52 
LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 
stem,, at the same time the fruit is ripening, and when the latter 
is cut, are very soon after separable from the mother plant. 
Suckers are generally preferred to crowns, because they gain bulk 
sooner, and of course are sooner ready to yield fruit; and besides, 
strong suckers are often partly rooted before they are dissevered from 
the parent, especially if some of the lower leaves from among which 
they rise be pulled off, and the bases of the suckers be covered up with 
sifted bark, or, what is better, fine loose leaf-mould. It is an old 
custom to allow the fresh wounds of both suckers and crowns to become 
dry before they are placed in pots of soil to strike root; but as this 
causes a loss of time, the drying period should be short; and indeed is, 
perhaps, not at all necessary if they be at once stuck into dry sifted 
bark or leaf-mould on a suitable heat. Sometimes they are partly 
rooted on the bark-bed among the old plants; but the regular course 
is, soon as the requisite number of suckers are selected, they are potted 
in small pots and plunged in old bark on a dung hotbed previously 
prepared for them. 
There is no succession pine-stove at this place, the gardener pre¬ 
ferring to raise all his succession plants on dung heat, which, he says, 
expedites their growth and keeps them free from the different kinds of 
noxious insects to which the pine plant is liable in dry heat. Very 
small pots are first used, and the plants are shifted frequently into 
larger and larger till they are large enough to go into the fruiting 
house. Fresh hotbeds are also made from time to time for their 
reception as they advance in size, and linings are constantly applied 
to keep up a lively bottom heat. Indeed, from the time the plants are 
first potted in the summer up to the first of March following, they 
must be kept constantly excited to grow vigorously by every kind of 
means. A bottom heat varying between seventy and eighty degrees, 
is always maintained : and the air in the bed never below sixty, to 
which it is kept by coverings on nights, and when the sun shines the 
temperature is raised to eighty degrees, and kept at that by giving air 
on all such occasions. A lively bottom heat, constantly maintained, is 
the chief point to be attended to; for while this is kept up, copious 
waterings may be given without fear of injury, and which at the same 
time creates that fine humid heat which is so favourable to the plant. 
Another thing: the steam arising from a dung hotbed, impregnated as 
it is with a considerable quantity of ammonia, so hurtful to almost all 
other tender vegetation, appears to be even nourishing to the hardy 
foliage of the pine plant; and hence the practice of rearing the 
successions on dung heat. 
As the original ball of earth in which the crown or sucker was 
