PART L] CULTURAL 81 



rooted plants into pots or pans, so as to form good plants 

 quickly. 



To descend from the type that seems to present to the 

 cultivator the greatest number of neat and attractive flowering 

 plants, we have the dwarf race of hardy succulents, and the 

 numerous minute alpine plants that associate with them in 

 size a class rich in merit and strong in numbers. These 

 should, as a rule, be grown and shown in pans: they are often 

 so pretty and singular in aspect, as in the case of the silvery 

 Kockfoils, that they are interesting when out of flower. All 

 these little plants are of the readiest culture in pans, with good 

 drainage and light soil. 



Some few alpine plants are somewhat delicate or difficult to 

 grow ; and amongst the most beautiful and interesting of these 

 are the Gentians, and certain of the alpine Primroses. In a 

 general way, it would be better to avoid, at first, such difficult 

 subjects. I believe that a more liberal culture than is gener- 

 ally pursued is what is wanted for these more difficult kinds. 

 The plants are often obtained in a delicate and small state ; 

 then they are, perhaps, kept in some out-of-the-way frame, or 

 put where they receive but chance attention ; or, perhaps, they 

 die off from some vicissitude, or fall victims to slugs, or, if a 

 little unhealthy about the roots, are injured by earth-worms, 

 whose casts serve to clog up the drainage, and thus render the 

 pot uninhabitable. With strong and healthy young plants to 

 begin with, good and more liberal culture, and plunging in the 

 open air in beds of coal-ashes through the greater part of the 

 year, the majority of those supposed to be difficult would 

 thrive. I have taken species of Primula, usually seen in a 

 very weakly and poor state, divided them, keeping safe all the 

 young roots, put one sucker in the centre, and five or six round 

 the sides of a 32-sized pot, and in a year made good " specimens " 

 of them, with a greater profusion of bloom than if I had 

 depended on one plant only. Annual division is an excellent 

 plan to pursue with many of these plants, which in a wild 

 state run each year a little farther into the deposit of decaying 

 herbage which surrounds them, or, it may be, into the sand and 



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