ny 
LAWN. 
268 
LAYERING. 
mer months, and a month during 
spring and autumn. Whenever 
coarse grasses, or broad-leaved 
plants of any kind appear, they 
should be taken out with the spud ; 
and whenever any spot becomes 
bare, the soil should be renewed, 
and pieces of fresh turf introduced, 
or seeds sown; also, when worms 
disfigure the surface, the castings 
which they throw up should be 
scraped off, and the surface watered 
with lime-water, by which all the 
worms will be destroyed. In gene- 
ral, it is impossible to produce a fine 
lawn, except in an open, airy situa- 
tion, with a soil which will retain 
moisture during summer; for in 
close pent-up places, surrounded by 
walls or hedges, and under the drip 
of trees and shrubs, no kind of grass 
will grow. In such places, all that 
can be done is to encourage the 
growth of moss, which will spring 
up naturally wherever the soil is 
kept sufficiently moist ; but where 
it is very dry, the branches of the 
rees and shrubs should be allowed 
to trail on the surface, so as com- 
pletely to cover it. In some situa- 
tions, where the branches of the 
trees and shrubs do not lie close to 
the surface, or where they are 
chiefly of deciduous kinds, the sur- 
face may be clothed with Ivy or 
Periwinkle. In very small gardens, 
grass plots are generally formed by 
rolls of turf taken from the surfaces 
of some adjoining pasture-field or 
meadow ; but when grass-seed is 
sown, the following kinds are con- 
sidered the best :—Fox-tail Meadow- 
grass, Alopectirus praténsis, which 
should form one-fourth of the whole ; 
the Sweet-scented Spring-grass, 
Anthoxénthemum odordtum, which 
gives the fragrance to new hay ; 
and Poa praténsis, the Common 
Meadow-grass. ‘To these may be 
added the Crested Dog’s-tail-grass, 
Cynostirus cristatus, and the hard 
Fescue-grass, Festtica duriiscula, 
with about the proportion of a bushel 
of white clover-seed to four bushels 
of the other mixture ; and this quan. 
tity will suffice for an acre of ground. 
Layerine is a mode of propa- 
gating used both in the case of 
ligneous and herbaceous plants, and 
the operation is performed by choos- 
ing a young shoot of the current or 
the preceding year, bending it down 
to the ground, and covering a por- 
tion of it near the extremity of the 
shoot with an inch or more of soil, 
previously fixing it there with a 
hooked stick. In general, layers 
of woody plants made in autumn 
may be taken off about the same 
season the following year; but 
some trees and shrubs, such as 
Magnolias, the tree Ivy, &c., re- 
quire to remain on the tree for two 
years. Roses layered in the sum- 
mer season with shoots of the same 
year’s growth may be taken off the 
following spring; but the genera’ 
practice is to layer them in autumn 
or winter, and allow the layers to 
remain on the plants for a year. 
Layers of herbaceous plants, such 
as Carnations, Pinks, Double Sweet 
Willams, and Chrysanthemums, 
made in the beginning of summer, 
will have made roots by the autumn ; 
and the layers of Chrysanthemums 
'so rooted will flower the winter of 
the same year. To facilitate the 
rooting of all layers, whether ligne- 
ous or herbaceous, a notch or slit is 
made in that part of the shoot which 
is buried in the soil; or it is twisted, 
and a portion of the bark taken off, 
or it is in some other way wounded, 
bruised, or injured, so aS to check 
the return of the sap by the bark, 
when the sap accumulating at the 
upper lip of the wound forms a 
callosity there of granulated mat- 
ter, from which roots are soon after 
emitted. In laying herbaceous 
plants, and more especially Carna- 
tions, the slit is made on the under 
side of the shoot, and in the case of 
af 
