We have here a sketch of a pretty plant belonging to the ginger family or Zingiberaceae, sent us by Mr. Wm. Bull. A fleshy-rooted perennial, with attractively variegated foliage, introduced from the East In. dies. From the succulent roots are annually produced a tuft of oblong-lanceolate deep green leaves, which are slightly undulated at the margin, and bordered by a broad and very conspicuous band of white. The purple and white flowers are peculiar in form, as often occurs in the Zingibera-ceous order.

Besides its great beauty as a plant for culture, it suggests some thoughts on the origin and nature of variegation - matters which have never been explained to our satisfaction. It has been said that the great object of color in flowers is to attract insects; but those of us who live among flowers know that insects visit flowers just as freely when there is neither color nor fragrance as when there is. The insignificant flower of Ampelopsis, without either of these attractions, is so great a favorite with bees that they almost crowd each other out to get at the sweets, while the particularly sweet flowers of the grape seem to have no more attraction than any ordinary flower. The pretty red and sweet flowers of the Rubus odoratus get a few visitors evidently for the pollen's sake, while the Black cap raspberries with hardly any perceptible smell, and greenish white flowers that scarcely look like blossoms at all, draw the whole strength of the hive to the feast spread for them.

And then we have color in leaves as well as in flowers. Color in bracts often long before the flowers are expanded, and they surely can have no special attraction for insects. The white in leaves is frequently merely the absence of green. It is really the absence of all color. In these cases we find a marked decrease in the health and vigor of the plant. In garden shrubs this is particularly apparent. The variegated Corchorus is not half the size of the common Corchorus, nor are the flowers as large, - but very often a branch will appear wholly green, and then we have branches and flowers of the ordinary size.

Kaempferia Gilbertii.

But when it comes to actual color, green usually prevailing, we find an increase of growth and vigor in many cases. Purple especially seems remarkably favorable to vegetative vigor. The Purple Beech, Purple Peach, Purple Hazel and similar plants, have larger leaves and a stronger growth than their green leaved parents, - and this is true of Dracaenas, and many other plants that we know as ornamental foliage plants.

Just the why of all this we don't know; yet we feel that the why is not beyond human perseverance. Every day we meet with problems like these, which if solved would be of vast practical benefit. We of the sere and yellow leaf of life, - full of zeal in behalf of problems we have already taken up, anxious that the fruit may ripen before our foliage falls, - can not undertake these things. But it may be a help to the young to point out how much there is to learn.