ITS HABIT AND CULTURE. 
309 
stop them to make them bushy, or let go on 
their own way. When shifted they should be 
potted in forty-eights, (pots forty-eight to the 
cast,) and placed again in the frame, watered 
and shaded as before, and their progress 
watched and regulated according to their 
habits, as directed in the early part of this 
article. It must be recollected that if the 
Fuchsia is kept soppy and wet, the leaves will 
drop, and if neglected and allowed to get dry 
the leaves will turn rusty and fall, so that care 
should be taken that the soil is moist, but that 
wet shall run away freely ; and if any one 
looks wet while the others are dry, you must 
turn out the ball and look well to the drainage, 
for it is evidently faulty and the plant in dan- 
ger, until the cause is removed. From this sized 
pot they should be turned into thirty-twos, 
(pots thirty-two to the cast,) and the same 
treatment persevered in further until the end of 
the summer. Many of the plants will bloom 
in fine order in their progress ; and during 
their bloom, if they are wanted, they must be 
shaded from the sun altogether all the middle 
of the day, as it naturally affects their colour ; 
on the other hand the shade must not take 
away all the air, for on their having a good sup- 
ply of this much depends. During the entire 
winter they must be protected from frost by 
covering the frames, but they must not have 
heat nor much wet ; they in fact grow but 
little in the winter advantageously, though 
they could be, and by many are, kept growing 
on. In the spring, when they start growing 
again, give them fresh pots a size larger, and 
treat them the same ; suffer not the slightest 
frost, to reach them, but give all the air you 
can in mild weather, and not too much wet, 
though they must not be neglected so as to 
dry up too much. This is not the rapid way 
of growing this plant, but it is the right way, 
and plants so grown will be a credit instead of 
a discredit to the gardener. Coarse minded 
people value size and ramping growth ; not so 
people of taste. Here your plants will be 
compact, rich in foliage, handsome in form, 
and the flower of a good colour ; whereas we 
must confess that of the hundreds we have 
seen this season, not a solitary plant have we ob- 
served that had not suffered in appearance from 
the foolish manner in which gardeners have 
been led to excite their plants. Hoses have 
been suffering from the same cause, and not a 
decent plant, not one capable of holding its 
position without props sticking about it in 
all directions in the most ungardener-like 
way imaginable, have we seen. Indeed, the 
silly mode of j udging things by their size, 
adopted at too many shows, and by too many 
societies, has all but destroyed the character 
of the Rose, the Geranium, the Fuchsia, and 
many green-house plants. A gardener, to 
follow the taste of the finicking judges of the 
day, has to^ become a carpenter — a mechanic, 
a sort of artificial flower-maker. Roses are 
"produced and called standards when there are 
sloping sticks standing outwards all round 
like the ropes of a balloon, or the wires of an 
umbrella, and this is called gardening. Fuchsias 
are the same; great sprawling branches propped 
up into their places, and lanky limbs twisted 
and distorted to bring them into some shape, 
have distinguished all the shows as yet, and 
we are almost ashamed to say, that neither 
beauty nor usefulness enters for a moment into 
the heads of the gardeners who hope for 
prizes in the present day. It matters not, 
however, how soon some Society starts to give 
prizes for legitimate objects of gardening ; the 
best and handsomest plants for use and beauty, 
fit to grace a conservatory or a drawing-room, 
and not to the wretched bird-cage looking things 
with bundles of laths sticking about them in 
all directions, which we see almost exclusively 
at the public shows. Fuchsias grown upon the 
plan we have laid down will year after year 
grow in size, and increase in beauty ; but if 
the frost touch them the young wood will die 
black, and you must then carefully prune them, 
so that the new wood will come into form. 
The Fuchsia is, in this country, nearly de- 
ciduous ; many persons lay them by in the 
winter to rest and give them no water ; we 
should only lessen the allowance ; but, inas- 
much as the plants under this system are 
never excited, they want no rest but that which 
they will of themselves take. We have grown 
Fuchsias upon the shift and slow-growing 
principle for ten or eleven years, until they 
are at length in good sized tubs, and though 
we cannot put ten-feet trees in frames, they 
do well in an orangery, where neither heat nor 
cold annoys them; and they make noble objects 
on the lawn all summer-time. 
It matters not at what period of the year 
you take cuttings ; and if you please you may 
take them once a month, and have all the 
ages doing alike in the same pit, and subjected 
to the same treatment. As a contrast to the 
great ugly Brobdignag things, that please the 
vulgar taste of the present day, we should 
like to see prizes for the smallest plants that 
could be produced in perfection of flower. 
There would be some merit in hastening the 
bloom of a plant while it is small ; there is 
not the least merit, not even the merit of a 
garden labourer, in producing large plants ; 
anybody can use the means, a boy can give 
the required attention ; and if he could lift 
the pots, we could find one (nay, a dozen or 
two) that would shame the gold-medal winners 
of the day. We do hope and trust that next 
season may produce us a few honest gardener- 
like plants, and that the public will force the 
