288 



THE MOIST STOVE. 



for the young plants, whether from seeds or cuttings, when they are 

 potted off. Tills is necessary, because the latter require to have more air 

 admitted to them as well as light. There is no difficulty in dividing such 

 a pit at pleasure, because having a boarded partition made to sliift from 

 one place to another is all that is required. Thus one or two hghts may 

 nclosed for one purpose, and one or more for another. 

 Many thick and hard-skinned seeds do not vegetate freely ; in such 

 cases it is necessary to steep them in moderately warm water for a few 

 days before they are sown, and to keep them at the same time in a warm 

 place. Mi*. Otto, the director of the Berhn Botanic Gardens, in a com- 

 munication to the Prussian Gardening Society, recommends steeping old 

 seeds, or such as there may be doubts of their vegetating, for twenty-four 

 or forty- eight hours, in a bottle containing oxalic acid, at the end of which 

 period germination vdll have commenced, which when observed the seeds 

 are to be carefully taken out and sown in the usual manner. He also 

 recommends wetting a woollen cloth with the same acid, on which the 

 seeds will germinate ; and also, by watering the mould in which seeds from 

 twenty to forty years old have been sown, with a weak solution of it, he 

 has succeeded in getting up plants, whilst the same sorts sown in the usual 

 manner did not grow at all. 



M. Bosse, in the work last quoted, states that the germination of seeds 

 is accelerated by steeping them in malic acid, and observes, that seeds 

 covered with the pulp of rotten apples have been known to vegetate 

 sooner than when treated in the ordinary course. 



Some have recommended milk, others diluted mmiatic acid, and many 

 pare with a sharp knife the shell or skin of the seed, just round the point 

 tlu'ough which the embryo shoot is to issue : all or any of these means 

 may be used, but in either case they should be sovni as soon as any sign 

 of sweUing or growth appears. 



If the sowing takes place in spring, which, as we have already observed, 

 is the best time, many of the seeds t^tQ germinate in five or six weeks' 

 time, but the larger and hardier sorts may remain for twelve months or 

 longer before any sign of vegetation appears. We notice this, as it not 

 unfrequently happens that seed-pots are emptied and thrown away just 

 as the process of germination is commencing. 



CUTTINGS. 



The majority of Tropical exoiics that are fm*nished with branches are 

 capable of being propagated by cuttings, which should be taken otf in 



