PRACTICAL HINTS ON A FEW SELECT CLIMBING STOVE PLANTS. 
105 
deposit of flocks in all the glasses, with a manifest loss of colour in the floating 
liquids. If, instead of applying lime-water to fluid humates of ammonia, a portion of 
each of the solid humous earths be rubbed in a mortar with some cream of lime, no 
colour will be extracted, even by adding boiling water. 
It thus appears that lime exerts a superior affinity upon humic acid, fixing it 
as an insoluble humate of lime : it likewise attracts it from every other known 
alkaline base. 
The inferences to be drawn from the above experiment are these. All brown 
tinted liquid manures contain humates of an alkaline base : these are doubtful, if 
not dangerous applications, and lime is a remedial antidote. 
If a weak, but perfectly clear solution of guano be occasionally employed, great 
effect has been produced : but then there remains little or no colour visible ; there- 
fore it contains no humate, but its virtue resides wholly in the soluble salts above 
enumerated. 
Dry manures applied to the soil do not yield brown extracts to the moisture 
therein ; and raw sap is always colourless : hence we conclude that brown liquid 
manures are in every case to be employed with the utmost circumspection ; and that 
the humic acid, so long vaunted as an aliment, is in fact a poison, and constitutes 
the sterilising agent of peat, bogs, and barren turbaries. 
PRACTICAL HINTS ON THE MANAGEMENT OF A FEW 
SELECT CLIMBING STOVE PLANTS. 
{Continued from page 89.) 
Since our last hints on this subject were committed to paper, we have had an 
opportunity of conversing with some of the first plant cultivators in the country, and 
of eliciting from several of the principal contributors to the metropolitan exhibitions 
their opinions as to the correctness of our views and practice with regard to training, 
and it is gratifying to know that by those most competent of judging, they were 
approved of. We therefore feel additional interest in pressing them upon the 
attention of our amateur friends, being convinced that if correctly carried out success 
will most assuredly crown their wishes. 
In our remarks upon Allamanda cathartica and grandiflora we omitted to state 
that the blooming branches may be multiplied four-fold by stopping some of the 
strongest shoots, when they are about fifteen or eighteen inches long. About one 
third of the shoot must be removed, and this will induce the plant to produce four 
lateral branches, and hence you will procure four spikes instead of one of bloom. 
This practice, however, must only be adopted with those plants intended for autumn 
blooming, as, if carried out in the spring, it will be found difficult to get the plants into 
VOL. XTV. NO, CLXI. P 
