THE LADY’S MAGAZINE OF GARDENING. 
15 
To have small flowering plants, cuttings should be taken off while the 
plant is in a flowering state, and put into thumb pots, which should be 
placed under a bell-glass. The cuttings will strike readily; and by 
shifting the plants two or three times into larger and longer pots, they will 
soon become bushy and well shaped, and will perfect fine racemes of 
flowers. 
Fuchsia Corymbiflora is a very vigorous-growing plant, and considerably 
more hardy than F. fulgens, to which it bears considerable resemblance 
in form though not in colour. It is, indeed, apparently the hardiest 
fuchsia in cultivation ; and it continues in flower much later in the season. 
The house my plants are now in is kept at from forty-five to fifty-five 
degrees of heat, and the plants are as luxuriant in their growth as if it 
were the middle of summer. There is a plant of F. fulgens in the same 
house, which lias not only done flowering, but is losing its leaves and 
ripening its wood. 
Bagshot, 
December 7th , 1840. 
ON FLOWER-SHOWS. 
BY AN AMATEUR OF FLOWERS. 
I have long been an exhibitor at flower-shows, but I have lately seen 
so many unfair practices among the exhibitors of florists’ flowers that I am 
almost discouraged from the pursuit. There can be no doubt that flower- 
shows in their original form were productive of great good. They are 
useful in exciting emulation, and in inducing many amateurs to cultivate 
flowers who would otherwise be too indolent to take the trouble. They 
do good to nurserymen, as they are the means of bringing new plants 
into notice more rapidly than they could be brought in any other way ; 
for every person who sees a new and beautiful flower, feels a desire to 
possess it, particularly if it be much admired and talked about, which it is 
sure to be at a flower-show. These meetings are also very advantageous 
to gardeners, as their prejudices are softened down, and their manners 
ameliorated by mixing with other persons whose pursuits are the same as 
their own. When a gardener shuts himself up in his own garden, he can 
only benefit by his own experience; but when he hears the results of the 
experience of others, even though he may not choose exactly to imitate 
their practices, new ideas are raised in his mind, and something good is 
almost sure to be the consequence. 
These advantages are, however, more than counterbalanced by the 
tricks often resorted to by the growers of florists’ flowers. These flowers, 
like the overgrown and bloated cattle exhibited at cattle-shows, are more 
