A genus comprising over one hundred species of hardy biennial herbs or subshrubs. Some of them are exceedingly handsome, the stately spikes of brightly-colored flowers being very orna-niental, especially when grown among shrubs. They thrive in any soil, all that is necessary being, in early Spring, to sow the seeds, one-sixteenth of an inch deep, where wanted, and to thin the young plants to one foot apart when they are two or three inches high.