52 THE FLOKAL WORLD AND GAEDEN GUIDE. 



fruit is about the size of peas. The number should be reduced in a 

 regular, equalizing manner, till they hang so that each individual 

 will have room to swell to its greatest Bize, but not more, or the 

 bunches will have a meagre appearance. The latter will, perhaps, 

 require reducing in proportion to the strengtb of the vine ; for the 

 cultivator may rest assured that it is better economy to thin an 

 excessive crop down to a moderate one, and thus secure superior 

 quality, with the reasonable expectation of its being repeated in the 

 next year, than to take a heavy crop of small, ill-flavoured fruit, to 

 the almost certain prejudice of those to come in succeeding seasons. 

 In conducting this operation it is advisable to avoid handling the 

 fruit ; it can be held with a crooked piece of wire, while the berries 

 are extracted with tbe scissors ; for when rubbed witb the fingers it 

 is supposed a predisposition to "shanking" is incurred, when tbe 

 berries rot or shrivel at the point of union with their footstalks, just 

 before they are ripe — a disease but too well known in all its forms, 

 but for which many opposite causes are adduced, without any satis- 

 factory explanation being arrived at either. Our own notion refers 

 it rather to sudden changes in the atmosphere, as either an excess 

 of moisture, or the rapid lowering of the temperature, when the 

 fruit is nearly or quite full-grown, is known to produce it. Some 

 care is necessary at the time the berries are changing colour, to 

 properly regulate the heat on this account, and as ripeness ensues, 

 the principal attention should be addressed to keeping it rather 

 below the average, by the admission of larger quantities of air, 

 which, as before remarked, increase the flavour, and imparts a finer 

 colour and bloom ; the sashes may then be opened, so as to keep 

 the temperature down to 60°, and even lower, when they are quite 

 ripe, only closing to exclude damp. 



RONDELETIA. 



HESE truly handsome stove plants are named after 

 Eondelet, a French botanist of the sixteenth century, 

 and belong to the important natural order Cinchonacece, 

 the genus chiefly occurring in America and the West 

 Indies. 



There are about fifteen species of Rondeletia known, but perhaps 

 the best for a general collection and the grandest of the series, is 

 the scarlet-flowered species, jB. speciosa, the subject of our engraving. 

 Rondeletias require peat and sand to grow in, with a brisk moist 

 heat while growing, and may be easily propagated from cuttings of 

 half-ripe wood taken off close to the stem, and shortened to four 

 joints each. The cuttings should be planted in pure silver sand, 

 covered with bell-glasses and plunged in heat. The glasses should 

 be taken off every morning, be wiped dry, and replaced, and in dull 

 weather may be kept off a few hours at a time. As soon as the 

 cuttings have rooted, pot them off in sandy peat and plunge them in 

 a brisk heat till they have filled the pot with roots, then shift to a 



