10 THE FLORAL WORLD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 



other places where there is anything in the nature of a collection, is 

 to plant them out in April, and leave them to grow as thej please. 

 In August take small cuttings of all the sorts you have, put these 

 cuttings in threes or fours together in GO-sized pots, in soil consisting 

 of two parts sand and grit and one part loam. Keep them through 

 the winter in a frame or greenhouse. Do not attempt to save any 

 of the old plants on the rockery ; let them take their risk. Many 

 of them will survive the winter, but some are sure to perish. Make 

 good those that perish by planting from your young stock. Wher- 

 ever and however mesembryanthemums'are grown, the plants should 

 be renewed annually. 



Space cannot be afforded for any further particulars of this 

 structure. It will be observed that in the foregoing lists hundreds 

 of plants that mirjlit be suitable for a rockery have had no mention. 

 I have sought only to enumerate such as have been grown on the 

 rockery figured, and there are many fine plants that I should object 

 to introduce to such scenes, because of some stiffness of habit, or 

 perhaps excessive showiness or coarseness of appearance, and so 

 forth. It must never be forgotten that, amongst rocks and roots, 

 there will always be abundance of vermin, and many fine plants are 

 certain to be destroyed by them. We must therefore be guided in 

 making selections by the relative degree of esteem in which the 

 plants are held by slugs, snails, and woodlice, as by ourselves. 

 Vigilant hunting of vermin is an essential part of the management 

 of such constructions, but it is well also to give first preference to 

 plants that common garden vermin do not care much about. 



S. H. 



THE AURICULA. 



BY JOHN WALSH. 



CHArxEE I. — Constitution, Soil, and General Teeatment. 



EEJOICE to hear, on the best possible authority, that 

 the taste for hardy plants is fast reviving, and that 

 there is setting in a healthy reaction against the extra- 

 vagant and tawdry taste of the past fifteen or twenty 

 years. We shall be able to guess without difiiculty to 

 whom we are indebted for the direction of the public mind into 

 more healthy channels than it has been moving in while engaged in 

 horticultural recreations, but it is enough for us at present to help 

 on the movement, and by all the means in our power contribute to 

 the substitution of real beauty for mere show, of real interest of an 

 abiding kind for the very superficial entertainment with which the 

 age has been content in the domain of floriculture. I may hope that 

 in 1867 an essay on the Auricula will pieet with more attention 

 than it would have done in 1857, for then the bedding mania was at 

 its height, and the first appearance of the Elokal World appears 

 to have been attended with a brilliant success, chiefly because its 



