second or third flower is expanded on: and after this period no time should be lost in layering.

If at all doubtful of your ability to understand the information given above, enlist the sympathy of some old hand, who will only be too happy to impart the information.

Early in September, the layers should be examined, and if found sufficiently rooted, cut through the remainder of the stem, where the incision was first made, give a good watering, and allow the young layers to remain a week or so after severance from the parent plant, and then pot into 4-inch pots, and treat as advised for the seedlings you réquire.

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In the next number, I shall enter into the cultivation of the named varieties which require to be grown in pots. When planted in the open ground they are very apt to run, ¿.e., the white ground colour changes to a red or dirty purple, and they deteriorate in quality. Such as are intending to cultivate this class of flowers will do well to take notes of any varieties that come under their personal observation, or look into lists of varieties staged at the principal Exhibitions, and they will then be ready to start for next season, as the young plants will not be obtainable until firstweek in October.-William Heale, Victoria and Paradise Nurseries, Upper Holloway, London.

FEEDING OF PLANTS.

HERE are two general modes of supplying plants with food. One may be termed the wholesale, and the other the retail. By the one method, enough is given at once to last for a season or more; by the other the food is provided piecemeal, a little at a time, as it is consumed. The former method is called manuring, the latter topdressing, and there are many ways and a variety of agencies employed in doing either or both. For instance, Nature manures and top-dresses as well as man, and all dead matter, liquid, solid, gaseous, is fit food for plants. Singularly enough, many people fancy that flowers need little or no food. They give them none, and are constantly stealing away from them all that was provided for their strengthening and enlargement by natural means. Thieving weeds are allowed to prowl about the flower larder, the strong roots to oppress and push out the weak, from the best and richest food. All decomposing vegetable substances are removed bodily by hungry rakes, or sharp-set fingers, and having done all possible to deprive the flowers of food, people affect to wonder greatly

that the plants refuse to grow strong. How can they? True, they have marvellous powers, but the creation of something-much out of nothing—is not of them. Plants cannot grow without food any more than ourselves. And we do not expect it of other plants, only of the flowers. All agree to feed their Cabbages, their Onions, Potatoes, Wheat, and Mangold. But Roses, Mignonette, Pelargoniums, Verbenas, Stocks they are too sweet to eat, and as for manure-faugh!—it would stain their purity, mar their delicate daintiness. This reminds us of a rustic beauty who thought herself too lovely to eat. But hunger soon broke through that phantasy, and she longed for a thick piece of bread and butter more than to see her own sweet face in the glass. It would be well if some of our flower-growing starvers could be made to change places for a time with the hungry plants. It would cure them of starving notions for all future time. It takes just as much food to grow the most beautiful flower as the largest Cauliflower-possibly more. Perhaps the beauty makes a special drain on the resources or strength of the plant. True, the colour, and the pencils that lay it

on, are of the sun, but the canvas is provided of the strength of the plant. No; flowers are free livers. They empty the rich filled larder of the earth with as much or more despatch than fruits or vegetables. Hence, if they are to grow fat and strong, and to continue growing, the importance of starting with a large larder well filled. But both size and furnishing are but too often neglected for the flowers; or, in other words, little care is taken to make the ground for them either deep or rich. The earth itself is a great storehouse of plant food: the larger the available area provided for the roots, the longer of being exhausted. This is now generally understood in the cultivation of fruit and vegetables, but too often ignored in the culture of flowers. Many are careful to provide a tilth, 4 feet deep, for Cabbages, that will allow flowers to starve, or pick up a scanty sustenance, on a root run of 4 inches. Is it any wonder that these plants starve in consequence? The food of the earth is quickly exhausted, and growth necessarily arrested. But the earth is too often poor, as well as shallow. There is little of it, and that little is less worth. A tilth, from 2 to 3 feet deep, ought to be prepared for flower culture-and this root run should be thoroughly furnished with suitable manure. By suitable, I mean partially decomposed, and what gardeners call sweet dung. A compost formed of one-half farm-yard manure, and one-half turfy maiden loam, free of weeds, laid up together for twelve months to mellow and sweeten, and turned over three or four times during that period, is the very best food for flowers: this applied at the rate of 50 tons per acre, will grow almost any garden flowers to perfection. Only a few flowers, such as Roses, like, or at least can appreciate their food in a fresh state. These can convert night-soil, or rank pig manure, into the sweetest cups of immense substance, and Grecian models of form. It seems impossible to over-feed Roses. They are the Kohl rabis (hear, hear) of floriculture; drawing in nourishing juices from all quarters, the richer the better they seem to like it, and always calling for more. But such rank food

would ruin most flowers-make them to overgrow their beauty, with rank wood and foliage. Partially decomposed food, on the contrary, imparts strength without grossness, and develops to the full the size, substance, and sweetness of the flowers. Sufficient earth properly stored with the right food is the foundation of success in flower culture. But supposing, as is often the case, the foundation has been badly laid, is there any other method of helping the flower? There is. Top-dressings add to, improve, enrich, strengthen, without radically renewing the substance or increasing the depth of the ground. The earth can be filled with good things, the flowers feed from above in several ways. Fresh earth of better quality may be laid over the roots. This is the simplest mode of topdressing. It adds to the depth of the ground, and thus enlarges the size of the larder. And again, manures or composts may be employed instead of mere earth. These feed the roots, enrich the whole area of the soil, and husband its moisture at one and the same time. More food may also be given in the shape of artificial manures, and sprinklings of concentrated meats doled out by measure, in nice accordance with the consuming power of the plants. Concentrated foods are not in safe eating condition. They must be first broken down for use, diluted by the solvent powers of water or disintegrating effects of earth and air. But the most speedy mode of providing food by top-dressing is to apply the latter in the form of rich soups and nourishing broths. Solids may be purposely dissolved in water, as the strength of beef is fused into beef-tea, and poured in solution over and through the whole mass of the roots, and the absorbent surface soil which they have exhausted. It will be strange, indeed, if the roots, and the earth. they inhabit, are not abundantly filled with good things, as the nourishing stream passes by; and the fact is well established by the success of the practice that the flowers feed abundantly on liquid manures. Then, in top-dressing, there are several obvious advantages in this mode of applying food. The fluid carries it to where

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and "hybridization." To many of Our readers they convey no idea whatever; we I will therefore explain the process.

It consists in cross-breeding one flower with another. It is only plants of the same family, that is, of the same genus of its different species, that will inter-breed with each other. This general law of Nature has been the test by which the gardener has frequently corrected the erroneous classification of the botanist. The selection of the parent plants for a cross requires some little taste and 'judgment; the amateur will learn by experience that the flowers selected should be as dissimilar as possible, and the female or seed-bearing plant should be chosen for its beauty of form, and the male for its brilliancy and distinctness of colour; and those which have the most prominent anthers should be selected. Divested of technicalities, the operation is exceedingly easy and simple.

Take a flower of a Gladiolus to commence with, as its stamens and anthers are so prominent. In its centre you will see a column termed the style, which expands on the top into three hollow and somewhat grooved fleshy-like substances, termed the stigmas. At the base of the style is the ovarium, or seed vessel; the style, stigmas, and ovarium form the pistil, or female organs of the plant. Surrounding the pistil you will find three upright bodies, termed anthers, each supported by a thread-like substance termed a filament; these filaments and anthers constitute the stamens, or male organs. With a flower in your hand, these explanations will be understood at a glance.

The flower from which it is intended to procure the hybridized seed should, as soon

entrance of bees or insects, for it is by their agency that the fertilizing process takes place. The flower must be watched closely, and before the anthers burst they must be carefully cut away. The other flower, the male parent of the cross, must also be watched, and as soon as its anthers have burst, and are covered with the flowery looking substance termed pollen, they must be cut off and placed on a saucer or plate, and kept until they are needed. Daily attention must then be paid to the stigmas of the female plant, and as soon as they appear to spread a little and become moist at the point, the pollen must be applied to them with a fine camel-hair pencil. After this process, termed impregnation, the muslin must still be kept closely tied over the flower until it fades. The pollen once gathered will retain its fertilizing power for some months; but the moisture on the stigma continues only a few days, and must be taken advantage of as soon as it appears.

The hybridized flower should be carefully tied up, all the other flowers from the stalk being removed, and the seed, when ripened, should be labelled with its parents' names.

We take the Gladiolus as an example, because with it the process can be so easily understood; but many other flowers can be hybridized. All our rarest Roses are the result of the careful manipulations of the florist-also the perfectly double Zinnias; the Camellia and rose-flower Balsams, and all the Tom Thumb varieties of flowers have been produced by means of hybridization.

We hope our readers will be tempted to try the process upon their pet flowers. The Pansies of the day are the result of this art, and it can be carried to a limitless extent.