Ten years ago while dining with a friend at Waverly, Maryland, one of his sons brought from the greenhouse a head of Verbena flowers, which in size exceeded anything that I had ever seen. Its color was a brilliant rosy pink, and the individual florets were an inch in diameter. I was informed that it was a new seedling just raised by Mr. John Garvin, a florist then living at Oxford, a suburb of Baltimore. I at once visited Mr. G., and made arrangements which resulted in the new seedling being sent out under the name of Beauty of Oxford. Mr. Peter Henderson, to whom I sent this variety in the fall of 1876, at once saw the possibility of making it the parent of a new race of giant Verbenas. His efforts in this direction have been remarkably successful of late years, and a few days ago, when visiting his establishment, he showed me a large house filled with the new strain of Mammoth Verbenas, all descended from our old Beauty of Oxford, through its remarkable descendant, America, which Mr. Henderson raised two years ago. If the new set of fourteen Mammoths which Mr. H. sends out this season equal Beauty of Oxford and America in size, with their great variety in color, it would seem that the limit in Verbena improvement has been reached.

I am sure your readers will thank me for calling attention to this remarkable improvement in an old favorite flower, which has been fast falling into disuse as a budder, but which will undoubtedly get a fresh popularity from these new sorts. Chestertown, Md.