"OH! they look upward in every place And dear as a smile on an old friend's face Is the smile of the bright, bright flowers! But the children of showers and sunny beams Have lovelier tales than these The bright, bright flowers!" THE plant now figured is another beautiful hybrid, between Begonia Rex and B. splendida argentea. It was raised by Mr. R. Franklin, gardener to James Garth Marshall, Esq., of Headingley Hall, near Leeds, and named after Mr. Marshall. Mr. R. Fish, in the "Cottage Gardener," remarks that it is the finest of the numerous hybrids of the Rex breed he has yet seen, and that it may be ranked thus:-1.-Begonia Marshallii; 2.-B. grandis; 3.-B. Rex. The leaves are nine inches long and six inches broad. A very broad band of silvery hue occupies the greater part of the leaf. In the very centre there are some long radiations of bright green, amongst which the silvery part meanders them; on the margin there is an edging of bright crimson hairs, and next that a kind of vandyking of green runs in and out of the silvered part. The leaf-stems are one foot long, and covered thinly with long white hairs. B. Marshallii is propagated and grown in an exactly similar way to that of B. Rex already described, (page 17.) It is astonishing how nature sports in her productions, and to what a state of perfection the art of gardening in the hybridizer's department has arrived. Will not other species of |