There are no peculiarities of culture to contend with, and the unusually dwarf habit of the plants specially fits them for comparative small beds and borders. One good way would be to fill a single bed with one or more decided colors, as is now done with the tuberous begonia, for the reason that these dahlias have flowers similar in size to those of the tall-growing single varieties, and bear them on stiff stalks well above the stems. A mass of the crimson variety would produce a rich glow of color infinitely finer than a mixture of undecided hues. We anticipate a high degree of popularity for these dwarf single or Tom Thumb dahlias, and there is a possibility of double varieties equally dwarf which would be also welcome. The great fault of the majority of dahlias already in cultivation is the tall habit of the plants, but here we have dwarfness, a profusion of finely formed flowers, and varied and attractive colors.--_The Gardeners' Magazine_. * * * * * SOME WINNEBAGO ARTS. In the Proceedings of the New York Academy of Sciences an abstract is given of a paper on the above, read by Dr. Frederick Starr: It is well known that a tribe may have peculiarities in speech, in manners, in arts, that distinguish it at once from its neighbors. The Haida carves slate as no other tribe does. The elegant blankets of mountain sheep wool from Chilcat are characteristic. The Hebrews tested the enemy with the word _shibboleth_, and found that he could only say _sibboleth_. A twist of the tongue in pronouncing a word is a small matter, but, small as it is, it may be perpetuated for ages. Such a perpetuation of a tribal peculiarity has been aptly called an ethnic survival. Some of the advanced linguists of the present day are beginning to query whether the group of modern languages of the Aryan family are not examples of such ethnic survival; whether the differences between French and Italian and Spanish, Latin, Greek and Slavonic, are not due to the difficulty various ancient tribes found in learning to speak the same new and foreign language. To draw an example of ethnic survival from another field of science, consider the art of the French cave men. The archaeologist finds in the caverns bones of various mammals, teeth of cave bear, and antlers of reindeer carved with animal figures. The art is _good_ for a barbarous people, but it is certainly barbarian art. The range of designs is quite great: horses, bears, mammoths, reindeer, are among the figures. The people who did this work were an artistic people. To carve and represent animal forms was almost a mania with them. An ethnic impulse seems to have driven them on to such work, just as a similar impulse drives the Haida slate carver to-day; just as a similar impulse has driven the Bushman to cover the walls of his caves in South Africa with pictures whose boldness and fidelity are the amazement of all who see them.