530 
THE COCKSCOMB, ITS PROPERTIES AND CULTIVATION. 
beyond the edge of the pot, to hide the soil 
and pot-rim. 
The leaves should form a ground-work, as 
it were, to the flower, and form a margin to 
it, not projecting more all round it than one- 
t.hird the width (he ilower is from the centre 
to the side. 
The height of the plant should be only the 
same as its diameter. 
The bloom should not be less than twelve 
inches diameter ; and, therefore, when mea- 
sured over the crown, eighteen inches, 
including the rise, and the foliage three 
inches beyond it all round. 
The colour should be decided and very 
bright ; undulations small, and close together. 
We are quite aware, that this is not to be 
achieved all at once ; but the broader a bloom 
is, the nearer it comes to it ; and all we can 
do is to save seed annually from the broadest 
and best, the most dwarf, and therefore the 
nearest ; pproach; and if this be done annually 
each year may produce something nearer, 
and this is the only true way of advancing 
towards perfection. 
CULTURE OF THE COCKSCOMB. 
Sow the seed in boxes, pans, or wide- 
mouthed pots filled with the loam formed of 
rotted turves, cut thin from a rich pasture, 
and laid together for the purpose, mixed with 
one half its bulk of silver sand ; unless it 
happens, which it will sometimes, that the 
loam is naturally sandy, when less sand will do. 
Place them in a hot-bed whose heat shall range 
from 75° to 85°. The seeds cannot be sown 
too thinly, for they ought to be an inch apart. 
Take care that the soil in the pans does not 
get thoroughly dry, or the seeds will perish. 
The plants will soon be up, when they will 
require to be shaded from the hot sun. 
placed pretty close up to the glass, and have 
a little air by lifting the glass of the frame 
at the back with a wedge or small stone. As 
soon as the plants have the third pair of leaves, 
they will require to be potted in the small 
pots, size sixty. The sa*ne soil is to be used, 
and the heat continued ; therefore, if there is 
any decline indicated, let there be fresh li- 
nings of hot stable-dung to keep it up, for any 
serious decline would spoil them. Here they 
may be grown until they completely fill their 
pots with roots. At this stage we have for 
two years divided our stock ; one half we 
have placed on slates, or tiles, or other hard 
substances, to prevent the roots protruding ; 
the other half we have shaken completely out, 
according to Mr. McEvoy's plan, without 
breaking the fibres, and repotted in clean 
pots of the same size, in light, poor, sandy 
loam ; and if not sandy, we add a third or 
fourth part of sand, thus checking the growth 
very considerably, quite as much as keeping 
them in the original pots, but rather more 
suddenly. Both these, however, were sub- 
milted to the same treatment, replaced in the 
hot- bed, or, more generally, in a new one, 
and kept dry for a day or two, after which 
they must have water. There will be 
found very little, if any, difference in the 
growth of the two ; but in a few days, when 
the shifted ones show their roots through the 
bottom of the pot, they are all to be shifted 
to pots size forty-eight. The flowers now 
very soon appear generally, and the form of 
the crest and the closeness of the texture 
give us a pretty good idea of the promise. 
Broad ones are the best to our fancy, and not 
those which are very long, and, like a cocks- 
comb, thin. Those selected, are shifted to 
pots a size larger, say thirty-twos. This 
shifting must be done without disturbing the 
ball. I have found no remarkable difference 
between those starved in their first pots, and 
those shook out and shifted after McEvoy's 
plan ; though, if the roots were allowed to go 
through the pots into the soil of the hot-bed, 
they would not be starved at all. This renders 
the tiles or slates necessary, so that if the 
roots protrude through the bottom of the pot, 
there shall be no nourishment for them. But 
in shifting from the forty-eights to the thirty- 
twos, we are providing for the growth of the 
flower, which requires better soil and more 
nourishment generally. The object in starving 
the cockscomb till it shows the flower, is this : 
the plant could be grow r n in good soil, and 
with plenty of room, or frequent shifting, to 
two feet high, before the bloom would take 
up the growth ; but if the plant be kept 
starved, so as to produce the crest or incipient 
bloom while the plant is very small, it will 
happen, as in many other seed-bearing plants, 
when the flowers are abundant, as soon as the 
buds begin to swell, the plant is stayed in its 
growth, and the flowers, and fruit, or seed- 
pods take it up. Having, therefore, checked 
the plant, by keeping it in a small pot until 
the bloom appears, we may safely give it all 
the nourishment we can, to encourage the 
large growth of the flower. Let the soil, 
therefore, for the shifts, after the forty-eights 
have produced the flower-crest, be composed 
of the following : the loam from rotted turves, 
which have been cut thin, as for laying down 
on lawns, or its equivalent, one half ; one 
quarter of thoroughly decomposed dung from 
an old melon bed, or its equivalent ; and one * 
fourth sand. When we say its equivalent, 
we mean a composition that shall be like it 
in all respects, or as near it as may be for 
richness. If turves be cut thin, and laid in 
a heap to rot, you may estimate the produce 
at one half loam, and one half vegetable 
