THE FLORAL WORLD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 
329 
separate the seeds and sow in pans and boxes, and keep them in 
frames or pits, or under the stage of a greenhouse, all the winter. 
This is the best method, for it ensures early germination, without 
drying of the seed, and gives the cultivator command of the seed- 
ling plants from the first. In such a case we should prefer to pot 
all the earliest plants and flower them in a cool, airy greenhouse, and 
plant out all the late ones, and wait a little longer for their flowers. 
Now, the inexperienced amateur will want to know how long we 
must wait to see the flowers of the seedlings. Well, comparatively 
speaking, no time at all. If seedling roses start early, most of them 
will flower the first season, and the remainder will flower the second. 
We have flowered seedlings in pots in forty-five days from the date 
of sow'ing the seed, but as a rule they need five or six months grow- 
ing before they flower, and those that flower latest are generally the 
best. Probably some of those that flower first deserve to be saved, 
for they present lovely little flowers, sometimes quite novel in colour, 
and as I’ound as clierries, and not much larger. Some day a pro- 
phetic amateur will be wise enough to keep some of the best of the 
most precocious seedling roses, and by this conservative procedure 
provide us with a companion rose to the Lawrence or Pairy roses, 
which have been too much overshadowed by the thumpers and thun- 
derers of the exhibition table. 
The raiser of seedlings must make much of promises. What- 
ever promises well must be kept and propagated. A seedling rose 
never declares itself as “ first in the throng ” by its first flower, or 
even by its first half-dozen. Remember that, all you aspirants for 
floral fame. You must have prophetic insight, or you will be con- 
tinually consigning to the rubbish heap possible competitors with 
Marechal Niel, or Gloire de Dijon, or Baroness Rothschild, or Victor 
Verdier, or something else. Let us suppose now that you have 
flowers of promise. In the first place bring pencil and note-book, 
and give the plant a provisional name or number, and make an entry 
descriptive of both leafage and flower, and a very rough and hasty 
description will suffice. Next adopt whatever measures are most 
convenient for its multiplication. You may enter a few buds in 
brier or Manetti stocks, and you may also put a few cuttings or eyes 
in pans of sandy soil, over a gentle hot-bed, to ensure a few plants 
on their own roots. When the cool autumn days return you must 
separate the plant from the crowd, and give it a separate place on 
rich soil in an open situation, and it must be moderately pruned 
back to ensure bloom the next season from the ripest wood, and 
thus, giving it a good chance, you may hope for a reward of your 
labours. The second bloom will surpass the first, and not unseldom 
the third bloom will surpass the second ; but in the third year your 
seedling will probably be at its best, and you may make up your 
mind whether it is best to keep it, sell it, or burn it. Be not trou- 
bled if after the careful trial of three years you have to burn many; 
but notwithstanding such a painful expectation, do the thing well, or 
do not dabble in seedlings at all. You must make stock of every 
promising plant, and you must courageously destroy all the evidently 
inferior ones, and of these you will have plenty. In the event of a 
November. 
