26 
GLENNT ON THE ANEMONE. 
be raised from the selection, therefore any 
flower that is very bright and moderately 
formed, any that is very large, very thick 
petalled, or with more than one row of them, 
may be marked as desirable, taken up with a 
good ball of earth, and carefully removed to 
the place you mean to grow them in. They 
should be replanted in rich soil without dis- 
turbing the roots. If this be done well, and 
each plant be covered with a large flower-pot, 
with the hole stopped up, to keep off the sun 
and wind the first day or two, the chance 
will be in favour of your saving seed the 
first season ; wc ought, however, to begin 
watching the beds from which we make the 
selection, from the time the first flowers open, 
and to remove those we desire to possess as 
soon as we can discover them, before any of 
their flowers are wasted. The seed is woolly 
and attached but slightly, so that the plants 
want constant watching, or the wind would 
blow it away altogether, like the seed of a 
thistle. The bed therefore should be picked 
over daily when the seed begins to ripen, and 
in very dry hot weather, twice a day, for it is 
not well to pick off the heads of seed before 
they begin to loosen. The seed as picked off 
should be put into a box rather deep, to pre- 
vent it blowing out again, for the seed will 
all disengage itself after gathering, the same 
as it would on the plant, and the box then 
secures it ; some put it in bags, but this 
should not be, till it is thoroughly dried. The 
seed thus saved from good picked flowers will 
at least afford a chance of better another year; 
and the plan, which is not a bad one, of sow- 
ing seed directly it is gathered, answers pretty 
well, except in very severe winters ; but there 
is danger of losing the plants while they are 
so small, as they must of necessity be when 
only sown two or three months before a win- 
ter usually commences. When common Ane- 
mones are raised for mixtures, the roots of 
which are to be sold by weight for common 
border flowers, little else is done than to 
rake a border or bed even, rub the seed out 
in earth or sand, sow it as evenly as possible 
all over, and rake it in as you would onion or 
turnip seed. Here it remains with occasional 
watering, and the bed kept clear from weeds 
(which spring up sooner and stronger than 
the Anemones), until they flower, simply 
covering them with open litter, such as peas- 
haulm, long broken straw, or other lightly 
lying stuff, that will keep off wind and frost 
whenever either prevails. But with choice 
seed, to which we look for something valuable, 
and of which we can hardly afford to lose a 
grain, lest it should be the best, we prefer 
sowing in spring, according to the following 
plan. The seed of the Anemone is attached 
to a woolly substance that renders it difficult 
to separate, unless it be rubbed in dry sand 
or earth, but when mixed with this it sepa- 
rates easily, and is ready for sowing. There 
are those who sow in boxes, but as the plant 
is hardy, all that is necessary is to provide a 
good rich loamy bed, not too strong, rake 
it very level, and sow the seeds very thinly 
all over it, then sift some mould finely over 
it, to cover every seed, but not too much. 
Here they may take their chance with all the 
weather, until they come up, when they must 
be occasionally watered and weeded, for to 
allow weeds to grow up among them would 
be to retard their growth, and in all proba- 
bility kill an)' that were weakly, and these 
are mostly the best. The importance, there- 
fore, of removing the weeds must be obvious. 
If the seed has been sown pretty well, and is 
evenly distributed over the bed, the only 
thing required is this continual watching and 
destroying the weeds. We have more than 
once raised the seedlings, and never removed 
them till they bloomed, but every plant was 
about two inches from any other, and a large 
breadth was sown too. It was by well mixing 
the seed with three times its bulk of silver 
sand, and then carefully spreading it well, that 
we got it thin and sufficiently distant. One 
bed continued partially blooming from the 
autumn through a mild winter, and in spring 
we removed the best with a trowel, after well 
watering them, and planted them without 
disturbing the roots, in a bed six inches apart 
every way, and here they remained two whole 
seasons before the foliage decayed. We con- 
tinued removing the best from the seed bed 
from time to time, so long as there were any 
worth removing. During all this time the 
weeds were pulled up as fast as they appeared 
and got large enough to be taken hold of, 
and some of the weakest and smallest in the 
first instance proved the best when they be- 
came matured. By mixing the seed with 
silver sand and rubbing it well to separate it 
among the sand, the whiteness of the sand 
shows where the seed lies, and enables us to 
scatter it evenly, which is not the case where 
it is separated in mould, as it all appears of a 
colour with the bed we are sowing it upon, 
and we cannot see where it lies. Of course 
we advocate the practice we found so suc- 
cessful. When the foliage turns yellow or 
brown and decays, the roots may be safely 
lifted and dried in the shade, but as they are 
all supposed to be different varieties, that is, 
have been selected for something good in 
quality, and seedlings are, when good and 
distinct, worth naming, every root, or rather, 
patch of roots, for in a summer or two they 
become so, must be kept in a bag by itself, 
with its number or name ; but if the inten- 
tion is to keep them as mixtures, this trouble 
