260 
FLORICULTURAL NOTICES. 
Seeds should be intrusted to the ground in dry weather, though it is of great 
moment that they should be visited soon after with gentle showers. The dryness 
at the time of sowing is essential to enable the operator to keep the ground open 
and porous on the top ; for by trampling and raking it while wet, the seeds would 
be shut up, as it were, in a prison, and would not germinate at all readily. The 
advantage of subsequent rains is to soften and swell the different parts of the seed, 
burst its integument, and assist in developing its vegetative powers. The month 
of March is thus the one which Nature indicates as the seed-sowing time, since it 
is generally dry, and is followed by the genial showers of April. And the nearer 
all other sowings can be made to correspond with this in respect to the weather, 
the better chance will they have of succeeding. It is remarkable that seeds which 
have to lie a long time in the ground before the occurrence of congenial weather, 
never produce such fine or healthy plants as those which develop themselves imme- 
diately under favouring influences. And this fact should teach the cultivator to 
calculate as accurately as he can on the state of the weather which will follow his 
sowings, and even to put off any sowing which may be deemed necessary at a 
particular time until a prospect of suitable weather arrives. 
In sowing seeds, the great art is to collect them just when they are dry and 
ripe in themselves, and likewise dry externally. A bright sunny day is the time 
for this. But it is of as much consequence to have the seeds hardened and dried 
by maturity, as it is to catch them free from moisture by rain or dew. Half the 
failures that are experienced with the seeds of annuals (and particularly of com- 
posite flowering kinds) are caused by collecting them before they are properly 
ripened, swelled, or even formed. The careful and judicious cultivator will attend 
as much to the one of these matters as to the other. 
We must now quit this topic for a time. Our observations have perhaps been 
too minute, and dealt too much with well-known facts. Yet we feel that a worse 
fault would have been the superficial notice of the several questions, without 
entering into any. If details are tedious, they are also useful ; the study of them 
has elevated many a man in the scale of society : no one has ever risen by their 
neglect. 
And it is the same here with things as with persons. Attention to trifling 
circumstances is the secret of plant- culture. 
FLORICULTURAL NOTICES. 
NEW OR BEAUTIFUL PLANTS FIGURED IN THE LEADING BOTANICAL PERIODICALS 
FOR NOVEMBER. 
Abu'tilon vitifo'lium. “ This fine Malvaceous plant is a native of Chili, whence it appears 
to have been introduced, about the year 1836, by Captain Cottingham, of Dublin. It was noticed 
in this work in July, 1840, when it was stated that it had proved quite hardy in Ireland, having stood 
in a south border, without protection, for three years. Under such circumstances it must be a 
