10 THE GARDENER. [Jan. 



should be extracted nicely, washed, and dried in the sun, after which 

 it may be laid past till the end of February or beginning of March. 

 Pots fdled with the following composition, two parts leaf-mould, one 

 part sandy loam, and one part pure sand, will answer for the seed very 

 well. The seed being small, the soil near the surface ought to be very 

 fine, and the seed ought not to be covered more than the sixteenth part 

 of an inch. The pots may be plunged in a gentle hot-bed of from 65* to 

 70° of heat. After the young plants are an inch or two in height, they 

 may be potted into small thumb-pots, and grown on in a pit or frame, 

 shifting them from pot to pot as the increase of the plant seems to 

 demand. Cuttings are usually selected from nicely-ripened wood of 

 the present year's growth, with a " heel " of the former year's wood 

 attached. They should be taken off in early winter, before severe 

 frosts set in, and be kept half-buried in moist soil of some sort in a 

 cool pit or frame. In March they can be put singly into pots, plunged 

 into a hotbed, and worked in the same way as directed above for 

 seedlings. By using the same means they can easily be increased from 

 eyes in the same manner as Grape-vines. By layers is perhaps the 

 speediest method of obtaining fruiting trees, as a branch of almost any 

 age, bent down to the ground, and fastened firmly into good rich soil, 

 will, at the end of one, two, or three years, according to the size and age 

 of the branch, be ready to detach from the parent tree. A branch of 

 three years old, if bent in March, and cut something in the way Car- 

 nations are usually done, will by the following March be ready to 

 transplant, and will be as large a tree, and bear equally as well, as a 

 cutting two or three years old. It is superfluous to say that suckers 

 are the branches thrown up from the roots, and which are detached 

 with a small quantity of roots adhering, and planted and grown in the 

 ordinary way. "Where plants are increased, either by layers or suckers, 

 it will be found very beneficial to give the roots a good mulching, 

 especially in the case of layers. 



The soil which best suits the Fig is a good and moderately-rich 

 friable calcareous loam. If the soil be too rich, there is danger that 

 the trees may grow too much to wood, the natural consequence of which 

 would be that little fruit would be produced. Where the roots can be 

 confined within limited bounds, the trees may be richly fed, and splen- 

 did crops be the result ; but where the trees have the full scope of the 

 garden to run, the very reverse must be the case. There are three 

 trees here which produce more fruit yearly than is produced by three 

 times their number in another quarter of the garden. The latter trees 

 are planted in the open garden against the south wall, and appear to 

 luxuriate extremely. They always produce an abundance of fruit, but 

 these at the setting-period often nearly all drop. The other three to 



