294 THE FLOEAL WORLD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 



which he afterwards migrated to Paris and Loudon. One would 

 think that our great botanic gardens, in which they have grown 

 Cacti for ages, would exhibit them in a better state than other 

 growers ; and some of them do indeed preserve them in a fine state, 

 notably Kew and Oxford — the Oxford collection being in fine 

 health from being kept much warmer and brighter than is usual, 

 and containing many rare kinds ; the collection at Kew being 

 beyond all comparison grand, as well for its general effect in the 

 great succulent house, as for its interest of detail and richness of 

 rare and valuable species. But the Kew Mammillarias, etc., though 

 fat and fresh-looking, are poor enough when compared to those 

 grown on the plan that Sigma recommends, in the Ploral AVorld 

 of September, 1861, and which M. Pftersdorf has for yeara practised. 

 In taking me round his little densely-packed Cactus garden, he 

 opened some frames— dung-frames — and immediately ray eyes were 

 expanded more than is their wont by the sight of hundreds of 

 Mammillarias, and the neater and dwarfer Cacti, positively glisten- 

 ing with health, the green beneath the spines looking as polished 

 as the Portugal and common laurels do in the mild and moist parts 

 of the south alter an autumnal shower. And the spines, how 

 determined they looked, and how fiercely hooked at the top in many 

 instances, quite unlike the flabby, starved Cactuses so often seen. 

 They were all sitting plunged in loose, fine, and comparatively dry 

 material. I think it was sawdust and leaf-mould mixed, and finely 

 sifted, and underneath a brisk hotbed, the plants being placed near 

 the glass, and when once started fairly into growth never shaded. 

 It needed not one word to convince me — I saw it all at a glance — 

 that the plants in those warm and sunny frames enjoyed the very 

 conditions that suited them to perfection. Even then I had no 

 conception how beautifully Mammillarias grown in this way could 

 flower, but having obtained a selection by way of exchange from 

 M. Pftersdorf, they all flowered the following summer, and beauti- 

 fully too. As ornamental plants, not only when in flower, but 

 when coming into it for weeks, when the crimson flower-buds, 

 arranged in a perfect circle or corona round the head of the plant, 

 are emerging their vivid points through the white or grey spines, 

 the effect is charming, and some of the best kinds are well worth 

 propagating, to the extent of a dozen or two, for the sake of placing 

 a ring of specimens coming into flower together around a low wide 

 vase of some choice group of plants. 



Now these plants when they are grown are generally kept in 

 the cool greenhouse, where they rarely have light and sun enough, 

 and consequently, never making good roots and growth in summer, 

 live over the winter in a struggling state — the cultivator saying they 

 are at rest when they are in the throes of death, and going off rotten 

 now and then " from too much water," though they rarely get half 

 enough of that requisite. There is hardly a garden but possesses 

 means of doing them much better than this, even if taking the 

 trouble of making a special small hotbed for them is out of the 

 question. By taking the stock out of the greenhouse in the begin- 

 ning of June or end of May— or, indeed, at present will not be too 



