18 
PROPAGATION OF TROP^OLUM TRICOLORUM. 
had the opportunity of publishing. It destroys entirely every objection to the 
planting of exotics in beds ; and a very slight superficial layer of earth will conceal 
all the partition walls, and leave the same unbroken surface which is a concomitant 
of the old system. 
To bring plants in conservatories to the perfection of which they are susceptible, 
and render each a handsome as well as prolific specimen, it will be important that 
their young branches should be pruned or stopped for the first two or three years, 
which will both give them a bushy character, and make them far more productive 
of blossoms. The practice may, indeed, be continued throughout their entire growth 
when it is thought advisable. 
It would take up too much of our room to add a list of the plants most suitable 
for the purpose herein discussed. In the genera Chorozema^ Hovea^ Pimelea, Erica, 
Azalea, Camellia-, Rhododendron, Brugmansia, Acacia, Luculia, Enhlanthus, 
Leonotis, Fuchsia, Eriostemon, Eutaxia, and very many besides, species of great 
beauty, and of a remarkable diversity of aspect, may be met with. And if any of 
the taller of them sliould, in spite of the restraints already hinted at, exhibit too 
unconquerable a propensity to rise or spread and injure the remainder, we would 
advise their immediate eradication, supplanting them by species of more moderate 
tendencies. , It is solely by thus removing ungainly specimens before they have had 
time to hurt the choicer ones, that tlie beauty of a collection can be established. 
PROPAGATION OF TR0PJ50LUM TRICOLORUM. 
Few plants have held a longer or more decided sway over public esteem than 
TropcEolum iricolorum. The peculiar elegance of its growth, and the extraordinary 
prodigality with which it develops its beautiful tricoloured blossoms, have always 
given it attractions which every person professes himself an admirer of, and which 
will most likely afford pleasure as long as any of the plants at present noted for 
beauty are cultivated. 
Singularly enough, however, this pretty species, though introduced thirteen or 
fourteen years ago, has never become absolutely common ; and its price in nurseries 
yet ranges too high for amateurs in a small way to be general purchasers of it. We 
have very seldom seen it in window cultivation, never among a cottager's plants, 
rarely in those gardens where notliing but a small greenhouse is kept, and in the 
best places usually no more than two or three specimens. 
This scarcity, or, at least, far from general possession, of a plant which must 
stand high in universal favour, is assignable to no conceivable cause but the uncer- 
tamty with which it can be propagated. The common mode of increasing it by 
cuttings is exceedingly liable to failure, from the very tender and succulent nature 
