Culture of the Ranunculus. 571 



Turkish ranunculus, in your Magazine, with great pleasure. 

 The former writer's plan is an excellent one for procuring 

 seed, as the experience of the last growing season enables me 

 to testify; having pursued it, and having now fine healthy 

 pericarps from varieties from which I never before succeeded 

 in obtaining a single seed. What sort of flowers these seeds 

 will produce, I hope to be able to tell you by this time next 

 year. You will think that very soon ; but I mean to treat 

 them in the same way I procured flowers this June, from seed 

 sown last October. Some time early in October, 1831, a 

 head of seed, from a tolerably thickly petaled light semi- 

 double ranunculus, was sown in a square pan of twelve-inch 

 sides by four deep ; at each corner was a pipe luted to the 

 sides, open at top and bottom, for the purpose of watering the 

 earth, without disturbing the seeds, or allowing a crust to 

 form on the surface, through frequent watering from a water- 

 pot rose in the usual way. In the middle was a hole for 

 allowing the superfluous water to drain away. About a 

 fortnight or so after sowing, the seeds came up (here I 

 should state the pan was put into a cucumber frame, with a 

 couple of seed cucumbers only on the vines, and no heat but 

 that afforded by the solar rays) : as soon as they had vege- 

 tated, the glasses were kept close, in order to take the ad- 

 vantage of the heat of the sun, to force them as much as 

 possible. By the end of November they were an inch high, 

 and I removed them into a room facing the south, in which a 

 fire and warm air stove were kept for about six hours each day. 

 There they drew towards the light, and began to get of a 

 sickly yellow by the beginning of February. On Valentine's 

 day I made my cucumber hill, and a week afterwards, when 

 the heat was well up, I put my pan into it. The seedlings 

 recovered immediately, grew away vigorously, and threw up 

 strong flower stems at the end of April. I then removed 

 them, and placed them against a south-east wall in the open 

 air, in which situation they have flowered, and are at this 

 moment loaded with strong healthy heads of seed. The plan 

 is nothing more than an extension of Mr. Sweet's plan of 

 flowering tulips unusually quickly, extended to another tribe of 

 florist's flowers. I have been equally successful with pinks, 

 although not precisely in the same mode. 



A Village Schoolmaster. 

 London [being nam in town), 

 July 30. 1832. 





