THE AURICULA. 137 



cover them with an additional mat, to prevent the 

 blossoms being checked or injured by the frost. 

 This is the very crisis of time that requires your 

 most particular care. 



As this flower produces more pips and blossoms 

 than can expand at one time, it is necessary, at the 

 beginning or so of this month, to cut out with great 

 care the interior or middle pips, reserving not fewer 

 than seven, nor more than thirteen : they should be 

 taken out two or three at a time, and it requires 

 sonie taste, nicety, and art, to perform this operation 

 well, that the blossoms which are left may grow 

 in a regular equidistant form, so that any common, 

 spectator might suppose that no such thinning of 

 the pips had taken place, but that they had grown 

 exactly in that form, and with that number, from 

 the first. 



By thus timely reducing the quantity of the pips, 

 the rest are enabled to grow and increase greatly in 

 size as well as beauty, and to give room to one 

 another to expand, and become flat and level, which 

 is a property required in all flowers that are exhi- 

 bited for prizes. 



