6i THE AMATEUe's GREENHOUSE 



regular routine work, and the amateur who loves plant grow- 

 ing will be ambitious of distinction in this part of the business. 

 It must be confessed, however, that to take a young plant 

 from the hands of a nurseryman, and by careful management 

 develope its full capabilities so that in due time — it may be 

 but a few months or it may be many years — that plant shall 

 have become a noble specimen, is a task far more worthy of an 

 amateur's ambition. "We can always buy plants to begin 

 with, but we must acquire by patience and perseverance the 

 skill requisite to the development of their beauties. One of 

 the first requisites to success in the multiplication of plants 

 is a propagating house or pit. It is customary to enclose, by 

 means of a glass screen, a small portion of the warmest end of 

 a stove or greenhouse for this purpose, and to ensure bottom- 

 heat by means of a shallow tank covered with slates, the water 

 in the tanks being heated. by conducting through it the flow- 

 pipe at the point where the latter is connected with the boiler. 

 But almost any amount of propagating may be done without 

 any special arrangement of this sort, especially in a garden 

 where a hotbed is made up in spring, and advantage is taken 

 of the natural heat of the earth in the later portion of the 

 summer season. Frames and pits are valuable auxiliaries to 

 the greenhouse, and, indeed, there can be but little done with- 

 out them where soft-wooded plants, notable for an abundant 

 production of flowers, are held in favour. The grower of hard- 

 wooded plants and succulents will have much less need of 

 them. Hand lights, bell glasses, and the propagating boxes 

 made of cheap tile-ware, may be rendered serviceable at all 

 seasons of the year in the multiplication of plants, and the en- 

 thusiastic plant-grower will soon learn how to make them repay 

 their cost a dozen times over every year. The necessity for 

 such contrivances arises out of the fact that a moist, warm 

 soil, and a still, moist, warm atmosphere, are peculiarly favour- ' 

 able to the germination of seeds and the rooting of cuttings, 

 and if the amateur will always bear this fact in mind, the 

 business of propagating wiU be no longer a perplexity and a 

 worry, but one of the most delightful amusements. 



In sowing seeds select the compost in which it is recommended 

 the plants should be grown, and add about a fourth part of its 

 bulk of sand to it. Shallow pans are useful things for seeds, 

 but wooden boxes answer equally well. The depth seeds are 

 sown is regulated by their sizes : those as large as a pea may 



