THE POPPY, 155 
They prefer silica to chalk, and hence our ved poppy often 
betrays the poor gravel it is rioting on; and its love of a 
dry foothold is proved by its happy state when located on 
the topmost ridge of some old castle wall, where it seems 
to outdo the snapdravon and the wallflower in its capability 
of living on nothing. But note what a starved thing it 
becomes when in this way beating the Frenchman’s horse, 
and learn therefrom the lesson that even a poppy reyuires a 
certain amount of wholesome food. With this philosophical 
observation we conclude the first part of the practical 
essay. 
It is a characteristic of poppy plants to make tap-roots : 
hence, in transplanting them, there is usually a season lost, 
because the inevitable breaking of the tap-roots prevents 
flowering the next seavon. But if the transplanting 1s 
done with care during moist, cool weather, it will not be 
attended with loss, because the plants have but to be left 
alone and they will make new tap-roots to replace those 
that have been broken by removal. When the plants are 
raised from seed, only a few should be sown in a pot, and 
of these the weakest should be removed as soon as possible. 
By carefully planting out from pots so prepared. serious 
injury to the tap-roots may be avoided; and that part of 
the business should be kept in view as of primary import- 
ance in the cultivation of poppies. 
In the selection of garden poppies, the showy annual 
kinds should, as remarked above, bave special attention ; 
and the shortest way to deal with them is to sow them 
where they are to stand, and thin them out in good tine, 
so that they do not crowd each other injuriously. The 
most generally useful of the perennial poppies is the great 
scarlet, or Siberian poppy (Pupacer bracleatum). This is 
