BY the ridiculous title Primula vulgaris var. you are to understand that the plant before you is a garden variety of the common yellow primrose. That being settled, we hereby record that the variety figured is in some gardens labelled "Alfred Dumesnil;" and assuredly it deserves a label. Primroses, single and double, are the most familiar of garden flowers, but they are coy beauties, and require coaxing. The happy appearance of the primroses in gardens will suggest to the uninitiated that it is a most easy matter to manage them. Well, so it is, when the conditions are favourable, for, in fact, they manage their own affairs with the most perfect success imaginable. But they are, we repeat, coy beauties, and one reason why you see them looking happy in gardens is that when they are unhappy they shuffle off their mortal coil very quickly, and are thereafter not seen at all.

There are fully thirty garden varieties of primroses worth growing, comprising single and so double flowers of all colours except true blue. They are all beautiful, but the double white, double lilac, and double red are exquisitely lovely, and worth any amount of trouble to insure a free growth and a perfect bloom. But observe, further, that they require a deep moist loamy soil, a partially-shaded situation, and to be often looked at, or they will not thrive. It must be remembered, also, that these flowers require a comparatively pure air. They are not town flowers, and therefore in a town garden one rosy pyrethrum is worth fifty primroses, whether single or double. But not a poor soil, not a smoky atmosphere, not a full blaze of summer sun is so decidedly deadly to these plants as dryness at the root. A dry soil is fatal to them and therefore when there is any doubt about their doing well, be careful to water them freely all through the summer season. As remarked before, they require a deep moist loamy soil, but they will thrive in clay, sand, or peat, if in the original arrangements it is kept in mind that a free rooting ground and constant moisture are essential. If you propose to grow these plants on poor sand or stubborn clay, you have but to dig deep, break up the staple well and mix with it a liberal allowance of fat manure, and the rest is easy. They must have food, they like shade and moisture, and when quite happy in their circumstances they grow "like weeds."

The multiplication of the choicer kinds of primroses is effected by division, and the months of May and June are the most suitable for the operation, because there is a long growing season before the plants to enable them to become established before they are called upon to make a show of flowers. But there is great danger of the destruction of the stock when inexperienced cultivators divide their plants in summer, and our advice to all such is to leave them undisturbed until they become large thriving clumps, and then to divide them in the month of August. In the meantime give them liberal supplies of water in dry weather, and if the soil is known to be somewhat poor, give weak liquid manure once a week all through the growing season. Be not alarmed at the fast growth of the leaves, for in proportion to the leaf-growth in summer will be the splendour of the flowers in the succeeding spring. All the hardy primula vulgaris in all its forms is a border flower if need be, though best at home in the shady parts of a half-wild garden where foxgloves, and large-leaved saxifrages, and Solomon's seal, and day lilies are at home, with perhaps glorious tufts of male fern and lady fern, and royal Osmund, and the most delicious Equisetum sylvaticum.

The primrose was always dear to the sentimental, and has been well cared for by the poets. Well indeed is its advent described in Kirke White's poem beginning--

"Wild offspring of a dark and sullen sire!

Whose modest form, so delicately fine,

Was nursed in whirling storms

And cradled in the winds."

Then there is Mrs. Hemans's poem, of which this is the first stanza:--

"I saw it in my evening walk--

A little lonely flower;

Under a hollow bank it grew,

Deep in a mossy bower."

Clare's cheerful lines begin with a welcome that touches the heart of every reader--

"Welcome, pale primrose! starting up between

Dead matted leaves of ash and oak, that strew

The lawn, the wood, and spinney through,

Mid creeping moss, and ivy's darker green."

And, to give one more quotation, there are Herrick's lovely lines to primroses filled with morning dew--

"Why do you weep? Can tears

Speak grief in you

Who were but born

Just as the modest morn