THE FLORAL WORLD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 123 



It is the best house I have ever yet had iu which to grow an early crop of 

 strawbeiTies without fire-heat. There cannot be a simpler method than 

 mine of growing a crop of fine fruit, and having it on the table by the 

 time the out-door plantations are first showing bloom. The moment 

 runners are visible, I go over the ground with a trowel and a barrowful 

 of rotten dung. I choose the plumpest and forwardest of the runners, 

 scoop out from under them a trowelful of soil, and replace with 

 a trowelful of the rotten dung, and either peg them down, or fix them 

 with a stone. They immediately make a ball of roots in the dung. 

 They are then cut off" and carried away without breaking a fibre. A lot 

 of seven-inch pots are prepared thus- — plenty of drainage, soil to consist 

 of turfy loam, the top crumbs of a bank of clay and rotten dung, and 

 bricks broken to the size of walnuts, equal parts. This mixture is 

 rammed in as hard as a barn floor. A depression is made in the middle 

 to receive the plant, which is filled in with leaf-mould, and pressed firm. 

 They are then placed in a frame, watered, and shut close. After a few 

 days they have air, and in about ten days after potting the lights are 

 taken off. They have plenty of water, and that is all the attention they 

 get. Some time in JN'ovember or December, according to the state of the 

 weather, they are taken into the house and placed on the front bed, with 

 a large saucer, bottom upwards, under each to prevent the entrance of 

 worms to the pots. They start early, and as soon as they begin to show 

 bloom the saucers are turned over and filled with fresh dung, which is 

 kept always wet. The dung is changed twice while the fruit is swelling, 

 and as these saucers are kept filled with water there is no occasion to 

 use liquid manure, which might do harm in this case, because it requires 

 a long reach of the arm to water the plants next the front shutters, and 

 the liquid manure would be splashed upon the leaves and fruit. But by 

 filling the pans with dung the plants can all be watered overhead with a 

 rose on a long spout, and this process fills the pans and occasions the least 

 amount of ti'ouble. It would pay any connoisseur in strawberries to put up 

 a house of this kind expressly for an early crop of unforced fruit, for fire- 

 heat tells against their flavour considerably, but it matters not how early 

 we get them by sun-heat, because the source of heat is also the source of 

 colour and flavour. This house never looked prettier than it did in the 

 spring of 1859, when the bed was covered with strawberries in seven-inch 

 pots, comprising about fifty of the best varieties, many of which were 

 from runners of the previous year, kindly presented to me by my 

 excellent friend J. S. Hodgkinson, Esq., of Sydenham, and another gen- 

 tleman who is an old correspondent of the Floral AVorld. 



Shirley Hibberd. 



FLOWER SHOWS OE APEIL AND MAT. 

 Royal Horticultural Society, | chief feature on the occasion, even 

 April 15th. — The plants exhibited at the roses becoming quite a secondary 

 the third spring show were very good; consideration. The very best lot of 

 the arcade next the International Ex- azaleas was a collection of twenty-four 

 hibition building was all a-blaze with a from Mr. Charles Turner, of the 

 fine display of azaleas, which were Royal Nurseries, Slough ; some of 

 mostly well grown and remarkably full these were arranged upon a semi-cir- 

 of bloom. Of course these formed the cular stand at the end of the room, 



