242 THE FLORIST AND 
possible. But little air will be necessary during the clay, if shaded, but on 
all hot and still summer evenings, the glass should be taken oif entirely, for 
three or four hours, which will be found to give a healthy appearance to the 
plants. 
Before the cold chills of autumn, the plants will have to be tak*en to the 
stove, and except the flower is wanted, kept as cool as the house will allow, 
till after the turn of the days. Now comes the time for preparing an extra 
plant. In February give the plants a good cleaning, and plunge in a gentle 
bottom heat, which will soon induce a fresh growth ; examine the roots, and 
if well out around the outside of the ball, give a shift into two sizes larger 
pot; the flowers will now soon show, and if kept in a growing atmosphere, 
will be large and fine. When the flower is over, cut back to form a nice 
bushy plant, and keep in a moist pit to make fresh growth. 
Providing the plant is in good condition, and the pot well filled with roots, 
it may have another shift, and by the following season, from one to two 
dozen heads of flowers may be reasonably anticipated. All the training 
required with these plants, is to occasionally peg down the shoots, when 
young, or tie out when older, to allow an even uniform growth. 
It is absolutely necessary to keep these plants entirely free from insects, 
or no flowers worthy the name will ever be obtained ; green fly, mealy bug, 
and scale, are all sure to find them, if the house contains them, especially 
the latter. We find nothing more effectual than a washing with lime water, 
precipitated, for the scale ; a thorough exterminating war with the mealy 
bug ; and the well known remedy of tobacco fumes, for the green fly. 
The pots should be well drained, and the soil as rough a turfy loam as 
possible ; and the top soil of a wood, decayed leaves, or peat earth, equal 
parts of the two, with a sixth of white sand and charcoal. 
TiLGATE. 
SUBSOIL PLOWING. 
BY ANDREW m'fARLAND, M. D. 
Among the additional means of nutrition which subsoil plowing opens, is 
that of moisture in a season of drought. This process, to the crop of maize 
in a New England latitude, is equal to a policy of insurance. Where this 
crop falls short of yielding a fair return, in a great majority of instances 
the failure "is due to insufficient moisture at that part of the season when the 
kernel is filling. In the growth of this most important New England grain. 
