BOOKS EE VIEWED. 



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would give somewhat different directions as to culture. Chapter III. is 

 headed " The Carnation as a garden plant." It is stated that " the layers 

 should be put down at the earliest possible moment, the middle of July 

 being quite late enough, so that nicely rooted plants may be ready for 

 planting any time from the end of August till the middle of September." 

 In the south, layering begins about the third week in July, and is 

 generally finished by the middle of August. The layers are taken off after 

 the middle of September, and the work is continued until the second week 

 in November or later. If Carnations are layered at or before the middle 

 of July, they would not even be in flower, and no admirer of the Carnation 

 would care to disturb his plant at that time. As to the time of planting, 

 there is no need to be in such a hurry. Some twenty-five or thirty years 

 ago, the Show Carnation, that is the flakes and bizarres and the white- 

 ground Picotees, used to be exhibited at Newcastle-on-Tyne, and multitudes 

 of plants might be seen growing in the gardens of cottagers and others in 

 the Tyne valley. These plants were layered in August and planted out 

 about the second week in November, the soil being well prepared and 

 enriched with manure from the sweepings of the cattle market. A trial 

 of this late November planting was for many years made in the south of 

 England, and the plants always succeeded admirably. It is well, as the 

 author suggests, to be careful with manure, but even fresh manure is not 

 injurious if it is placed six inches below the surface. 



There is a chapter on the cultivation of Carnations in pots, which is 

 excellent ; for although this, and indeed all the species of Dianthus, are 

 quite hardy, and well adapted for garden cultivation, the best flowers are 

 undoubtedly obtained from plants grown in glass houses. The manure 

 question is a difficult one for amateurs, and a passage at page 28 is obscure. 

 After instructions for watering, placing sticks to the plants, &c, the 

 cultivator is instructed to "apply manure as required." Probably 

 manure water is meant ; if so, it should be very much diluted, and given 

 seldom. One cultivator, who grows many thousands of all classes in pots 

 under glass, never uses manure water at all, or artificial manure of any 

 kind. A fourth part of good decayed stable manure is mixed with the 

 potting soil, and that is found sufficient to carry the plants through the 

 flowering period. It is a good plan (if fine exhibition blooms are wanted) 

 to place a slight surface dressing of equal parts decayed manure and loam 

 on the surface. Ground oyster- shells in the proportion of a six-inch potful 

 to a barrowload of compost is a better material to keep the compost open 

 than sand. 



The Pink family is also treated in three chapters ; the author has taken 

 much pains here again to trace it through several centuries. At page 51 

 of the history it is stated that " the Pynkes and small feathered Gillofers 

 are like to the double or cloave Gillofers ; " surely this is some confirmation 

 that Chaucer meant the Carnation and not the Clove of commerce when 

 he wrote of the "clow gilofre." 



In the chapter on " Mules or Hybrids" it is stated that the pollen 

 of the Sweet William is impotent applied to the Carnation. If the reader 

 is meant to infer from this that the two do riot cross, it is rather a mis- 

 leading statement, as a cross has been recently obtained between k Uriah 

 Pike ' Carnation and a Sweet William. About a thousand seedlings were 



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