Under severe affliction I cannot make up this sheet as I wish. This day week my second son was brought home with his scull fractured. To-day intelligence has arrived to me of the death of my eldest son.
The necessity I have been under of submitting recently to a surgical operation on myself, with a long summer of sickness to every member of my family, and accumulated troubles of earlier origin, and of another nature, have prevented me too often from satisfying the wishes of readers, and the claims of Correspondents. I crave that they will be pleased to receive this, as a general apology, in lieu of particular notices, and in the stead of promises to effect what I can no longer hope to accomplish, and forbear to attempt.
W. Hone. December 12, 1827.
WINTER FLOWERS.
Chrysanthemum Indicum.
To the Editor.
Sir,—While the praises of our wild, native, simple flowers, the primrose, the violet, the blue bell, and daisy, as well as the blossoms of the hawthorn, wild rose, and honey-suckle, have been said and sung in many a pleasant bit of prose and verse in the pages of your extra-ordinary Every-Day Book, as connected with the lively descriptions given therein of many a rural sport and joyous pastime, enjoyed by our forefathers and foremothers of the “olden time,” particularly in that enlivening and mirth-inspiring month, sweet May; when both young and old feel a renovation of their health and spirits, and hail the return of sunshine, verdure, and flowers; permit me to call the attention of such of your readers as are fond of flowers (and there is no one, who has “music in his soul” and a taste for poetry, that is not) to that highly interesting plant, the Indian Chrysanthemum, which serves, by its gay blossoms, to cheer the gloom, and enliven the sadness of those dreary months, November and December.
Since the introduction of the Camellia and the Dahlia, I know of no plant that produces so striking an effect upon the sight as the Chrysanthemum. We have now about forty distinct varieties of it in the country, for the greater part of which we are indebted to the London Horticultural Society. Many of the flowers are much larger than the largest full-blown Provence rose, highly aromatic, and of extremely bright, vivid, and varied colours; as white, yellow, copper, red, and purple, of all the different gradations of tint, and several of those colours mixed and blended. Some very fine specimens of this flower have been exhibited at the society’s rooms and greenhouse. Nothing, in my opinion, could equal their beauty and splendour; not even the well-known collection of carnations and foreign picotées of my neighbour, Mr. Hogg, the florist.
This flower gives a very gay appearance to the conservatory and the greenhouse at this season of the year, when there is hardly another in blossom; and it may also be introduced into the parlour and drawing-room; for it flowers freely in small sized pots of forty-eight and thirty-two to the cast, requires no particular care, is not impatient of cold, and is easily propagated by dividing the roots, or by cuttings placed under a hand-glass in the months of May or June, which will bloom the following autumn, for it is prodigal of its flowers; the best method is to leave only one flowering stem in a pot.
The facility with which it is propagated will always make the price moderate, and render it attainable by any one; there is much dissimilarity in the form of the flowers, as well as in the formation of the petals—some flowers are only half spread, and have the appearance of tassels, while others are expanded fully, like the Chinese aster; some petals are quilled, some half quilled, some are flat and lanceolated, some crisped and curled, and others are in an imbricated form, decreasing in length towards the centre. There is also some variation in their time of flowering, some come much earlier than others.