ants, and fill it with water.
The selection of suitable varieties for a small flower-garden is quite
important. We shall only mention a brief list. Those who would make this
more of a study, are recommended to study "_Breck's Book of Flowers_,"
which is quite as complete for American cultivators as anything we have.
The principal divisions are, bulbous flowering roots, flowering shrubs,
and flowering herbs--annual, biennial, and perennial--the first
blossoming and dying the year they are sown; the second blossoming and
dying the second year, without having blossomed the first; the last
blossoming, and the top dying down and coming up the next spring, for a
series of years.

_Bulbous Flowering Roots._--These need considerable sand in their soil.
They should be taken up after the foliage is all dead, and if they are
hardy, put the soil in good condition, and dry the bulbs and reset them,
and let them remain through the winter. They may need slight protection,
by spreading coarse straw, manure, or forest-leaves over them late in
the fall; but all the more tender bulbs do better kept in sand until
early spring. The best list with which we are acquainted, for a small
garden, is the following: the well-known lilies, the tulips, gladiolas,
hyacinths, Feraria tigrida, crocus, narcissus, and jonquils.

_Flowering Shrubs._--The following is a select small list: Roses, as
large a variety as you please, out of the hundreds known; flowering
almond, Indigo shrub, wahoo or fire-shrub, the mountain-ash, althea,
snowball, lilac, fringe-tree, snow-drop, double-flowering peach,
Siberian crab, the smoke-tree, or French tree, or Venitian sumach,
honeysuckle, double-flowering cherry.

The list of beautiful herbaceous flowers is very lengthy. We give only a
few of those most easily raised, and most showy; the list is designed
only to aid the inquiries of those who are unacquainted with them:
superb amaranth, tri-colored amaranth, China and German astors--the
latter are very beautiful--Canterbury bell, carnation pinks (great
variety), chrysanthemum (many varieties and splendid until very late in
autumn), morning glory or convolvulus, japonicas, Cupid's car, dahlias,
dwarf bush, morning bride or fading beauty, fox-glove, golden coreopsis
(we have raised a variety that proved biennial, which was superb all the
season), ice-plant, larkspur, passion-flower, peony, sweet pea, pinks,
sweet-williams, annual China pink, polyanthus (a great beauty),