Happily the office of a critic is here very simple indeed. We have only to name the book, and point out a few of its excellences, and then leave our readers to find the rest for themselves, -as they are sure to do.

Mr. Parkman divides his book into two parts, the first devoted to the laws, methods, and operations of rose-culture proper; the second to a classification of roses, a list of the best varieties, and the novelties of 1866, -a most judicious and sensible arrangement, and one which makes a pleasing contrast to the condition of some horticultural books it has been our fate to read.

The first chapter treats of planting, pruning, preparation of the soil, novel methods of growing fine plants, and of the enemies of the rose; and all these topics are discussed at length, and with much clearness and precision.

The second chapter is devoted to pot-culture, and to the somewhat neglected art of raising specimen plants. The third chapter gives instruction in propagation in all known ways; while various miscellaneous matters, including the production of new varieties, hybridizing, and the improvement of climbing roses, find space for ample consideration in chapter four.

"Raising seedling roses is a recreation of so much interest," says Mr. Parkman, "that few who once enter upon it ever abandon their pleasing task." We who plant our grape and strawberry seeds every fall, and watch the seedlings with undiminished interest from summer to summer, are very ready to believe him, and trust that his explicit directions will enlist a host of experimenters.

He who plants a seed of a grape or a rose, a verbena or a pear, buys a ticket in a lottery where single prizes are set off against myriads of blanks. Yet this very uncertainty, added to the extreme brilliancy of the prizes, lures on one amateur after another, until raising seedlings of some fruit or flower becomes, as at present, the fashionable mania in the horticultural world. One gentleman in this country is said to have thirty thousand seedling grape-vines under trial; and Mr. Parkman assures us that M. Laffay, an eminent French rose-cultivator, raised in one year ten times that number of rose-seedlings. If twenty or thirty good new roses resulted from this immense number of plants, the year's experiment must have been considered very successful.

The new roses of 1866, named and described in the Appendix, are fifty-six, if we have counted right; and must represent the product of nearly half a million seedling plants. Although there are countless distinct and splendid roses, there is yet room for more; and the amateur who produces a good climbing moss-rose will win for himself a most honorable name. Let every rose-grower raise a few seedlings, and keep in mind the words of the veteran Rivers: "These light gardening operations are not labor: they are a delightful amusement to a refined mind, and lead it to reflect on the wonderful infinities of Nature."

The second part of the book - that devoted to an elaborate classification of roses - sheds a flood of light upon what was once incomprehensible.

The author himself recognizes the formidable difficulties that stand in the way of a strictly scientific classification; but, in spite of these obstacles, — arising from the interminable series of hybrids that have been artificially produced, — he has given his readers a classification as far as possible removed from what he calls the equivocal and shadowy character of many of the nominal distinctions.

He explains the habits, mode of growth, and general character, of the varieties in each subdivision; and is careful to specify what kinds will, in our climate, repay the cultivator for his pains and care.

The remontant roses receive at the author's hands the attention they so well deserve and we are glad of this; for we know many a garden that is never made bright by a show of autumnal roses, although it has the old-fashioned kinds in abundance.

The best of these ever-blooming kinds, however, are getting more common every year; and in a little while these brilliant parvenus, as the author calls some of them, will be known everywhere, and meet with the recognition they merit.

It is not our purpose, nor indeed have we space, to go through Mr. Parkman's book seriatim, taking up and discussing each chapter by itself. We are obliged to speak of it in large and general terms. No foreign treatise, however excellent at home, can be of much use here; and the present work may be safely said to be the only book on this subject that fully meets our wants. It bears marks, of course, of elegant and refined scholarship, and is characterized throughout by such thoroughness, accuracy, precision, and command of the subject treated of, as fill us with renewed admiration of the varied accomplishments of its learned author. Nobody should buy roses next spring, or plant those he has bought this fall, without first making sure he is right by consulting Mr. Parkman.

In regard to the external appearance of the book, all we can say is, that the publishers have done their very best to make the outside worthy of the contents. Very few books intended for holiday gifts surpass this in luxuriousness of paper and type, or in the dainty fitness of the illustrations. The publishers may well regard it with pride; and while all amateurs will, of course, buy and read it, people who do not know a cabbage-rose from a cabbage can cheaply acquire a floricultural reputation among their friends by embellishing their parlor-tables with a copy of "The Book of Roses."

If such books as this are called for, they will be produced by some one or another; and the increasing demand for horticultural works is one of the pleasantest signs of the times.

The fact that somebody has time, in this busy land, to gratify his æsthetic sentiment by the cultivation of flowers, shows that we are not all absorbed in money-getting; and no happier answer to the common charge, that all Yankees are slaves of the almighty dollar, can be devised, than simply to hand to the calumniator this book, or one of Mr. Rand's.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS.

IN "Chronicles of a Town Garden," published last year in "The Florist and Pomologist," I read an account of Roman hyacinths as being very early springblooming bulbs, which forced finely, and produced elegant fragrant flowers.

Seeing the name in a Dutch catalogue, I procured some through a friend; but the bulb sent bore no resemblance to a common hyacinth. I have planted them, and am giving the usual treatment of hyacinths in earth.

Can you tell me what they are, the botanical name, and whether I am growing mine properly? A new Subscriber.

We sent your letter to Mr. Rand; who replies, The botanical name of the bulb commonly called Roman hyacinth is Bellevalia Romana, or operculata: it is also sometimes called Scilla Romana and Hyacinthus Romanus. The plants are distinguished from Muscari, some species of which they much resemble, by having their perianth divided half-way down into six folded lobes, expanding to form a prismatic bell. They differ from the true hyacinths by the perianth having an angular and not a circular section.

The bulbs are about the size of an English walnut, roundish-oblong, smooth, somewhat resembling those of the musk hyacinth: the flowers are blue, white, or pink tinged with green. They are natives of Southern Europe and Western Asia. B. Syriaca has orange and blue flowers. They would not prove hardy in New England, and require pot-culture like tender scillas, which they much resemble in flower. While pretty, they are not very ornamental; and I much doubt their being very early flowering. The blue is the most common, and is figured in Curtis's "Botanical Magazine,” tab. 939. Your treatment is right; but they will scarcely bloom before March.

S. R. S.-The leaf sent is a clear case of red spider, which is one of the worst of insect-pests. Moisture is sure death to them. Flour of sulphur dusted over the leaves tends to prevent their increase. In the March number of the Magazine, a long article will be devoted to this insect, and the best modes of destroying it.

I. W. B. Four best hardy rhododendrons, red, Atrosanguineum; pink, Delicatissimum; white, Catawbiense album; purplish, Everestianum.

Lawn Grass. We propose to begin in a future number a series of articles on lawn grasses, illustrated by figures drawn from Nature, and accompanied by descriptions, together with directions for sowing, proper soil, and culture.

Mrs. R. B. E., E. Bridgewater. - Carnations and picotees are hardy if a little care be taken. They should not be wintered in a wet place, or where they will be exposed to alternate freezing and thawing. As soon as the ground freezes, cover them loosely with dry leaves, and lay an evergreen bough upon them to prevent the leaves from blowing away. With this protection, they will generally survive. The best way, however, is to layer them in July; and in November to take up the layers, which will then be well rooted. Plant them in a frame made of common boards, about an inch apart. As soon as freezing weather comes, fill the frame with leaves, and put on a sash, covering it with a board. Let them thus remain until the first of April, when the board, sash, and leaves may be removed. The plants will be fresh and bright, will at once begin to grow, and may be transplanted to beds or the border about the middle of May. Care must be taken that mice do not make their winter-quarters in the frame.

Can standard pears budded last fall be transplanted the coming spring for the purpose of thinning rows of nursery-trees? Yes: though it will check their growth somewhat. The land should be well prepared and highly manured, and the trees transplanted early and with care, and they will do well. Should very much prefer to leave them where they are, at least one year, unless very near together.

Please answer which are the best twelve varieties of standard pears for cultivation in Massachusetts, for market, early and late.

Windsor, or Bell; August; poor in quality; sells well; bears moderately young; tree hardy. Clapp's favorite; September; large; handsome; bears young. Bartlett; September; bears young. Merriam; great bearer; bears young. Doyenné Boussock; great bearer; large and fair fruit. Louise Bonne de Jersey; bears young. Swan's Orange; bears young; fruit large; acid. Seckel; requires considerable age before bearing. Sheldon; fine quality; bears rather young. Urbaniste; tree long time coming to maturity; first-rate. Buerré d'Anjou there is no better variety, all things considered; bears young; October and November. Lawrence; winter; bears young; good.

We have received many questions, to which we have not space to reply in this number.

I HAVE lately made an address before an agricultural society, with the above title. As it proved quite interesting to a large concourse of ladies and gentlemen, I have thought that a little talk upon a similar subject would interest the readers of your new magazine; particularly the younger portion, who have not yet mastered the scientific fact, that dirt is dirt. What else it is, or appears to be, let us consider.

Here comes one of Flora's sweetest nymphs, holding in her hand one of those "regulation bouquets," which more resembles a carved and painted block than it does a collection of growing flowers.

But we will not stop to dispute the artist's taste, who prefers such an unnatural thing to a much more artistic, because more natural, bunch of flowers. Our present talk is upon another theme.

With what delight our little goddess Nymphalia exhibits to me her prize! "So sweet, so pure, so beautiful!" she says. Yes, it is; and thus should flowers always excite admiration. They do in all cultivated minds. So, also, they should excite inquiry of whence they come.

"Flowers?" I replied to the little lady's admiration, as she laid them

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