As a pot plant too, the Nicotiana is exceedingly useful, the large sweet-scented white, soft pink, and rich red coloured flowers being very attractive.  A group of plants placed in the porch will, in the earlier and later hours of the day, as the door is opened, fill the house with their delightful perfume.  Seed may be sown from January to June, and a continuance of bloom may thus be secured during nearly nine months of the year.  Prick off the seedlings as soon as they are fit to handle, for if sown too thickly they are liable to damp off rapidly.  Gradually harden off if required for planting out in May or June.  In some places, more especially in the South of England, Tobacco seed sown on an open sunny border early in May will produce fine plants that will flower freely in August.

==Pansy==

==Viola tricolor.  Hardy perennial==

The popularity of this flower has been greatly extended and the culture simplified since it became the practice to raise the required number of plants every year from seed.  For all ordinary purposes the trouble of striking cuttings and keeping stocks in pots through the winter is mere waste of labour and pit-room.  The Pansy is a little fastidious, but not severely so.  It thrives in a cool climate, with partial shade in high summer, and in a rich, moist, sandy soil.  Notwithstanding all this, the Pansy will grow almost anywhere and anyhow; but as fine flowers of this old favourite are highly prized, the plant should be treated with reasonable care to do justice to its great merits.

A thick sowing is very liable to damp off:  therefore sow thinly, either in pots or boxes, in February and March.  The thin sowing, moreover, renders it possible to take out the forward plants without disturbing the remainder.  In due course transplant into pans or boxes of good soil, and place in some cool spot where the plants may gradually harden off.  When they have become stocky, remove to beds or borders, with balls of earth attached to the roots.  Should the surrounding soil become set by heavy rain or by watering, a slight stirring of the surface will prove beneficial.

Seed sown in the open ground during the summer months will readily germinate, and the seedlings need no attention beyond thinning to about six inches apart until they are ready for transferring to their proper positions, where they will produce a mass of bloom in the following spring.

The Pansy puts forth its buds very early in the year.  Whether they are particularly tasty, or the scarcity of young vegetable growth gives them undue prominence, we know not, but certain it is that sparrows show a marked partiality for them.  And having once acquired a taste for the buds, these impudent marauders will not leave them alone; they evidently regard Pansies as the perfection of a winter salad.  Their depredations can be prevented by an application of water flavoured with quassia or paraffin oil, which must be repeated after rain.