Christmas giving to the flower lover is a matter of delight, for if you stop to think you will know what the recipient will be sure to appreciate. Cut flowers always afford joy, from an inexpensive bunch of carnations to the choicest American Beauties. The Christmas blooming plants, however, last much longer, and the rich scarlet berries of the ardesia will survive the holiday season by several months. Poinsettia has been steadily increasing in popularity, and can be surrounded by ferns that will live on indefinitely. All the decorative foliage plants are sure to be welcomed, for with care they will last for years, and improve in size and beauty.

The growing fad for winter-blooming bulbs affords another opportunity for pleasing. If you did not start in time to grow to flower yourself, give your friend one of the new flat lily bowls, procurable from fifty cents up, and with it a collection of bulbs for succession of bloom. These may be started in any kind of dishes with pebbles and water, set in a cool, dark place until the roots start, and then brought out to the light as desired. With narcissi at three cents each, Chinese lilies at ten cents, and fine hyacinths up to twenty cents, for named varieties, a dollar's worth will keep her in flowers for the rest of the winter.

Pretty little stem holders, made in pottery leaves, mushrooms, frogs, etc., cost only from forty cents to fifty cents, and will be nice to use in the bowl afterward, for holding any kind of cut flowers. We are adopting more and more the Japanese method of displaying a few choice specimens artistically, and assuredly this way they do show up to better advantage. Many new vases are displayed for the purpose. A charming Japanese yellow glaze, ten in. high, with a brown wicker cover, I saw for only a dollar and a quarter, while the graceful Japanese yellow plum blossom shown with it at thirty-five cents a spray, was a delight to the eye. A slender ground glass vase in a plated cut silver holder was only twenty-five cents, while the Sheffield plate bud vase was but fifty cents. These could be duplicated in cut glass and sterling silver at almost any price one wished to pay.

Venetian glass is quite fashionable, and can be had in all colors—red, blue, green, yellow and black, and while expensive, has been imitated in domestic ware at reasonable prices. Some of the new pottery bowls come in unusual shapes, in white, gray, green, blue, and many are small enough for a single bulb. A lover of the narcissus myself, I am delighted with the idea of bringing out my paper whites one at a time, so as to keep a lovely gray-green piece in use all winter. One of my friends, on the other hand, is growing hers in groups of half-a-dozen, the warm brown of the bulbs harmonizing most artistically with her delicately colored stones in a brown wicker-covered Japanese glazed dish.

This brown Japanese wicker, by the way, is most decorative, and can be found in various kinds of baskets, metal-lined, for cut flowers or plants of that grow in water,—some as low as ten cents apiece. A tall-handled basket of this kind is now standing on my buffet, beautiful with the varigated trailing sprays of the Wandering Jew. One could not ask for a more satisfying arrangement.

Enamelled tinware, hand-painted, is new, too, and comes in many pottery shapes, though strange to say, often at higher prices. Hand-painted china butterflies, bees and birds, at from twenty-five cents to fifty cents, are among this year's novelties, and look very realistic when applied invisibly with a bit of putty to the edge of bowl or vase. Some of the birds are painted on wood, life-sized, and mounted on long sticks, to be stuck in among growing plants or on the tiny trellises used for indoor climbers.

Many novelties in growing things can be found at the florist's—from the cheapest up to all you feel like paying. A dainty new silver fern, big enough for a small table, comes in a thumb pot at only ten cents. Haworthia is cheap, too, and has the advantage of being uncommon. More and more do we see of the dwarf Japanese plants, many quite inexpensive. The Japanese cut leaf maple, for example, can be bought for seventy-five cents. All are hardy, and suitable for small table decorations.

The new "air plant," or "Wonder of the Orient" (really an autumn crocus), surprises every one not acquainted with it, as it flowers during the late fall and early winter, without either soil or water, as soon as put in the sunlight for a few days. Better still, when through blooming, it will live through the year if put in soil, and store up enough energy to repeat the performance when taken out next season. Costing a dollar each when first introduced here, it can now be bought as low as ten cents a bulb.

Japanese fern balls, black and unpromising as they look when purchased, respond to plenty of light, heat and water by sending out the daintiest kind of feathery ferns in a few weeks, and will last for several years. They cost only thirty-five cents, too. Quaint, square pottery jars, suspended in pairs by a cord over a little wheel, like buckets on a well rope, make unusual hanging baskets and can be filled with your favorite vines and flowers.

Garden tools are always acceptable as the old ones wear out or get lost, and you can choose from the three-prong pot claw at a nickel up to the fully equipped basket at several dollars. Handwoven cutting baskets, mounted on sharp sticks for sticking in the ground when you are cutting your posies, cost two dollars and a half, but will last for years. Small hand-painted, long-spouted watering cans, for window sprinkling, cost less than a dollar and look pretty when not in use. And for the person with only a window garden, the self-watering, metal-lined window boxes, that preclude dripping on the floor, will be a boon indeed.

Goldfish are pretty sure to please, for your flower lover is also the nature lover. Even the tiniest bowl is attractive, and one I saw recently had been in the house over two winters. The globe, however, does not meet our modern ideas for the reason that the curved glass reduces the area of water exposed to the air, so is bad for the fish. The new all-glass aquariums can be bought in either the square or cylindrical shapes, from a dollar and a quarter up, according to size and quality, while the golden inmates can be found from five cents, for the child's pet up to the fancier's Japanese prize-winner at one thousand dollars. Your aquarium will require no change of water, either, if properly balanced. Put in for the fishes' needs such oxygen-producing plants as milfoil, (Millefolium,) fish grass, (Cabomba,) common arrow head, (Sagittaria natans,) and mud plant, plantain, (Heteranthera Reniformis,) the first and third being especially good together. These in turn will thrive on the carbonic acid gas the fish exhale, so that one supports the other. A snail or two (the Japanese red, at twenty-five cents, preferred for looks,) and a newt will act as scavengers, and keep the water clear as crystal. For food, put in a small quantity of meat once a week, as the commercial "fish food" eventually causes tuberculosis.

Birds, too, are generally popular with flower lovers. Canaries probably are the stand-bys, though in the cities the uncommon little beauties often are preferred. Polly, however, holds her own, and with many people is the favorite.

Books,—always a safe and inexpensive gift,—are obtainable for the flower lover, in the most fascinating editions. They cover all phases of the subject, indoors and out, from the window garden to the vast estate, the amateur to the professional grower. And no true gardener could sit down by a blazing log on a blizzardy night, with Helena Rutherford Ely's "The Practical Flower Garden," or L. B. Holland's "The Garden Blue Book," filled with wonderful photographs and colored plates, without quickly becoming lost to the storm outside, and conscious only of sun-kissed lawns with blossoms nodding in the breeze. Heaven? Your friend will already be in imagination's Paradise, with an increasing sense of gratitude over your thoughtful selection.