PRODUCTION OP NEW VARIBriES, 53 



pailful of water will be sufficient for twenty plants. The best 

 way of using the hellebore is to put it in water in the proportion 

 of an ounce of powdered white hellebore (the white hellebore, 

 not black) to a pailful of water, and with a common watering 

 pot, with not too fine a rose, sprinkle it thoroughly over the 

 leaves, being careful to thrust the rose into the bush so as to 

 sprinkle the lower leaves on which the early brood while yet 

 young will be found. It will be necessary to keep a careful and 

 constant look-out for these worms, examining with care the leaves 

 on the lower branches and in the interior of the bush, and use 

 the hellebore whenever they are discovered. A couple of days* 

 delay after they are once discovered will usually give them time 

 to strip all the leaves from the plants, but a timely and thorough 

 application of hellebore will kill the worms and save the plants. 

 This hellebore is poisonous, and should be cared for accordingly, 

 though not as virulent as many, and requiring to be taken in 

 larger doses than most other poisons to produce serious conse- 

 quences. 



THE PRODUCTIOl^ OF FEW VAEIETEES. 



The method by which varieties are perpetuated, and trees of 

 any given sort are multiplied by grafting and budding, has been 

 already fully explained ; now we propose to shew how new vari- 

 eties of good quahties can be produced. It is true that very 

 many, perhaps the most, of our valuable varieties of fruit have 

 been accidental productions, in which the hand of man played 

 no other part than that of sowing the seed, and oftentimes not 

 even that ; but study and experiment have shown that there are 

 certain laws which govern the processes of reproduction in the 

 vegetable as well as the animal world, and that it is in the 

 power of man to so direct these processes of vegetable reproduc- 

 tion as to secure definite results. The stock-breeder makes him- 

 seK acquainted with the laws of animal reproduction, and by 

 skilful direction so uses them as to produce an aniTnal having 



