310 THE PLOKAL WOKLD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 



growing is always the same, and it would be waste of space to 

 multiply particulars. It must be borne in mind that a certain degree 

 of moisture and warmth are essential, that light is not essential, but 

 they may be grown in full daylight as well as in the dark, but I 

 prefer the dark because an opaque roof is warmer than a glass one, 

 and in winter we must husband warmth, or be at the expense of 

 heating apparatus. As for mushroom houses I have nothing to say, 

 it is a subject for master gardeners in wealthy establishments ; we 

 plain market folks manage to get some tolerably good produce by 

 means of very rough and inexpensive appliances. If we had to 

 grow mushrooms all winter in such houses as I have seen in noble- 

 men's gardens, we could not send them to Covent Garden to be sold 

 at the cheaji rate at which the London public are supplied. It is 

 not the costly tool that makes the clever workman, or the prettiest 

 piebald or cream-coloured horse that wins the race. 



T. B. 



SEDUM rABARIUM. 



[HIS plant was figured and described in the Floeal 

 "Would of ^November, 18G3. I name it again in order 

 to add to what has been said in its praise. It has been." 

 increased year after year since it was first introduced to 

 public notice by Messrs. Carter and Co., and I have at 

 the present time a very large stock of it. The plants are all in six- 

 inch pots ; they stand out all the winter, plunged in cocoa-nut fibre ; 

 some time in April or May they are parted, and the partings potted 

 in light loamy soil (almost any soil will do for it), and they are 

 again plunged. If the parting does not produce enough plants, a 

 quantity of cuttings are put in pots, and kept in a frame till rooted, 

 and are then potted separately in four-inch pots ; they will not 

 properly occupy six-inch pots the first season. About the first of 

 September, the great flower-heads begin to show a little colour ; 

 they are then taken to the forecourt, and made use of to fill a bed, 

 being plunged in cocoa-nut fibre, and they continue fresh and 

 beautiful till the middle of October. During the wretched weather 

 of the past month this plant has been invaluable. The cold, 

 drenching rains ruined fuchsias and geraniums, and even the plunged 

 gladioli did not keep their looks as long as they would have done 

 with better weather. Had I not possessed a good stock of this 

 sedum, I must have put up with a mass of dilapidated plants, with 

 specks of colour here and there, for there was nothing else in the 

 place fit for embellishment except this. Instead of dirty clumps 

 and borders, however, my display has been fresh and bright ; the 

 great heads of pale pink flowers of Sedum Fabarium and its peculiar 

 glaucous leaves having, under very trying circumstances, secured a 

 continued triumph for the " plunging system " ! For any other 

 system it is, perhaps, scarcely so valuable. Yet it is not unreason- 

 able to suppose thatj in many places where the principal flower-beds 



