ON RAISING TULIP SEED. 51 



not known, or the practice would be abandoned. To those who are 

 so unfortunate as to receive plants in this state, I should say, — place 

 the balls in a dish of water, and soak them till the soil can be cleared 

 from the roots, and then carefully plant them. Persons who may 

 fear to do this with all the plants they may thus receive from a dis- 

 tance, let them try the experiment with half of them, and they will 

 soon perceive that even this method, harsh as it is, will be found better 

 than planting them incased in hard, stiff soil, through which the 

 fibrous roots of plants will require several months to struggle. 



Plants should be packed with the earth loosely round the roots, in 

 a little moist moss, and inclosed in brown paper. The foliage of 

 plants should be surrounded with soft dry moss. 



ARTICLE V. 



ON RAISING TULIP SEED. 



BY Mil. JOHN SLATER, ALBION PLACE, LOWER BROUGHTON, NEAR MANCHESTER. 



The raising of Tulips from seed, having at last engaged the attention 

 of florists in this neighbourhood, I presume that a few remarks as to 

 the best means of obtaining it will prove acceptable to the readers of 

 the Cabinet. The last two years have been very unfavourable for 

 that purpose, and as the weather is in general more moist in the 

 northern counties than the southern, it rarely happens that seed 

 can be matured. In the year 1838 I found it impossible, by the 

 usual method, to procure a pod of seed, as the pericarpium, from the 

 moisture, damped and mildewed off. The year 1839 I took a dif- 

 ferent plan. As soon as the petals fell off I procured a piece of 

 wood two inches broad and four inches long, and at one end I made 

 a nich with a saw upwards of one inch deep, sufficient to hold firmly 

 a square of glass six inches by four or five, and at the other end cut 

 a hole about three quarters of an inch square. I then put a carnation 

 stick through the square hole, and stuck it down near the bulb, and 

 let the square of glass be within two inches of the top of the peri- 

 carpium, which prevented the wet from lodging in it. This is easily 

 done by having hole3 bored in the stick every two inches, through 

 which a nail or piece of wire can be inserted to prevent the glass from 

 touching the seed-vessel. I then got a piece of metallic wire and 



