The art of breeding new flowers has glorious flukes. For
example, Senorita d'Alvarez was produced from the marriage of two seedlings that themselves never attained to the dignity of any name at all : 0 mater pulchra filia pulchrior I for she is very lovely with the habit rare in her sort of flowering again and again like " Mermaid." One of the most attractive
of recent roses is Chaplin's pink climber, a double pink, with a longer season and larger blossom than most climbers can boast. An old plant, indeed a native wild plant, that is now almost necessary in the' rough border is the Mullein. " Tall Mullein like a tower," wrote Lord de Tabley, that leading botanist among poets ; but there are mulleins to-day so branched as to resemble a shrub ; and in the older form the flowers grow twice as big, and break from a stem almost pure white. Verbascum vernale and Verbascum Gains- borough, are an example of each of these sorts.
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