THE FLORAL WORLD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 293 



over it. During winter, if it happens to be very severe, some of 

 the plants suffer, and in the spring require pruning. Cut off 

 the shoots to about four inches from the ground, and let the bark 

 or other covering be taken away, and some well-rotted hotbed dung 

 just pointed in, or spread over the surface, and hid by a slight 

 covering of soil. Those plants which have not received much injury 

 only require their side shoots to be cut back to about two inches 

 from the main stem. Trained up, and treated in other respects as 

 above described, the plants have a most beautiful effect. I have 

 some plants in sheltered, warm situations, which have grown from 

 seven to eight feet high in one season. During the last summer 

 they were a complete mass of bloom, and nothing could exceed their 

 pleasing appearance. The following sorts are what I have culti- 

 vated in the mauuer mentioned above : — F. gracilis, F. tenella, F. 

 virgata, F. conica, F. coccinea, F. thymifolia, and F. micropliylla." 



These directions so completely embody my own way of treating 

 them, that no cultural directions from me are necessary, and I am 

 sure that the cultivator will receive ample compensation in attending 

 to their simple wants ; and I trust that the remarks on these really 

 fine old subjects will bo the means of obtaining for them a larger 

 amount of justice than is at present accorded them. 



THE CULTUKE OE THE CACTUS. 



BT. WILLIAM ROBINSON, F.L.S., 

 Author of '' The Parks, Promenades, and Gardens of Paris." 



|HE extensive culture of Cacti in private gardens tends 

 to a very unsatisfactory kind of monotony, but there 

 are plants to be found in the various sections, which, 

 for singular beauty when out of ilower, and for the 

 most brilliant of colours when in that state, are not 

 only not surpassed, but not equalled, by any plants in the country. 

 It may be that even Cactus-loving readers may doubt this, but 

 they would not if they once saw some of the species that Sigma 

 enumerates in bud or in flower, or even after their remaining some 

 months in the warm frame. I have seen the Cacti in every botanic 

 garden in the United Kingdom, and many choice private collections, 

 particularly the famous one of the late Mr. Borrer at Henfield, and 

 the yet more rich and extensive one of Mr. Wilson Saunders at 

 Reigate ; but for my first glimmer of pure light in Cactus culture I 

 am indebted to my genial Cactus-loving and Cactus-purveying 

 friend M. Pffersdorf, of Kensal New Town, who supplies Covent 

 Garden and London generally with those liliputian, but healthy, 

 fairy little Cactuses, Mammillarias, Echeverias, and the like, that 

 may be seen in thimble-pots in numerous London windows. And 

 not only London, but Paris, where he has a succulent growing 

 establishment, and formerly Vieuna, where he first began, and from 



