Eight] oue^pan 73 



with tobacco tea, or fumigate with tobacco, leaving 

 them in the smoke long enough to insure success. Or 

 the plant may be dipped in hot water at about 130 

 degrees; this will kill all insects or eggs. 



Cyperus, or Umbrella-plant, may be easily raised 

 from cuttings, but it is sometimes desirable to have a 

 number of plants for aquatic gardening, and growing 

 from seed is an economy. The seeds should be sown 

 in flats and kept warm ; they germinate in about ten 

 days, coming up very freely. As many as three hun- 

 dred plants have been secured from one packet. Prick 

 the seedlings out into larger flats as soon as they are 

 big enough to handle, and when two or three inches 

 high pot them off into two- or three-inch pots of muck, 

 plunging into wet sand and keeping constantly moist. 

 Shift them as the pots fill with roots, and by the time 

 the plants are in four-inch pots the water should be 

 kept standing in the saucer all the time. When they 

 attain proper size they should be grown in a jardiniere 

 or other vessel holding water, or else the pot in which 

 they grow should be plunged in water. The Cyperus, 

 being a semi-aquatic plant, cannot have too much 

 water; the lack is quickly shown by the leaf-tips turn- 

 ing brown. Two plants kept fairly wet in pots, but 

 plainly suffering, so were plunged into a lily-tank; in a 

 few days the roots had pressed to the surface in search 

 of water, and hung, a perfect fringe, over the edge 

 of the pots. The effect on the tops was as pro- 

 nounced the crown quickly sending up lush green 



