152 



UTENSILS USED IN HORTICULTURE. 



deal. Fig. 75 represents a punnet 

 manufactured in the latter manner, 

 the construction of which will be un- 

 derstood by any person who under- 

 stands the English mode of basket- 

 making. 



433. Baskets for growing plants 

 were a long time hi use in the open 

 Fig. 75. Punnet basket. garden, being plunged in spring, and 



taken up in the following autumn ; the object being to take up fruit-trees or 

 other tender shrubs with a ball, and with most of the fibres. At present 

 baskets for growing plants are chiefly used in orchidaceous houses, the basket 

 being filled with moss ; but as they are found to be of very short duration, 

 wire baskets are substituted, earthenware pots with perforated sides, or a sort 

 of open box formed of short rods, laid over one another, at the angles, some- 

 what in the manner of a log-house. 



434. Portable Glass Utensils for plants are chiefly of two kinds : the bell- 

 glass, fig. 76, and the hand-glass, fig. 77. Bell-glasses 

 vary in dimensions from the large green bell-glass, 

 eighteen inches in diameter and twenty inches in height, 

 used in the open garden for protecting cauliflowers in 

 winter and cucumbers in summer, to the small crystal 

 bell, three inches in diameter, and 

 two inches high, for covering new- 

 ly-planted cuttings. Whenever 

 the propagation of tender plants by 

 cuttings, or by the greffe touffe, is attempted, bell- 

 Fig. 77. Cast-iron hand- S lasses are essential. The common hand-glass is formed 

 glass in two parts, the either square, or of five or more sides on the plan, and 

 roof and tides. with the sides commonly eight or twelve inches high. 



The framework is of lead, cast-iron, tinned wrought-iron, copper, or zinc ; 

 the last is much the cheapest, and also the lightest, and when kept well 

 painted, it will last as long as cast-iron, which with the moisture of the soil 

 soon becomes rusty at the lower edge. Cast-iron hand-glasses being very 

 heavy, are commonly formed in two pieces ; and when the form is square, as 

 in fig. 77, air is very conveniently given by changing the position of the cover- 

 ing part, as shown in the figure. 



435. The folio whig substitute for bell-glasses may be readily adopted by 

 any gardener who can get pieces of broken window-glass from his frames or 

 hothouses, and who has a glazier's patent diamond, which differs from the 



Fig. 76. Bell-glasses. 



Fig. 78- Substitutes for bell-glasses. 



