306 SHKUBBERIES AND FLOWER-GARDENS. [CHAP. 



Sow in January, under a frame and light, but take care to have 

 the earth, to a foot and a half deep, taken out previously and well 

 frosted, and, when thawed again, put it back into the frame. 

 This destroys all vermin. Make it fine, and sow your seeds in 

 very shallow diills, four inches apart, covering the seed in the 

 slightest possible manner. I should, perhaps, have first said that 

 the seed should be saved from a semi-double plant, the stem of 

 which is strong and high, the flowers large, thick and round, and 

 of brilliant colour ; and also that it should be gathered in a dry 

 time, scraped off from the stalk by patiently using your finger- 

 nails for the work, and kept in a dry, though airy place, till the 

 time for sowing. Let your seed-bed be in an eastern aspect, the 

 one best suited to the ranunculus whether a seedling or a flower- 

 ing plant ; water with a fine-rosed watering-pot, so as to keep up 

 a continual moisture, and, when the plants are up, give plenty of 

 air ; remove the light from the frame, and cover over with hurdles 

 or a thick covering of netting. Do not move these young plants 

 till their leaves are perfectly dead, and then do as with young 

 anemones. By offsets. The time of planting out your old root 

 is precisely that directed as the proper time for planting out the 

 anemone ; and, it is at the time of planting that you part the 

 offsets from the mother-roots. They are easily discerned, each 

 complete root having a bud enveloped, as it were, in a greyish 

 down ; the under part being composed of several dark-brown 

 claws, for the most part tending inwards at their points. These 

 look as if perfectly dead, but a few days under ground plumps 

 them up to a considerable size ; and it is even, with some, the 

 practice to put the roots into a basin of water a few hours pre- 

 vious to planting them, a practice of very doubtful utility. The 

 offsets that you take off are just as fit for blowers as the mother- 

 roots ; they do not, like the hyacinth and tulip, require nursery 

 beds to bring them into flowering in a course of years ; therefore 

 there are no instructions necessary further as to the propagating 

 by offsets. But as to general cultivation something must be said. 

 The florists invariably plant them in beds in the manner described 

 under the head Hyacinth^ except that they are not to be planted 

 at any more or less than an inch and a half under ground ; but 

 they flourish also either in clumps in the border, or in pots in the 

 green-house. In either of these cases, the soil that the ranunculus 

 likes is a good fresh, strong, rich loamy one ; or, if you prepare 



