PLANTS of the new world often lack interest through sheer meagreness of "associations," and the petunia is a trite ex-example of this. Its useful-ness as a garden flower rests on its beauty first, and next on the ease with which it may be adapted to a variety of circumstances for decorative effect. At page 110 of the First Series will be found some remarks upon the name and character of the plant, and we shall therefore now speak of its cultivation only.

The flower before us, which for convenience sake we name Petunia phoenicea, is a garden variety, therefore not to be regarded as typical for botanical purposes. Indeed, we can scarcely speak of it as a proper hybrid, but rather a cross, no one knows how many times removed, from P. violacea, P. nyetaginiflora, P. phoenicea, and others that have been bred from in gardens, and so often crossed that it is in vain to look for distinct specific characters in the named varieties that now find favour. The seed-growers select certain showy types, taking care to insure plants of good habit, and they allow them to seed in a wild sort of way, the bees being free to cross them as they will, and the customers who buy and grow the seed being equally free to select from their seedling plants such as they consider worth a better fate than to be disposed of as annuals, which are here to-day and gone to-morrow.

Garden petunias may be classed under three heads: unnamed seedlings of various colours, named single varieties, and named double varieties. The cheapest of all modes of obtaining a fine lot is to sow the seed thinly on a well-made sunny border about the middle of April. As soon as the plants are furnished with three or four leaves, those that are crowded should be drawn out and transplanted to a similarly favourable spot, but as many as possible should be allowed to remain to flower where sown. When they are in flower the best should be marked; and if it is desired to perpetuate them, cuttings should be struck in August, five or six together in five-inch pots in sandy loam, and in these pots they should remain, having the shelter of a frame or greenhouse during the winter months. Thus you will have secured for flowering a second time, and indeed for as many years thereafter as may suit your pleasure or convenience, the best of the kinds that were in the first instance produced from purchased seed.

Now, if you have in you the spirit of a florist you will regard this little lot of selected sorts as the traditional half-crown that the enterprising lad starts from home with when destined to marry his master's daughter and become Lord Mayor of London. The way to make your floral fortune is to plant them, let them run to seed, and thereby begin the world anew by means of seed of your own saving. You will sow, and grow, and select as before; and there is in truth no knowing to what glorious pitch of perfection you may eventually, by patience and skill, bring the petunia or any other flower that you may deal with in the same way.

We began on a cheap plan; but there is a better. It consists in buying plants of the best named varieties, and raising seeds from these, thus securing all that has been done by a thousand florists at the first start. But you are not bound to raise seedlings at all. If you want to have the best possible petunias for the least possible trouble, you have but to purchase the named sorts and grow them well, and there is an end of the matter.

To grow nice pot specimens of petunias is evidently not an easy matter, because we meet with very many at exhibitions that are not nice. The general fault consists in the growth being prolonged and rusty, suggesting to the critical observer that the plants have been crowded and far from the glass, and in some degree neglected as regards watering. The petunia is a very accommodating plant; it is very nearly hardy, and therefore should have plenty of air when growing freely. A light, rich, sandy soil should be employed in the growth of pot specimens, and the shoots should be pinched back in a slight degree in the early stages to promote a dwarf, bushy habit; and of course the training to neat stakes should proceed with every advance in the growth of the plants.

When kept under glass during the summer, the petunia soon becomes infested with green-fly, the only mode of removing which is to fumigate with tobacco smoke at night, when the plants are quite dry, and early the next day to give them a slight cleansing shower of clean water with the syringe. All plants that are nearly hardy will thrive better in frames than in greenhouses from May to October, as they can be fully exposed to light, air, and dew, and may be protected at any time from storm and frost.