Ivi INTRODUCTION. 



beririCT large ones, which have nothing to recommend 

 their use but the circumstance that they are big enough 

 to receive the contents of a packet, and that they may 

 save a little room. Pots, as many as required, should be 

 drained by placing a few crocks or fragments of broken 

 pots, not too small, in the bottom, over which a film of 

 clean moss or the rough material rejected in sifting the 

 soil, if it is fibrous, or anything else handy that will act 

 as a filter in preventing the finer particles of soil from 

 working in amongst and destroying the efficiency of the 

 drainage, should be laid. The soil may then be filled in 

 to within three-quarters or half an inch of the top or rim 

 of the pots, making it moderately and equally firm in the 

 process, and the surface should be nicely smoothed by 

 means of a disc or circle of wood, of such diameter as will 

 work easily inside the pot. As many labels as will be re- 

 quired should be made ready: they are generally slips of 

 wood five or six inches long, and three-quarters of an inch 

 w4de, smoothed and painted on one side, on which the 

 name of the subject is written ; but they may be had in 

 zinc, which is less destructible, at a cheap rate. At any rate, 

 the practice adopted by many amateurs of using a slip of 

 paper, or the packet itself, stuck in a cleft stick, is not ad- 

 visable, inasmuch as it leads too often to loss of nam.es 

 and consequent confusion, owing to the perishable nature 

 of the material. Before proceeding to the actual work 

 of sowing, it will further conduce to orderliness and de- 

 spatch if the labels are written, and arranged, along with 

 the packets to which they respectively belong, within con- 

 venient reach of the operator. These preliminary de- 

 tails will appear tedious on paper, and they are tedious 

 to write, but not so to accomplish — and when done, the 



