Notes and Gleanittgs. 377 



eighteen or twenty inches apart for the second year's blooming, which will begin 

 in July, and, if the plants are prevented from seeding, will go on till the end of 

 September. Care should be taken to have a stake to each plant; and, as the 

 shoots advance in growth, they should be securely tied to it. If this is neg- 

 lected, they are very likely to be snapped off close to the ground. A slight wind 

 is sufficient to do this, and then the plant is spoiled for the season. 



If a phlox is well managed, it will be in its prime in the second year of its 

 "flowering. Early in the spring, when the shoots are three or four inches long, 

 it is agTo.l plan to thin them. A good two-year-old plant will generally start 

 more shoots than are required ; but five or si.x only should be left to go up 

 for flowering. The spare shoots make excellent cuttings ; but they can seldom 

 be rooted early enough to flower the same year like those obtained from plants 

 put into a greenhouse in February. However, the plants obtained from these 

 cuttings make fine flowering-plants for the next year. 



But little can be done in arranging phloxes according to their height : indeed, 

 in this respect (with two or three exceptions), there is very little difference 

 between them. The first year they generally flower when about fifteen or 

 eighteen inches high ; but the same plants in the second year will grow two 

 or three feet high. 



A continual succession of young plants should be kept up by cuttings. Di- 

 viding the old roots is a clumsy method of increasing the stock ; and plants 

 obtained in this way seldom produce fine healthy foliage and good flowers. A 

 phlox should be thrown away when it gets over two years old, and a young plant 

 put in its place. Sometimes phloxes may be placed here and there in mixed 

 borders or shrubberies, where they help to make a garden gay, and furnish a 

 supply of cut flowers ; but the spare plants only ought to be used for this pur- 

 pose, as they never, under this treatment, produce such fine flowers as when 

 they have a place to themselves. 



Phloxes may be easily grown in pots by attending to the instructions given 

 for growing them in the open ground ; only they require more care in watering. 



The varieties of Phlox dicussata are the best and hardiest, and have been 

 very much improved lately. There used to be some pretty varieties of Phlox 

 pyramidalis ; but they are delicate, and have given place to the former. 



Summer Pruning. — Few persons are fully aware of the advantages of 

 summer pruning, especially as applied to the pear-tree. Thrifty-growing 

 dwarfs particularly need pinching in during the summer, and the fruit on such 

 trees is greatly benefited by such management. We recently visited a pear- 

 orchard, all dwarfs, where the trees had been highly manured, and had made 

 great growth, and were still growing, though the trees had set a large crop of 

 fruit. Now, it would have been very much better for the fruit if the owner could 

 have found the time to have stopped all the shoots after they had grown four 

 or five inches, and saved the strength of the tree somewhat. They will require 

 severe shortening in this fall or next spring, or the trees will lose their beauty of 

 form, become straggling, and cease to be fruitful. One of the best cultivators of 

 dwarf pears in Massachusetts trains his trees very much as a grape-grower does 



