I20 The Canadian Horticulturist. 



other forms. When these things are transported by rail long distances the 

 freight becomes the chief item of the cost. We once freighted ten tons of 

 ashes at a cost of $80, and got 1,200 lbs. of actual potash (more than the aver- 

 age amount). We could have freighted 10,000 lbs. of potash in the shape of 

 muriate from a nearer point for half the money. And this is the very point we 

 would like to impress upon the producers of potash on the other side of the 

 Atlantic, the immense saving of the cost of potash to the American farmer living 

 far from the sea coast, by relieving him of the necessity for freighting so much 

 useless material to get the potash he is after. They should send us more of the 

 concentrated article, for the freight over the Atlantic is but a small part of the 



inland freight in very many instances. 



W. P. Massev. 



SOWING SEEDS IN DRY WEATHER. 



A frequent source of complaint is the fact of seeds failing to germinate 

 during long continued dry weather, and it is very important that the gardener 

 should always apply common-sense to his work, and not simply follow routine, 

 for what will suit for one condition of soil or atmosphere would be unnecessary,, 

 or even wrong, for another. I will give a case to illustrate. About the 5th of 

 May of 1 87 1, I sowed a large patch of open ground with celery seed, and another 

 with cabbage seed. The soil was in fine order, and the beds, after sowing, were 

 raked — the celery with a fine steel rake, the cabbage with a large wooden rake, 

 which covered the seed of each to the regular depth. The weather was dry,, 

 with indications of its continuing so, and after sowing had both the cabbage and 

 celery beds roiled heavily, leaving, however, a strip of each unrolled, so that I 

 could clearly show to some of my young men what the result of this omission 

 would be if dry weather continued. Had a heavy rain fallen within a day or 

 two after sowing, it would have compacted the soft soil and produced the effect 

 of rolling it. But we had no rain for three or four weeks, and a burning hot 

 atmosphere, passing through the shallow, loose covering of the seeds, shriveled 

 and dried them up so that it was impossible they could ever germinate. This 

 little experiment resulted exactly as anyone having experience in seed-sowing 

 knew it must ; our crop of celery and cabbage plants were as fine as need be on 

 the rolled bed, while not one seed in a thousand of the celery, and not one in 

 a hundred of the cabbage, started in the strips where the soil was left loose. — 

 American Agriculturist. 



Watering" the Cyclamen. — Mr. Wm. Bacon, of Orillia, who wrote the 

 article on the Cyclamen in our March number, writes : " When watering the 

 cyclamen exercise care so that you do not let a lot of water settle into the 

 clustering leaves and buds, as a constant dose of this kind would induce rot." 



