200 THE CULTURE OF THE TUBE ROSE. 



the heating material being a few wheelbarrow loads of 

 dung. How to best make the hot-bed we will describe in 

 a future chapter. 



Now suppose the heat is up in the hot-bed, and we have 

 selected tubers as soon as opened by the importer, thus 

 securing the strongest and best-grown roots, known by the 

 size, and firmness even to the top, and the absence of off- 

 sets or their marks, being sure that there is no old blossom 

 stalk, evidence of exhaustion. Time, about the first of 

 April ; prepare seven-inch pots, with the usual drainage ; we 

 prefer charcoal to any thing else ; over this place about four 

 inches of old, dry cow manure, picked up in the pasture, 

 and preserved for future use (the older the better), broken 

 fine, but not sifted. 



Then fill the pot nearly full of a compost of nearly equal 

 parts of sand, loam, peat, and last year's hot-bed, with a 

 slight admixture of charcoal dust ; then prepare the roots 

 by removing the outer scale or coating, so as to detect 

 embryo offsets. These carefully remove with a knife, or 

 the thumb nail, so as to lessen future operations of that 

 kind. This done, plunge them in the compost, just cov- 

 ering them from sight, and then fill the pot with spent bark 

 or tan, and plunge the pot to the rim in the tan, which, by 



