Part II. PRIMULA. 283 



flowering they should be potted in May, and kept shaded till 

 they have recovered. The potting is usually a process of care- 

 fully shaking away all the soil, and putting the plant in fresh com- 

 post, and the practice is well-founded, for it is the habit of this 

 plant and its wild allies to put forth young roots higher up on the 

 stem every year, and the encouragement of these young roots is 

 sure to lead to a good result. Four-inch pots are generally used, 

 and are quite large enough where the annual disrooting system is 

 practised, one sucker of a kind being placed in the centre of each 

 pot. I , however, doubt the wisdom of applying this system of pot- 

 ting to every planf, and should select those that had sound roots, 

 and were set firmly and low in the earth, and, disturbing the ball 

 but little, give them a careful shift into a five-inch pot. In case 

 of growing the alpine kinds in pots — and they are quite as well 

 worthy of it as the others — instead of confining ourselves to one 

 plant in a small pot, we should put five or six of a kind in a 

 six-inch pot, one in the centre and four or five round the side, 

 thus forming a handsome specimen. Or the same principle 

 might be carried out in pans, and with the free-growing florists' 

 varieties as well as the alpines. In summer all the plants should 

 be placed in the open air, and on boards, slates, a bed of coal- 

 ashes, or some substance that can prevent the entrance of worms 

 into the pots. Some careful growers guard the' plants from 

 heavy rains ; this is unnecessary if the pots are perfectly drained 

 and everything else as it ought to be. The florists rarely plunge . 

 them ; but, if plunged in a bed of clean sharp sand, or any like 

 material placed on a well-drained bottom, and free from the 

 earthworm, they would be in a safer and certainly less trouble- 

 some condition, because free from the vicissitudes that must 

 attend aU plants exposed in a fragile porous shell containing but 

 a few inches of soil. 



Prescriptions for the ailing human creature were never mea- 

 sured out with more care than the mixtures of soil recommended 

 by some authors for Auriculas ; and prescriptions never did less 

 good than these, or were less founded on philosophical prin- 

 ciples. The perfect development of the choicest florists' kinds is 

 secured by a simple mixture of one part good turfy loam, one part 

 leaf-mould, and another composed of well-decayed cow manure 

 and silver or sharp river sand. It should be observed that 

 some pot their plants in August, but just after the flowering is 

 the best time, as, if disrooted in the autumn, the plants have not 



