FORCING ROSES. 
35 
contiguous apparatus, (like the one described in our last,) would supply ample heat, 
with the great advantages of regular equable temperature and moisture if required ; 
the latter, a circumstance of moment in respect to cleanliness. 
In our plan the back and front walls are of brick ; but in the original, wood, if 
preferred, is deemed admissible. A door in the middle is provided for, just large 
enough to admit the gardener to creep in and water the plants by reaching over 
them from one side to the other, without any inside walk ; but the tank system 
would allow of a back walk. 
A strong latticed floor is fixed six inches above the flue, (if that be adopted,) and 
on that the pots — each having a pan under it — are placed. In the tank system a 
bed of sand and screenings of charcoal might obviate the necessity of employing 
the pans. 
The machinery arranged, we now come to the treatment. 
All plants to be forced into blossom by Christmas day, are to be placed in 
the house on the first day of October, increasing the heat gradually from sixty to 
eighty degrees by day, but suffering it to recede much lower by night; a slight 
frost or two early in October will be beneficial, by causing the plants to push more 
vigorously after the heat is employed. Hence it follows that at the first introduction 
no artificial stimulus is given beyond that excited by confined sun heat. 
A second set of plants intended to blossom from the middle of January to the 
middle of February, is brought into the house on the first of November, and a third 
set on the first of December ; these will blossom so as to keep up the succession 
to the middle of March. Fresh sets are to be excited each month, supplying bloom 
till the middle of June, when several varieties in the open ground will naturally 
come into blossom. 
The plan thus sketched from the clear and unambiguous description of an able 
writer who had neither object nor motive which could induce him to mislead, is 
equally luminous and feasible ; and we therefore proceed to the detail of progressive 
secondary treatment. 
It is well known that roses are exceedingly liable to be infested with a peculiar 
greenfly, (Aphis Bosas,) and with a grub or caterpillar, the larva of the rose-beetle, 
which may most pertinently be called the worm in the bud. To afford means of 
effectually defeating the former enemy, the entire erection, and particularly the 
glazing of the sashes, ought to be made as nearly as possible air-tight, provision 
being made for giving air by close-fitting but moveable sashes in front, and 
corresponding trap-doors in the back wall. With these precautions : — " As soon as 
the plants begin to push their buds, whether any aphides appear upon the young 
shoots or not, fill the frame with tobacco-smoke, and do not fail to repeat this 
fumigation every third week till the flowers appear, smoking for the last time just 
before any red tints are seen on the earliest buds. The young shoots must also be 
carefully examined when only half an inch long, and any grubs feeding upon them 
destroyed." 
