174 ON STRIKING SLIPS IN WATER. 



of your Correspondents regarding striking cuttings in water, I 

 have tried a great many Dahlia roots this spring in water, and 

 every shoot has struck freely, excepting where I lightly fasten- 

 ed a bit of brass round the stem to keep the lower leaves close, 

 that the shoot might go into the phial, the lower leaves of 

 which rotted. I cut the shoots in the usual way, close under a 

 joint, and then hang the bottles, which ought to be wide-mouthed, 

 some green, some white glass, against a wall, under the sky- 

 light of a warm work-shop in London, in the full glare of the 

 sun, from the first moment of putting them in the water. A 

 shoot of an old root, the Springfield Rival, I put in the latter 

 end of May, I noticed particularly on the 12th day after putting 

 it in had emitted one root, and on the fifteenth, it had four fibres 

 or small lobes, an inch long, the growth being so rapid after it 

 starts. 



Fuschia gracilis I am trying the same way, and find them 

 strike in the same time, this way may be slower than the ordi- 

 nary way of hot-bed strikings, but I think it will suit those, 

 who like me, have a hot-bed at the beginning of the season, but 

 cannot command one whenever occasion may require it. 



An Operative. 



ARTICLE VI. 



METHOD OF OBTAINING FLOWFRS OF DIFFERENT COLOURS 

 FROM THE SAME STEM. 



BY AN AMATEUR. 



I have tried the following process with great success; and if 

 you think it worthy a place in the Floricultural Cabinet, it is at 

 your service. Split a small twig of elder-bush lengthways, and 

 having scooped out the pith, fill each of the compartments with 

 seeds of flowers of different sorts, but which blossom about the 

 same time ; surround them with mould, and then tying together 

 the two halves of the twig, plant the whole in a pot filled with 

 earth properly prepared. The stems of the different flowers will 

 then be so incorporated as to exhibit to the eye only one stem 

 throwing out branches covered with flowers analagous to the 

 seed which produced them. 



An Amateur. 



