46 ALPINE PLANTS. 
top-dressing. Fill the plants well up to the 
shoulder, just leaving out the tips. This must 
be done with the hand (and not spread on 
with a trowel or spade, as I have seen done 
sometimes), so that it can be well worked 
into the plant. Keep pressing the plant 
firmly into the ground all the time, and the 
result will be so much the better the follow- 
ing flowering season. The shoots will at 
once start to root into the fresh compost, and 
in the course of a year or so you will be 
rewarded with fine healthy clumps full of 
flower, instead of a poor miserable specimen 
with nothing but a few withered leaves upon 
it. This is the system which I adopt, and I 
find if it is followed no one need despair of 
srowing Gentiana verna and bavarica, G. 
imbricata or pyrenaica. If the above instruc- 
tions are carried out, I am sure anyone will 
be well repaid for the little extra trouble 
entailed by their success in growing these 
beautiful plants ; in fact, all the smaller class 
‘are very beautiful and well worth growing. 
G. acaulis \ikes a little limestone mixed with 
the soil. In any damp place it is as well to 
drain the spot where acaulis is planted, as 
