18 THE ELOKAL WORLD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 



site— and we could toss the plants on to the muck-heap, and say 

 good-bye to them for a season. But we always had a few that did 

 not flower, and those few we kept secret, for fear they might prove 

 that we were muffs after all ; and those few went to the same igno- 

 minious rest as the rest, or as the remainder ; they all slept together, 

 and rotted like mortal things, earth to earth, dust to dust. Mr. 

 Salisbury told, in the " Horticultural Transactions," how to grow 

 them in the open air — that is to say, how to flower them in borders ; 

 but I never could do it, and never met with the human creature 

 that could. Probably Mephistopheles, a particular friend of our 

 excellent contributor Karl Prosper, could do it. Well, iu due time, 

 I discovered that the ladies (speaking collectively when a few only 

 of that angelic assembly are referred to) were in perpetual trouble 

 about tuberoses. Letters used to arrive in batches every mouth, in 

 which the lovely and loveable writers complained that though their 

 tuberoses grew freely, they would not flower. These I always 

 answered (see Ploral Would passim) to the effect that " a good 

 start in heat was the royal road to success," and always thought 

 thereby I had done the honest and the clever thing. Yet I felt that 

 there was a problem to be solved, and a conversation at Barr and 

 Sugden's brought it all fresh before me ; and I selected samples of 

 the several qualities of tuberose bulbs, to make a trial of them 

 without the aid of heat. They were for some time forgotten, but I 

 stumbled upon the parcel one day, and had them potted in batches 

 with labels to every pot, all of them in threes in 32-size, in a mixture 

 of equal parts rich loam, leaf-soil, and a half part silver-sand. They 

 were potted in the first week of April ; the stuff just moist enough 

 to be handled comfortably ; not a drop of water given, and they were 

 placed on the floor of a cool house. There they remained about six 

 weeks, nearly dry, though occasionally watered to prevent them 

 becoming dust-dry. At the expiration of the six weeks, or, say 

 about the third week of May, signs of growth were evinced iu a 

 greening of the points of the bulbs, and as the sun was then smiling 

 I had them placed on a top shelf, that the pots might be warmed to 

 give the roots a start. Twice a week they had water, but they were 

 still rather dry, owing to the light nature of the soil and the careful 

 manner in which the pots had been crocked. By the middle of June 

 they were growing freely, and the suckers had the best of it for a 

 time, though eventually the crowns in all cases gained the supremacy, 

 and the leaves of the suckers served as surfacing. As they advanced, 

 the supplies of water were increased, and by the middle of August 

 they were in a luxurious condition of leafage, and one of the secrets 

 of their biology began to explain itself. All the extra selected bulbs 

 were showing flower-spikes, and the flowers could be felt by the finger 

 and thumb as the riding stem came out of the central crown. Thus 

 they went on, the selected throwing up more and more spikes, but 

 the others — all of them — refusing to act so politely, grovelling still 

 in the unlovely state of flaccid leaves of a light grassy-green. We 

 gave them more and more water, and had at last to take them off 

 the shelf because of their growth, which was hampered for want of 

 room ; and they were stood on inverted pots in the border of the 



