VI.] CHINESE PRIMULAS BEGONIAS 31 



twice a week with liquid manure, and syringe the leaves 

 frequently. They may afterwards be moved into the 

 greenhouse, where soon they will come into blossom, each 

 pot being furnished with flowering spikes, which will last 

 in bloom for weeks. By making a sowing every month 

 there can be a succession kept up through the season. 



Chinese Primulas are better all sown in one large 

 deep pot, well drained with sherds, and filled only two- 

 thirds, pressed down thoroughly, and watered once for 

 all before scattering the seeds, then tying thin paper or 

 gauze over it until the seeds have germinated and well 

 rooted themselves. Begonia seed is so very minute it 

 should be thinly scattered and lightly covered. Cyclamens 

 are very slow in germinating, and one fears they are often 

 lost through sheer impatience. 



As a rule all these things prefer the equable tem- 

 perature first of the warm frame, then of the cold one, 

 to the draughts and drought and hot sunlight of the 

 average greenhouse, and the longer their promotion is 

 deferred the more likely are they to attain to a healthy 

 maturity. 



CHAPTER VI 

 THE GARDENER'S NATURAL ENEMIES 



AN American writer, Chas. Dudley Warner, in " My 

 Summer in a Garden," once said that he would like 

 to be a gardener, but on one condition only, that he 



