LIST OF FLOWERS. 317 



June ; and, as to colours, they match the rainbow. I will inention 

 the names of two or three of the early and the double varieties. 

 Early blowers, Due van Thol, Clarimond, Due van Orange. 

 Double, Marriage de ma Fille, doichle red, double yellow. Of 

 single late-blowers there are upwards of six hundred named 

 varieties, so I give none of these. For borders, they are sold by 

 the floiists at five shillings the hundred. All are propagated in 

 the same way : by offsets or by seed ; but most commonly by 

 offsets, because to do it by seed is expensive an;l most tedious, as 

 the seedling plants do not come into flowering till the fifth or 

 sixth year. Dy offsets : When you take out your old bulbs to 

 plant, break off the largest offsets from the sides, and plant them 

 at two or three inches apart in a bed of sandy loam with a sub- 

 stratum of rotted cow-dung at about eight inches beneath the 

 surface. Let the bed be raised a few inches above the adjoining 

 ground and rounded so as to turn off rains, and have it hooped 

 over so that, in severe frosts or long- continued rains, you may 

 throw over a covering to guard against either. Dy seed: Procure 

 the seed from those plants that have the tallest and straightest 

 stems, the flowers the most even, the most clear in the cup, and 

 of the purest colours : and let the seed remain on the plant till 

 the pod in which it is contained becomes of a brown colour, and 

 begins to burst. Sow and manage in the manner directed for the 

 Hyacinth, which see. For bulbs that are already blowers, most 

 florists choose square beds, in which they plant them in rows at 

 seven inches asunder ; the beds being first prepared in this way : 

 they are marked out according as the dimensions are determined 

 on ; then the earth is digged out completely to the depth of 

 tvventy inches or more ; a layer, ten inches thick, of good fresh 

 earth from a rather sandy pasture is put in, and upon it a thin 

 coat of M'ell-rotted cow-dung ; on that, another layer of the fresh 

 pasture mould is laid in, to about four inches above the surface of 

 the ground, in the middle, and sloping down at the sides, where 

 also it should be a little higher than the adjacent ground, to 

 which it will settle. It is left so for ten days, and then, about the 

 end of October, being intersected by lines across and along in 

 such way as for every intersection to be seven inches from the 

 neighbouring ones, holes about four inches deep are made at 

 every one of these, a little drift sand deposited in each hole, and 

 the btdbs are put in and covered over carefully. Beds of this 



