100 ON THE CUI,TUR OF THE RANUNCULUS. 



vages on the roots, in many instances annihilating them altogether 

 Some growers, to obviate this, recommend that potatoes should 

 be planted between the rows, so that they insects may attach 

 themselves to that plant, but it must certainly be more preferable 

 to remove them altogether which is most easily effected by 

 washing their eggs from the roots. It has also been recommended 

 to allow the roots gradually to dry with the earth about them, 

 this they say preserves the eye of the root safe for the succeeding 

 year; this is certainly the easiest method of all others for de- 

 stroying the roots, because after they have become shrivelled the 

 clay gradually crumbles from them, leaving the eye supported 

 only by so many dry brittle fibres ; but washed when newly 

 taken up, the fibres, on drying, cling together and support each 

 other from injury, and although when the season for planting re- 

 turns, the roots appear very diminutive, still when we look 

 two days after they are planted they are as much swollen as when 

 they were taken up. I always spread the roots while washing 

 them, although by this system the trouble attendant on the cul- 

 ture is a little increased, yet the certainty of a good blow (for I 

 scarcely ever planted a root that it does not blow) more than 



compensates for all the trouble. 



T. B. W. G. 



ARTICLE. III. 



A FEW OBSERVATIONS UPON SOME OF THE RECENTLY 

 INTRODUCED ANNUALS. 



fSY MET A. 



The investigations that have been carried on, during the last few 

 years, in different parts of the globe have added so many new 

 names to our list of annuals, that a selection from them becomes 

 almost puzzling, and a few remarks upon some of the species 

 worthy of cultivation may not be uninteresting to the readers of the 

 Floricultural Cabinet. Those chiefly are noticed that have been 

 figured in the preceding volumes, all of which may be grown 

 successfully, and though to many of your readers, I am aware 

 the remarks will present nothing new, I trust they may offer some- 

 thing useful, especially as a correpondent in the Number for 

 April, has requested information on the subject. 



One of the very prettiest additions to our Flower-borders is 



