162 CULTURE OF THE ROSE. 



vided with heating apparatus, there can be nothing 1 better for 

 roses. We have forced them very successfully in one of our own 

 vineries, which is 120 feet long, 12 feet wide, 10 feet high in the 

 rear, 3 in front, and heated by hot water. But as there may be 

 many who desire a cheaper structure, we will give the description 

 of one used by Rivers (the best rose-grower known), with his 

 mode of managing roses in a structure of that character. " A pit, 

 10 or 12 feet long and 8 feet wide, just high enough to stand up- 

 right in, with a door at one end and a sunken path in the centre, a 

 raised bed on each side of the path, and an 18-inch Arnott's stove 

 at the farther end, opposite to the door, with a pipe leading into a 

 small brick chimney outside (a chimney is indispensable), will 

 give a great abundance of forced roses from February to the end 

 of May. To ensure this, a supply must be kept ready, so that, 

 say twenty may be placed in the forcing pit about the middle of 

 December, a like number in the middle of January, and the same 

 about the middle of February ; they must not be pruned till taken 

 into the house, when each shoot should be cut back to two or 

 three buds for the formation of strong shoots. The fire should be 

 lighted at seven in the morning, and suffered to burn out about 

 the same hour in the evening, unless in frosty weather, when it 

 must be kept burning till late at night, so as to exclude the frost ; 

 and for this purpose double mats should be placed on the lights. 

 The thermometer should not, by fire heat, be higher in the day 

 than 70 during December, January and February ; at night it 

 may sink to 35 without injury. The temporary rise in a sunny 

 day is of no consequence, but no air must be admitted at such 

 times, or the plants will exhaust themselves, and immediately 

 shed their leaves. When the sun begins to have power, and in 

 sunny weather toward the end of February, the plants may be 

 syringed every morning about 10 o'clock with tepid water, and 

 smoked with tobacco at night on the least appearance of the 

 Aphis or green-fly. To ensure a fine and full crop of flowers, the 

 plants should be established one year in pots, and plunged in tan 

 or saw-dust, in an open, exposed place, that their shoots may be 

 well ripened : the pots must be often removed, or what is better. 



