FIRST-CLASS window flowers are not so easily found as may be supposed by those who have never had to look for them; but this coronilla is the very type of what a window-plant should be, not only in appearance, but in habit. It is evergreen, and almost always growing. It flowers twice in the year when thoroughly well managed. It may become a "patrician tree" or a "family heirloom." In other words, the same plant may be preserved for any number of years, and be handed down from generation to generation; and that is an important point in the character of a genuine window-plant.

The treatment of this useful plant is precisely the same as the so-called "genista," or "broom," that the gardeners know as Cytisus racemosus; but the coronilla is a trifle hardier, and will bear rough usage patiently; and it may be fairly said that whoever fails to keep it for some years, and to have at least one display of its flowers annually, either has very much to learn in the way' of plant-growing, or is wanting in genuine love for plants. There are many who say they "love flowers;" there are comparatively few who know what the expression should imply.

The glaucous coronilla, like the golden greenhouse broom, is a free-growing shrub that attains to considerable dimensions if encouraged to grow and kept from harm in the winter. Severe frost will certainly kill it, but a light frost will do it no harm; and it may be exposed to the weather with advantage certainly during about eight months of the year. To obtain young plants, cuttings may be struck at almost any time, but with the greatest certainty in the summer. Young shoots should be selected, as the hard wood does not serve the purpose. If dibbled into sandy soil and pressed firm, and covered with a bell-glass, they soon form roots, and may then be potted into small pots in any light loamy soil. When the small pots are filled with roots, the plants should be shifted into pots one size larger, and in these they should remain for the winter, and the proper place for them then is a light airy greenhouse.

These shrubs are very accommodating. They will thrive in peat or loam, but the soil should be substantial, and there should be about a sixth part of sand added, and there may be added also about a fourth or fifth part of rotten hotbed manure.

To make handsome specimens, they should be carefully pruned as soon as the flowering is over. This is intended to keep them in shape, and to prevent them becoming unreasonably large. But they will do as well without pruning as with it, and if the shape and size are satisfactory, and some increase of size may be allowed, it is simply waste of time and waste of growth to prune them. Why, except for some sufficient reason, destroy one scrap of any plant that nature has laboured through a whole year-perhaps through many years-to produce for you? However, having pruned them, turn them out of the pots, remove some of the old soil, and re-pot in clean pots of the same size, and do not disturb them again until they are growing freely. Then shift them into pots one size larger. Thus, before the growing season is over you will have promoted a free growth, and if this is well ripened by sunshine and fresh air, and a slight diminution of the water supply, a grand display of flowers will be seen in due time.

It was our good fortune to have for many years some fine plants of coronilla and cytisus. They had the most simple treatment; they were always in perfect health, and they flowered superbly. When they grew somewhat too freely, we kept them two years in the same pots, without any fresh soil. But the routine treatment consisted in turning them out of their pots in the month of April, and removing some of the old soil, and putting them back into the same pots, or into pots one size larger, and filling in with a mixture of equal parts of loam, leaf-mould, and rotten hotbed manure. They were in the open air, on beds of coal-ashes, all the summer, and they usually flowered in spring and in autumn, the spring bloom being the most abundant.

A coronilla is of necessity a garland flower or a flower dedicated to the glory of the rustic hero, with which he shall be crowned as with a crown of gold. In the comfortable country towns where window flowers are much better managed than in any of our great cities, the glaucous coronilla is called the seven-leaved crown; and there is a companion plant, equally prized with it, the C. valentina, which is called the nine-leaved crown. A somewhat common garden shrub in France, but not often seen in this country, is the scorpion senna (C. emerus), which flowers in April. This has been employed to furnish a dye that was at one time valued as a substitute for indigo. But vegetable dyes are at a discount, and even indigo may be superseded by coal-tar.