THE FLORAL WORLD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 87 



The separation of bulbs should be made in autumu, as fast as the 

 flower-stalks be^^in to get dry, as then the bulbs are perfect and ripe, 

 their maturity being complete, whilst, if you wait longer, in order to 

 make the separation of the whole crop at once, the stalks of certain 

 of the earliest varieties, as well as tliose of the first planting, will 

 fall and detach themseU^es from the bulbs, w^hich deprived of growth, 

 in continual contact with the humidity of soil, will quickly be de- 

 teriorated, and only produce unsound roots unfit for reproduction. 

 As soon as the separation is efiected, the bulbs should be placed in. a, 

 dry place, airy, without heat, upon shelves or in cases, not one i^pqii . 

 the other' and protected from frost, they will then keep well 



The flower-stalks, cut and plunged in water, go on flowering, the 

 buds opening easily in succession ; these blooms, surrounded with 

 eleo-ant foliage, such as tamarix, or asparagus leaves, etc., make fine 

 ornamentations for the drawing-room. 



bien:n^ial LiFTixa or miniatuiie pruit-teees. 



T would be well if all tliose who write fcr' gardening amateurs were 

 aware of the necessity there is forgiving the most minute instruction? 

 tiiat can be given for the performance of the different operations thej 

 recommend, especially those which are at all out of tlie practice of 

 ordinary workmen— by which I mean workmen as distinguished from, 

 what are really entitled to be called gardeners. Amateurs are often dependent 

 on such people, and have only the knowledge they have acquired by readino- to 

 help out and direct them, and are for that reason sometimes" ptizzled for a lontr time 

 to know how to execute with ease and expedition operations v,^hi oh appear to prac- 

 tical gardeners only possible to do in one way, and that the right one. It is indeed 

 so hard for those wlio have always seen things done as they ought to be, to imao-in^ 

 their being done otherwise, that it would be well, when writing for the press, to try 

 how a person ignorant of the subject would act according to their directions, so that' 

 they could add to or alter them accordmglj-. 



The occasion of the above observations is the folio winfij experierice of jnj own. 

 Having merely a good workman for a gardener — a man industrioiiS and liandy 

 with his spade — I had to depend on my own unassisted comprehension of Mr. 

 Eivers's directions for the biennial removal of fruit-trees, whose roots reouire more 

 careful treatment than is given to the thorn quicks, etc., to which my man vras 

 accustomed, and it was upwards of half-a-dozou seasons before I at last hit itpon a 

 tolerably easy and expeditious mode of carrying them out, in the case of full-sized 

 bushes and pyramids. As long as the trees were small, their removal, though 

 more tedious than it ought to have been, was tolerably easy ; but when, a couple o'S 

 seasons ago, I commenced operations on a number of strong bush apples on the 

 crab, four to five feet high, and so much through that they required a cii'cle of 

 roots two feet radius from the stem to be preserved, it was different. Bearing in 

 mind Mr. Eivers's directions for the rem.oval of pears and apples—" A trench should 

 be opened round the stem, the width of a spade, and from twelve to lifteen inches 

 deep ; the tree should then be raised with the ball of earth attached to its roots 

 intact;" and likewise those for root-pruning the pear — " A trench should be dug 

 round the t'-ee, about eighteen inches from its stem," etc. — by which I had hitherto 

 acted, as far as possible, on smaller trees, and got such a trench dug at two feet 

 distance from the stem of the tree, intending, of course, in this case, merely to get 

 up the roots v/ithout a ball, bat was not thereby helped in the least, as the spado 

 could not be got under the roots across the narrow trench. The next step was to 

 widen the trench to two spades in width, and from this, with the addition of forking 

 out the soil from the roots, the job was at last accomplished. 



Looking back, from where the tree was planted in another place, at the excava- 

 tion it came out of, and thinking of the time that had been taken up, I said to my 



