74 FLOWERS AND THE FLOWER GARDEN. 



mums, which should be sown in the open borders in 

 April, 



Cinerarias are gay in spring, for the decoration of 

 rooms or stands, with their bright masses of bloom 

 purple, pink, carmine, violet, bright blue, lilac and 

 white, and sometimes a pretty mixture of two colours. 

 They are grown from cuttings or seed, and good soil for 

 them is a mixture of peat, loam, leaf-mould, and sand. 

 To get cuttings, cut down the plants when they have 

 flowered ; and when they have grown again sufficiently 

 take off the cuttings, and plant them in pots filled with 

 the compost, with a layer of silver sand on the surface. 

 When the cuttings have thrown shoots about three 

 inches high, they should be stopped to make the plants 

 grow bushy. They should be re-potted whenever the 

 roots grow well, before they get too much matted, and 

 be* treated occasionally with a little liquid manure. The 

 seed should be sown as soon as it is ripe, and scarcely 

 covered with earth. Cinerarias may also be increased 

 by offsets. They are terribly subject to the green fly, 

 which must be watched and destroyed by fumigation 

 when it makes its destructive appearance. 



CHAPTER XI. 



FLORISTS' FLOWERS DAHLIAS, FUCHSIAS, HYACINTHS, 

 TANSIES, PELARGONIUMS. 



DAHLIAS are cultivated as florists' flowers, but they 

 are, like several I have already mentioned, in such gene- 

 ral use as handsome useful garden flowers, that they 

 may be considered to have both characters. Although 

 they flower in autumn, and keep flowering until quite 

 late, they will not bear the slightest degree of frost ; the 

 tuberous roots must not consequently be put in the 

 open ground until there is little chance of more sharp 

 weather ; and if frost should come late, the young plants 



