THE IXIA. Ill 



endeavonv to do their duty. Now it is of very great 

 importance not to give them mnch water, but at the same 

 time they must not be quite dry. When there are visible 

 signs of growth, remove the plants to a warm greenhouse, 

 and increase the supplies of water as the growth advances 

 taking care always to avoid excess, and at the same time 

 keei)ing them near the glass, and giving them as much air 

 as is usually allowed in winter to plants that are known 

 to be nearly hardj'. As spring arrives the flowers will be 

 showing ; they will reqi\ire more liberal supplies of water, 

 more air, and perhaps a little staking and tying to keep 

 them in order nicely. Your reward is at hand, and the 

 beauty of the bloom will justify your endeavours. When 

 the bloom is past, put the plants out of doors in a sunny 

 situation on a bed of coal-ashes, and take care that you 

 do not now neglect them. 



The leaves will die down soon after the flowers are past, 

 and then there must be an end of watering. If it be a 

 very hot summer, the ixias may be left alone to go quite 

 dry, and to roast into perfect ripeness, as in the hot sandy 

 soil of their native fields is the projjer course of events. 

 But in a cool summer it will be good jiractice to take all 

 the pots to a sunny greenhouse, and lay them on their sides, 

 on any stage or shelf that can be spared, full in the sun. 

 Being thus properly cooked, they will flower again, and 

 you have but to shake them out about the middle or end 

 of September, and re-pot them in fresh pots and freth 

 soil, to insure another bloom ; and so on from year to year, 

 so long as you have patience to do justice to ixias. 



Now for another system in which pots are not required. 

 Make up a bed of sandy peat under a south or west wall, 

 and preferably next the wall of a hothouse. The bed 



