THE ERICA. 
149 
I will here just remark, that although I am no advocate for the 
one-shift system, as it is termed, after a plant is once well 
established, I have no objection to shifting it into a pot two 
sizes larger than that in which it has been growing, provided 
the plant is in good health and it being the growing season. 
There is one principal operation indispensable to the Erica, if fine 
specimens are desired, and that is, the formation of the plant in 
its young state; this is something like the foundation of a house 
to the well-being of the plant, for unless this be attended to while 
young, the plant will assume a naked irregular appearance when 
old. 
I will now proceed to place the Heaths in two classes : the first, 
the soft-wooded or free growing kinds ; and the latter, the liard- 
wooded or comparatively slow growing kinds. 
As regards the former, they require quite different treatment 
to the latter, inasmuch as they require the knife; that is to say, 
most of the free growing heaths require to be cut down after 
blooming, to keep them bushy, for if allowed to go on year after 
year without this process being observed, they will become poor, 
naked specimens, only fit for the rubbish heap; while, if ju¬ 
diciously pruned at proper seasons, you may have such as Erica 
Willmoriana, hybrida, &c. in four years, four feet high and four 
feet through. 
With respect to the hard-wooded kinds, such as Hartnellii, 
Massonii, Aristata major, &c., if they are managed properly they 
never ought to lose a leaf, much less a shoot or branch. In 
order to arrive at this state of perfection with this class of heaths, 
they should not be kept in a higher temperature, in winter, than 
50° at most, and never be watered at any other time than early in 
the morning, so that the plants may dry off before night. Watering 
heaths at night is one of the causes of mildew; through this 
baneful practice in winter many valuable plants are entirely lost. 
I will here observe, that the best remedy for this disease is plenty 
of air and a complete smothering of dry brown sulphur. Another 
cause of mildew is excessive rain in autumn, which ultimately 
brings on a more destructive fungus than mildew, and the only 
remedy I know is to remove the plants to the driest part of a cold 
greenhouse. The fungus I allude to is a small yellow spot on 
