cially his second season, for unless he has had better 
success than most, he has found by more or less bitter 
experience that of the bulblets he planted the first 
season many were never seen in any form again. 
A few varieties will germinate very readily, but most 
varieties will not give more than from 30% to 70% 
germination, unless special treatment is given, and 
some will show only a lone straggler here and there. 
But we can make them do better. 
The beginner usually finds that he has kept his 
bulblets too dry in storage and that he did not peel and 
soak them before planting. Then he plunges to the 
other extreme and keeps them too wet and soaks them 
too long. Possibly as he peeled them he has placed them 
in a bowl of warm water (as he should) and has thought 
to plant them in a day or so, only to find that a long 
cold rain has set in. Then he has been on pins and 
needles for a week or two or three, and not knowing 
what better to do, has still kept them soaking in water, 
perhaps changing the water often, but not getting 
much results in the way of sprouting them. In fact, 
some are becoming water logged, and he is wasting 
much time and patience over them. And after all this 
soaking, many of them are in fine condition to rot when 
he does finally succeed in planting them. The sprout¬ 
ing cabinet and the sand box, described a little later, 
offer simple solutions to this problem. 
In his Nursery Book, in the chapter on seed testing, 
Mr. Bailey shows that a much greater percentage of 
germination of hard shelled seeds may be secured by 
the use of various kinds of indoor seed testing devices. 
Bulblets are very similar to hard shelled seeds. We 
have constructed a device which is perhaps more simple 
