ON THF. CULTURE OF THE PINK. SI 



following manner"; I take a flower-pot No, 12, and fill it with finely 

 sifted mould, drawing a flat piece of board over the top to make the 

 surface even, I then lay on the seed and cover it over with very fine 

 mould, and give them a gentle wateiing, covering the pot with a glass, 

 and about the begining of June they will be fit for planting in the na- 

 tural ground and will bloom the following year. 



It is a great error among the cultivators of this flower, in not getting 

 the sorts they require in due time ; I have frequently received orders as 

 late as the middle of November after all the best plants arc disposed of, 

 the plants so late obtained cannot be expected to be so fine as those 

 planted out in September, which gets better hold of the ground and are 

 better able to stand the winter. 



Since writing the above I have seen the second part of the Practical 

 Gardener's remarks, and I beg to state, I have the same opinion of ihe 

 second part as I had of the first, at the same time I beg to thank him for 

 his information concerning rats, he states there is no animal so dan- 

 gerous to pinks as rats, therefore you should be very watchful that they 

 do them no mischeif, I can assure him, I have a great many rats in 

 my garden and its neighbourhood, and they must be all very kind 

 ones, as I have never known them to destroy any of my pinks, but 

 there is a little animal, or insect called a grub, which has done more 

 mischief in one night than all the rats have done in twenty years, and 

 when I find any of my pinks bit off, I work round the stem of the 

 plant with my finger in the earth, and 1 generally find (hem about 

 one inch under the surface, and not being quite so nimble as the rats, 

 I can more easily catch them, and I show them no more quarter than 

 I would the vermin before alluded to. In giving my opinion of the pink 

 I beg to observe I consider it a irost beautiful flower, and worthy a 

 place in the garden of every florist, I have frequently been highly grati- 

 fied during the twenty years that 1 have been a grower of that deli°-ht- 

 Ful flower, to observe after a long winter, my pinks looking beautiful 

 when there was scarce any thing else green in the garden. 



The pink is the poor man's flower, and has been exhibited for show 

 more than any other flower until the introduction of the dahlia, which 

 the poor man has little chance with, it requiring considerable room to 

 grow any quantity : I consider the pink also very litle inferior to the 

 carnation or piccotee : take and place the following twelve blooms in a 

 stand viz. Dryden's Earl of Uxbridge— Hopkins's one in the Ring— 

 Ownsworth's Omega, Bexly beauty— Westlake's Hero— Bray's Invinci- 

 ble—Mans, Dr. Summers — Stevens's George Cook— Clark's Matilda — 

 Barret's Conqueror— Seal's Miss, Austin, and Ibbet's Triumphant; and 



