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THE FLORAL WORLD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 369 
strike freely with the assistance of a genial bottom-heat. April is 
a good time for commencing the work of propagating, and any old 
plants that are to be grown on should in the course of that month 
be pruned, to insure their being sufficiently advanced to be repotted 
in May or June. A position in a cool house or pit, where they can 
enjoy a free circulation of air, will be the best for them until the 
early part of September, when they must be returned to the stove. 
A mixture of peat or loam and leaf-mould in equal parts, with a 
moderate quantity of silver sand, will form a compost in every way 
suited to their requirements. The growth should not be stopped, 
and if bushy specimens are required, put the cuttings three or four 
together and sbift on without dividing them, otherwise pot them off 
separately, and as a rule examples in eight-inch pots will be the 
most useful. 
THE CULTIVATION OF STOCKS FOR ROSES. 
BY JOHN HARRISON, 
North of England Rose Nurseries, Darlington. 
=i¢.N my time a very large rumber of articles have been 
| ° written on the best kinds of stocks upon which to graft 
and bud roses intended for garden decoration and for 
the production of blooms for exhibition purposes. 
Some writers have extolled the manetti, others have 
condemned it, and the wild and the cultivated brier have also come 
in for their share of praise and condemnation. Some of the writers 
on roses do not appear to think that all that can be said in reference 
to the stocks has been said, without descending to the details bear-' 
ing on their cultivation, and about which the majority know but 
little, for they continue at intervals to direct the attention of the 
readers of the horticultural journals to the subject without giving 
directions for the cultivation of the stocks. 
Much has of late been done in the way of writing up the seedling 
brier, and by many writers the raising of this stock is regarded as 
a new “ discovery” in the art of propagation. That there is nothing 
“new” about seedling briers, whether wild or cultivated, I shall be 
able to zghow in a very few words. It is a fact well known to the 
older rosarians that up to the year 1844 or 1845 no stock other than 
the common brier was used, either for standard or dwarf roses. A. 
few dwarfs were occasionally worked upon Celine Noisette, but they 
were so few that it is hardly necessary to mention them. It was 
sixty-four years last July since I first budded roses on the seedling 
brier in the young plantations adjoining the Yarm Nurseries, and 
since that time I have annually worked roses on seedling briers, and 
continue to do so. Every year I have large quantities of brier 
“hips”’ collected, and these are sown in my nurseries and in per- 
manent plantations. The stocks raised in the latter are much 
superior to those produced by the seed sown in the nursery, especially 
for standards. I know from long experience that a period of not 
less than eight years is required for the production of stocks for 
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December. 
