THE light of other days is faded, and the blue salvia is no longer in high renown as a wonder amongst bedding plants. It has filled as many pages of print as the crimson flax, but now the horticultural writers have nothing to say about it, and appear, indeed, to have forgotten its gay existence. It might have been famous to this day if it could but have stooped to conquer, but it was always too tall for its place, and carried its colours carelessly, as if seeking the bubble reputation were a pastime for such meaner ones as without seeking would never outwin reputation at all. But we must be wise about it, and endeavour to earn our wages.

The blue salvia is a tall-growing, loosely-branched, untidy plant that may be grown equally well in the green house or the stove. For summer bloom the greenhouse suffices, and during the warmer portions of the summer the plant will, if properly managed, flower freely in the open air. If winter flowers are required, the plant must be in the stove, where, if fairly dealt with, it will rise to a height of ten or twelve feet, and make a very delightful display of its intensely blue flowers, in which the blue of the delphinium--the rarest colour in nature, save in the vast firmament above--is developed in power and purity.

Salria patens may be raised from seed with ease and certainty. If it is sown in sandy soil in shallow pans and boxes early in February, and placed in the stove or on common hotbed, the plants may be grown to a sufficient size to make a good display in the flower garden the same season. It will be necessary to pot them into small pots, and keep them in a warm pit or greenhouse until the middle of May, when they should be transferred to a cold frame, and have more and more air by degrees, but with very great care in the first instance, the object of this treatment being to render them hardy enough to bear full exposure before they are finally planted out. The bed should be in a sunny situation, well drained, and the soil somewhat sandy. To plant them out before the first week of June would be unwise. But as soon after that time as possible they should be consigned to their blooming quarters, and should be at a distance apart of not less than nine to twelve inches.

The plants can be kept from year to year by lifting the roots after the tops have been cut down by frost, and storing them in sand during the winter. Early in the spring these roots should be planted in boxes or pans filled with light soil, and be placed in a moderate heat to start them into growth. They will soon produce young shoots, which, when two or three inches in length, may be taken off as cuttings, and will soon strike in a temperature of 70 degree. This practice may be varied by lifting and potting the plants before the frost has defaced them, in which case they must be wintered in a warm greenhouse or the cool end of the stove, and have but moderate supplies of water until they begin to grow freely in the spring. At the time of potting, superfluous shoots may be removed and struck, but the autumn is an inconvenient season for propagating this salvia.

The crimson salvia (S. splendens) and the small S. coccinea are about equally well adapted for bedding as S. patens, but they are all so diffuse in habit that to employ them to advantage requires more than ordinary taste and judgment. S. coccinea answers admirably to grow from seed as an annual, as when so managed, it does not grow much more than a foot high, and it blooms freely from July to October.

For the greenhouse and conservatory the following species of salvia may be especially recommended:--The narrow-leaved (S. angustifolia), flowers blue, appearing in May; the light blue (S. azurea), flowering from August to October; the searlet (S. fulgens), a fine plant, producing a grand show of scarlet flowers in August; the white patens (S. patens alba), a variety of the plant represented in the plate. It is useful as a greenhouse plant, but is scarcely effective as a bedder.

A remarkably fine group of salvias has been lately brought into public notice by Mr. H. Cannell, of Swanley. We recently received grand spikes of bloom of three of these, and therefore can speak of them as flowering well in the autumn. Salvia Pitcheri produces a profusion of flowers of the most pure and brilliant blue, and will flower all the winter in the conservatory. S. Betheli has brilliant scarlet flowers; S. splendens Bruanti also has scarlet flowers; S. Hoveyi has flowers of an exquisite tone of violet or satiny purple. These four may be considered the most useful of all the salvias in cultivation.

A few other kinds deserve mention. S. tricolor is a sweet little gem, with white tube and mouth, and the upper lip purple, the lower lip scarlet--a bit of Nature's fancy work in painting that appears intended to mock the human painters of flowers. Thirty years ago we used to see in the gardens two curious salvias, named respectively S. bracteata and S. horminum, which are remarkable because their conspicuous features are their coloured bracts, the flowers of both being blue.