v.] 



CUCUMBER. 



95 



been thus prepared, take four pots of the plants ; those which 

 appear to be the finest, of course ; put the mould into a round 

 heap under the middle of each light of the new bed, make 

 a hole in the centre of the heap suitable for your purpose. Take 

 the pots of plants, one at a time, put the fingers of one of your 

 hands on the top of the earth of the pot, then turn the pot upside 

 down, give the rim of it a little tap upon the edge of the frame, 

 pushing the oyster-shell with the fore finger of the other hand, 

 and the plants and earth will come clean out of the pot in a con- 

 nected ball, which with both hands you are to deposit in the hole 

 which you have made in the heap in the centre of the light. When 

 you have thus deposited it, draw the earth of the heap well up 

 about the ball, and press it a little with your fingers, taking care 

 of two things, first, that the hole be sufficiently deep to admit the 

 ball down into it so low that the earth of the hill, when drawn up 

 about the plants, may come up quite to the lower side of the stem 

 of the seed-leaves ; and, second, taking care that the points of the 

 leaves of the p ants be not more than six inches distance from the 

 glass. While the plants were in the seed-bed, it might have been 

 necessary to w ater them once or twice, and especially about four 

 days before their removal out of the pots ; and now again, at this 

 final transplanting, a little water should be given, gently poured on 

 in one place, between the stems of the two plants, and the hole 

 that that water makes should be covered again with a little fresh 

 earth. The other four pots of plants, which you do not want_, may 

 be sunk in the earth in any part of this new bed, being watered 

 occasionally, and finally flung away if you do not want them. 

 But at this time of the year the water must not be cold : it must 

 have stood in the bed, in a small watering-pot, to get warm, and 

 this must be observed continually until a much later season of the 

 year. By the time that you have these plants in the bearing-bed, 

 the latter end of January will have come, and you will have all the 

 difficulties of hard weather to contend with. The bed itself will 

 not have a sufficiently strong heat for more than about a fort- 

 night, and therefore linings must be prepared, the dung for which 

 must be got ready in time, as mentioned in Chapter III., and the 

 lining is to be made thus ; the first lining is put at the back, or 

 north side of the bed. It is, in fact, another narrow hot-bed, 

 built up along at the back of the original one, perpendicular, as 

 near as may be, till you approach the top, twenty inches through. 



