slight interest in practical gardening, “I have a lily bed, but I scarcely ever get any lilies.”  Wild lilies are hardly worth the trouble of gathering, they are so thin and poor; it is interesting to find a plant so beautiful and precious in the garden growing wild in the woods, but beyond that the flowers themselves are worth but very little.  This at once tells us an evident fact about the lily of the valley, viz., that it does require cultivation.  It is not a thing to be left alone in a dark and dreary corner to take care of itself anyhow year after year.  People who treat it so deserve to be disappointed when in May they go to the lily bed and find plenty of leaves, but no flowers, or, if any, a few poor, weak attempts at producing blossoms, which ought to be so beautiful and fragrant.

One great advantage of this lovely spring flower is that it can be so readily and easily forced.  Gardeners in large places usually spend several pounds in the purchase of crowns and clumps of the lily of the valley, which they either import direct from foreign nurserymen or else procure from their own dealer in such things, who imports his lilies in large quantities from abroad.  But we may well ask, Have foreign gardeners found out some great secret in the cultivation of this plant?  Or is their climate more suitable for it?  Or their soil adapted to growing it and getting it into splendid condition for forcing?  It is impossible that the conditions for growing large and fine heads of this lily can be in any way better in Berlin or elsewhere than they are in our own land, unless greater heat in summer than we experience in England is necessary for ripening the growths in autumn.

There is another question certainly as to varieties; one variety may be superior to another, but surely if so it is only on the principle of the survival of the fittest, that is to say, by carefully working on the finest forms only and propagating from them, a strong and vigorous stock may be the result, and this stock may be dignified with a special name.  For my own part what I want is to have a great abundance of lily of the valley from February till the out-door season is over.  To do this with imported clumps would, of course, be most costly, and far beyond what any person ought to spend on mere flowers.  Though it must be remembered that it is an immense advantage to the parish priest to be able to take bright and sweet flowers to the bedside of the sick, or to gratify the weary spirit of a confirmed invalid, confined through all the lovely spring time to the narrow limits of a dull room, with the fragrant flowers of the lily of the valley.  I determined, therefore, that I would have an abundance of early lilies, and that they should not be costly, but simply produced at about the same expense as any other flowers, and I have been very successful in accomplishing this by very simple means.  First of all, it is necessary to have the means of forcing, that is to say the required