INTRODUCTION. 
On arrival at home all collected alpine plants should be cleaned 
of dead, bruised, and rotting foliage, and their broken or crushed 
ends of root should be cut cleanly away. They should then have 
a period of not less than six weeks or two months of recuperation 
in a frame bed of pure sand about two feet deep to its drainage ; 
left moist beneath, either by pipes, or by drains driven perpendi- 
cularly in at the top, flush with the sand, and then periodically 
filled up with water. This bed may be in any aspect, but a sunny 
one is usually preferable ; and, if the heat at any time becomes 
excessive, bass matting should be cast over the frame, on which 
the light, as a rule, remains, but is so lifted up as to admit abund- 
ance of air. Thus treated, collected plants prodigiously root 
again and re-establish themselves; a naked little carrot of 
Campanula alpina, put out in sand, comes up at the end of three 
weeks, the nucleus of a solid ball held together by a web of new 
white fibres. The cool and innutritious fine roughness of the sand 
stimulates the stock immediately into forming fresh rootage ; 
while, if the plant be left there too long, the same conditions 
ultimately tend to starve the abundant new growth it has 
engendered—though no harm is taken by leaving a July collected 
plant to re-establish itself in sand through the summer, and 
there sit dormant on until next spring; indeed, in the case of 
woody plants, this treatment is almost essential. 
Thus it is that certainty of success can be obtained with some 
cent. per cent. of alpine plants so collected, so despatched, and 
so treated in convalescence. Their planting has been already 
discussed ; the question of their propagation now remains for 
consideration. By far the most rapidly profitable method is 
by division. Almost all alpine plants form clumps, and almost 
any detached rosette will root immediately if removed at any 
time during the summer and inserted in sand. Indeed, with a 
large number, such as the mossy and silver Saxifrages, any shoot 
pulled off will be found already to have little fibres of its own, 
and merely requires to be stuck into the ground wherever a fresh. 
plant be desired for nook or ledge. With many others, again, 
as, for instance, the race of Dianthus, cuttings usually offer a very 
lvili 
