THE CANADIAN HORTICULTRIST. 1'2T 



In such cases these operations may not be necessary at all, for if rainy 

 weather ensue the seeds will germinate of course, but if there be any 

 likelihood of continued drouth the treading or rolling may be done a 

 week or so after sowing, if at such a season as there is no reason to- 

 believe that it may suffer from the dry hot air." 



Now if firming tlie soil around seed to protect it from the influence 

 of a dry and hot atmosphere is a necessity, it is obvious that it is even 

 more so in the case of plants whose rootlets are even more sensitive ta 

 such influence than dormant seed. Experienced horticulturists are 

 less likely to neglect this than in the case of seeds, for the damage 

 from such neglect is easier to be seen, and hence better understood by 

 practical nurserymen, but with the inexperienced amateur the case is- 

 different. "When he receives his package of trees he handles them as. 

 if they were glass, every broken twig or root calls forth a complaint^ 

 and he proceeds to plant gingerly, straightening out each root and 

 sifting the soil around them, but he would no more stamp down that 

 soil than he would stamp on the soil of his mother's grave. So the 

 plant in nine cases out of ten is left loose and wagging ; the dry air 

 penetrates througli the soil to its roots, the winds shake it, it shrivels up 

 and fails to grow; then comes the anathemas on the head of the unfortu- 

 nate nurseryman, who is charged with selling him dead trees or plants. 



About a month ago I sent a package of a dozen roses to a lady in 

 Savannah. She wrote me a woeful story last week, saying that though 

 the roses had arrived seemingly all right, they had all died but one, 

 and what was very singular, she said, the one that lived was the one 

 that Mr. Jones had stepped on, and which she had thought had surely 

 been crushed to death, for Mr. Jones weighed two hundred pounds. 

 Now we do not advise any gentleman of two hundred pounds putting 

 his brogans on the top of a tender rose plant as a practice conducive 

 to its health, yet if Mrs. Jones coufcl have allowed her weighty lord to 

 have pressed the soil against the roots of each of her dozen roses, I 

 mucli doubt if she would now have had to mourn their loss. 



THE FIG. 



BY P. E. BUCKE, OTTAWA. 



I am glad to see in the Horticulturist that attention is being- 

 drawn to the cultivation of the fig. The summer heat of this. Province 



