the following Japanese varieties are of special beauty, among the single
pinks: Queen of Holland, pure white; Eastern Queen, enormous rose-pink
flowers, Crimson Belle, dark red. Among the double, Fireball, an intense
scarlet; the Diadem pink, Salmon Queen, and the lovely Oriental Beauty
with diversely marked petals of a crepy texture.

The double varieties of course are more solid and lasting, if they do
not insist upon swelling so mightily that they burst the calyx and so
have a dishevelled and one sided look; but for intrinsic beauty of
colour and marking the single Chinese and Japanese pinks, particularly
the latter, reign supreme. They have a quality of holding one akin to
that of the human eye and possess much of the power of individual
expression that belongs to pansies and single violets.

By careful management and close clipping of withered flowers, a bed of
these pinks may be had in bloom from June until December, the first
flowers coming from the autumn-sown plants, which may be replaced in
August by those sown in the seed bed in late May, which by this time
will be well budded.

"August is a kittle time for transplanting border things," I hear you
say. To be sure; but with your water-barrel, the long-necked water-pots,
and a judicious use of inverted flower-pots between ten A.M.
and four P.M., there is no such word as fail in this as in many
other cases.

[Illustration: SINGLE AND DOUBLE PINKS.]

Upon the second and third classes you must depend for pinks of the
taller growth ranging from one to two feet in height and flourishing
long-stemmed clusters of deliciously clove-scented flowers. The hardy
Margarets might be wintered in the pit, if it were worth the while, but
they are so easily raised from seed, and so prone literally to bloom
themselves to death in the three months between midsummer and hard
frost, that I prefer to sow them each year in late March and April and
plant them out in May, as soon as their real leaves appear, and pull
them up at the general autumnal garden clearance. Upon the highly
scented perpetual and picotee pinks or carnations (make your own choice
of terms) you must depend for fragrance between the going of the May
pinks and the coming of the Margarets; not that they of necessity cease
blooming when their more easily perfected sisters begin; quite the
contrary, for the necessity of lifting them in the winter gives them a
spring set-back that they do not have in England, wher