81 
THE FLORAL WORLD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 
really required, for in dull weather delicate flowers will attain per- 
fection without it ; but if an east wind and a scorching sun, or a 
sou’-wester with heavy rain, prevail, the shades must be used to 
protect the more highly -finished flowers, and especially such as are 
of thin texture and light colour. The caps must be covered with 
fresh cabbage or rhubarb leaves, or paper. A shade may be m- 
provised by means of a board and a flower-pot, as in the subjoined 
figure. The board must have a hole in the centre, and a slit cut 
from it to the edge to pass the stalk of the flower through. The 
boards will of course be firmly fixed to stakes, and the flower-pots 
will have their bottoms knocked out and covered with w ire gauze or 
glass. In place of a flower pot a bell-glass may be used. 
To have cards and moss in boxes in readiness will be one good 
step towards achieving conquest in the strife. You will, of course, 
have severally thinned the buds on your best trees, especially if 
they stand remote from the garden in a nursery quarter, and you 
will have supplied with regular doses of liquid manure such of them 
as may have appeared to need it, taking care also not to overfeed 
any, lest, instead of huge perfect roses, they should present ugly 
green centres. Very well. You have next to cut the flowers, 
blow, the best time for this business is the morning of the show, 
and you cannot be too early, for the flowers will hold their own 
longer if you can cut them before the sun has shed one ray on their 
perishable petals. It is good practice to cut and stage them at 
once ; therefore your boxes and tubes should be taken to the garden 
shed the night before, and your man should be encouraged to meet 
you on the ground at daybreak by any kind of encouragement you 
consider best adapted to his constitution. If lie is one of the right 
sort, it will be enough to say, “ Call me at three, Sanders, and don’t 
cut a flower until I come.” 
Alwny s cut your finest flowers first, and arrange them as you 
proceed, to insure a telling effect, placing the largest at the back, 
and putting the yellows as far apart as possible, and taking care to 
have light tiowers at each end of the lot, and here and there in the 
hack row to draw out the eyes of thejudges, but in such a way as not to 
betray any strict formality. If you have but a few light flowers, 
and put them close together near the centre, you will spoil the very 
best of the dark flowers that happen to be on the outsides. Spread 
