20^ THE FLORAL WORLD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 



they really prosper. To do tliem justice, they should be in a cool, 

 shady, moist peat-bed ; or, if in pots, should be potted in lumpy 

 peat with which a goodly proportion of siliceous grit has been 

 mingled, and should be kept in a damp shady pit all the summer, 

 or in a moist border under trees. Our Skimmias are all in pots, 

 being kept solely for furnishing the borders in the winter by the 

 plunging system. They now stand on a bed of earth under the 

 shade of a leafy beech-tree, and have a most luxuriant appearance, 

 their berries being now about the size of cherry-stones. In the 

 spring of the present year, we found a few in our stock that were in 

 poor condition, apparently unwilling to fruit and unable to grow. 

 They were left alone till the middle of April, when they began to 

 make feeble attempts to push new shoots. They were then taken 

 out of their pots, and all the old soil was shaken off them, and they 

 were repotted in good lumpy peat, with an admixture of the sharp 

 sand resulting from siftings of the sweepings of gravel-walks. When 

 potted, they were placed on a moist bed in the most shady part of a 

 fern-house. They are now in a state of luxuriant growth, having 

 put forth shoots from all parts of the old wood as well as from the 

 terminal points of the branches. They will now be placed with the 

 others under the beech-tree to harden, and no doubt they will next 

 year have a good crop of berries. In any other soil than turfy 

 peat, and in any other than a damp, shady position, the growth of 

 the Skimmia will be more or less unsatisfactory. S. H. 



EQUISETIJMS. 



[,HEEE is a rather troublesome weed, of very elegant 

 structure and curious history, met with in undrained 

 clay and loamy soils ; it is of a pale green colour, 

 and consists of a tough and rather decumbent stem, 

 surrounded with whorls of thread-like branches, its 

 true leaves, if it has any, being in the form of minute scales, placed 

 around points or rings which occur at regular intervals on the stems. 

 The plant is known to country people as the " horse-tail" or 

 " mare's-tail," and in botany is called Uquisetmn arvense, the field 

 Equisetum. Though a troublesome weed, and one that is detested 

 where it grows plentifully, it is well worth a place in the fernery, 

 and when planted in a shady bank of peat, it spreads fast, and 

 makes its appearance in all sorts of places, but does not drive better 

 things out of the way, or even render itself objectionable. I have 

 some of it in a shady part of my fernery, and very much enjoy the 

 mixture of its elegant light green spray with such ferns as Onoclea 

 sensibilis, and others that have bold-looking fronds. Those who 

 know this plant, as probably most of our readers do, will be, perhaps, 

 prejudiced in favour of the genus to which it belongs. But whether 

 such be the case or not, I wish to recommend these plants to the 



