Notes and Gleanings. 185 



AcHiMENES AND GLOXINIAS FROM Seed. — Seedlings may be raised in a dung- 

 bed as easily as in a stove. Sow it any time in March, and till the 15th of April. 

 Shallow seed-pans should be filled with first a layer of cocoa-nut dust, and the re- 

 mainder peat, broken fine and mixed with a fourth part silver-sand. Sow thin and 

 cover the seed with a dusting of peat powder, and cover with squares of glass. 

 Place the pans in a heat of seventy degrees, and when the seedlings have each two 

 good leaves, transplant them singly into thumb-pots in the same mixture as rec- 

 ommended for flowering plants, but with fine sandy compost to fill in next tlie roots. 

 Replace them in the bed, and when they fill the pots with roots, shift to sixty-sized 

 pots, and in these let them remain for the season and till the next spring, taking 

 care to ripen them off well in the autumn. These will not flower till the second 

 year. By sowing in February, and growing them on with great care in a steady 

 moist heat of seventy degrees, some will flower the first season. Floral U^orld. 



Golden Feather Pyrethrum. — Much as this plant is lauded for its 

 usefulness, I do not remember to have seen the best mode of " using it " through- 

 out the season, as, if you plant out in May cuttings — say from six to nine inches 

 apart, from the repeated pinching to keep the flowers down, they will, ere the mid- 

 dle of July, have grown together and lost the beautiful golden fern-like appear- 

 ance, so much enhanced by the background of soil or dark-colored plants showing 

 through the graceful foliage. All who desire to use it to perfection should endeav- 

 or to keep the plants in the state most favorable to this perfect display. As cut- 

 ting and pinching fail so miserably, I say, Get two successions to replace your 

 first lot (which should be strong plants from cuttings planted out in April, if you 

 have grown them hardy, or in May), having a batch of autumn-sown seedlings 

 coming on to take their place as soon as they go to seed and become weedy, and 

 a batch of spring-sown seedlings to replace these when they shall have arrived at 

 the same state. Thus you will retain that charming distinctness and beauty so 

 attractive in this plant in its early growth, and so totally lost when it has grown 

 together and the knife becomes necessary. 



R. H. Poynter, Tatcntoii, in English Jotcrnal of Horticulture. 



Influence of the Stock on the Graft. — At the meeting of the Royal 

 Horticultural Societv on the 2d instant, Messrs. Downie, Laird, and Laing, Stan- 

 stead Park Nursery, Forest Hill, exhibited several grafted abutilons to show the 

 influence of stock on scion, and vice versa. Thus ^. mesapotaniicutn and A. 

 Due de iMalakoff, both green-leaved kinds, grafted on the beautifully-variegated 

 A. Tlionipsoni, became variegated like the stock. On the other hand, A. T/iomp- 

 soni, grafted on A. mesapotaniiciim, and the growing point pinched back, had 

 caused the production of variegated shoots from the originally green stock. It is 

 also worthy of note that short scions of hard wood of the green-leaved kinds are 

 more quickly influenced by the stock than scions of soft wood. Messrs Downie, 

 Laird, and Laing used both hard and soft wood as scions in grafting the green- 

 leaved varieties on A. Tho/npsoni, and although all the stocks were grafted at the 

 same time, the plants produced by the scions of soft wood have as yet shown no 

 signs of variegation. Gardener'' s Magazine. 



