THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
January 12 
meshed sieve, picking out, as the operation is going on, 
| all the young bulbs, even the very smallest, for the 
j smallest may produce the best flower. When all are care¬ 
fully picked out, dry them for a few hours, and then put 
! them in a canvass bag, and hang it up in a room with- 
j out fire till the planting season arrives. In the mean 
time prepare a bed, three feet wide, and as long as may 
i be needful, to plant them in. 
j Choose an open part of the garden, and a dry subsoil. 
If it is not dry it must be made so by drainage. Dig 
out the soil to the depth of fifteen inches, and then lay 
j in three inches of broken stones or brickbats, and upon 
! them place a covering of thin turf, the grassy side 
j downwards. Fill in the soil again, if of tolerable good 
I quality, mixing it, as the operation goes on, with some 
! dung and leaf-mould, in such quantities as will make 
the soil rich and light. A little sandy peat would be of 
service, as also a liberal allowance of river sand, unless 
the soil be already of a sandy character. With these 
additions the soil of the bed will be considerably raised; 
but if the bed is prepared some six weeks or two months 
before it is wanted, a settling will take place, so as to 
lower it nearly to the original level, or only just high 
enough to suit the flowers. In this state let it lay till 
the month of September; then is the time to plant the 
seedling bulbs. If there should be any great difference 
in their size it will be advisable to select the largest 
size, and plant them by themselves at one end of the 
bed. Draw drills four inches apart, and three inches 
deep, across the bed, and plant the larger bulbs (if any) 
four inches apart in the drill; the smaller size may be 
planted thicker — two or three inches will be space 
enough. When all are planted, level down the drills 
with a rake, and they will require no further care till 
the spring, after they have made their way to the 
surface; then, with a small three-pronged fork stir up 
the soil, to give it a fresh appearance, and to admit 
freely the warm rains and air of the spring and summer 
months. In this bed they may remain two years, when 
some of them will have attained such a size as to 
warrant the expectation that they will flower. They 
should then be taken up, dried, and stored, and 
treated like the old flowering bulbs. T. Appleby. 
(To be continued.) 
PEAS. 
SOWING AND PBESEBV1NG. 
It is certainly a just and wise provision of nature that 
the seeds of plants possess a greater degree of hardihood 
than their parent plants. This is, perhaps, most con¬ 
spicuous in those of the tenderer exotic natives of the 
tropical regions, which, though never naturalised with 
us, yet are enabled to ripen their seeds in our hot- 
! houses, and those seeds are capable of enduring an 
| amount of frost, I might say equal to that of indigenous 
plants. It is true, a seed is but a bud containing in 
1 embryo the future plant; but the same beautiful law of 
j nature has so ordained that the mere bursting of the 
i shell which confines the cotyledon, does not, in every 
instance, involve the young offspring in destruction, for 
they are possessed of a greater degree of hardihood at that 
' age than when further advanced- This is especially 
| the case with hardy or half-hardy plants, most of which 
endure our winters but when in a young state. Now 
I this rule has been taken advantage of by the flower- 
gardener, who sows his annuals (from the temperate 
regions) in the open ground the beginning of Sep¬ 
tember, and sees them stand an amount of frost they 
would not have done had the plants been larger. 
Subject to the same law is the tenderer kinds of Brocoli 
and Cauliflower, and many other things, which, having 
a duration allotted them, and a duty to perform in that 
time, are fortified with a power of resisting many in¬ 
clemencies, which a look at the map of the country 
they came from would induce a belief they were not 
able to do. 
This example of adaptation to circumstance is of 
inestimable value in many points of view. Our farmers 
sow their Wheat in autumn with something like a 
certainty that nothing short of a Russian winter (without 
snow) will kill the young plants. True it is that 
another point bears on this last case, and one that 
should bo mentioned in conjunction with a young 
plant’s hardihood. The seed itself continues to supply 
nourishment, or assistance, to the young plant long 
after we might suppose, by its size and habit, that such 
assistance was needed; and the shrewd, observant 
husbandman, notices the check the plant receives when 
it loses that support, which, in local phrase, passes by 
various denominations; and the plant, left there to its 
own resources, has to struggle and maintain an ex¬ 
istence by its own exertions, aided, of course, by the 
external circumstances in which it is placed, and the 
soil in which are its roots. 
I have introduced the above observation by way of 
calling attention to the culture of one of our most useful 
vegetables, i. e. Peas—to obtain an early dish of which 
has long been regarded as an important point in horti 
culture; and in furtherance of this object, the attention 
of seed-growers and others has been directed to the im¬ 
proving of varieties in cultivation, so as to hasten pro¬ 
duction as much as possible. 
It is generally allowed that the Pea, as well as most 
cereals, &c., are all annual plants, and that their capa¬ 
bility of standing over one winter to ripen their seed in 
the next season is merely owing to the accidental cir¬ 
cumstances of their being sown at such a season as just 
enables them to attain a size capable of resisting the 
elements, without incurring a danger of their falling a 
prey to the severities of the season, which they are sure 
to do if beyond a certain size. Now, to have the crop 
of such a size as to secure itself, as well as to produce 
the earliest possible pods, many things are to be con¬ 
sidered—as the position in which the crop is placed in, 
and the nature of the soil, as well as the latitude of the 
place; coupled with these, is also a prophetic knowledge 
of the kind of weather they are likely to encounter, a 
circumstance as much important to success as any 
other, and one of which the cottager has as good a chance 
to foretell as any philosopher, of whatever standing he 
may be; and as the wisest may be mistaken and at 
fault, it is advisable, in all cases, to provide against 
such mishaps as that of a flourishing looking crop of 
Peas being destroyed in February. 
This was much the case last season; the mildness of 
the autumn and early winter months favouring their 
growth, they had progressed so far as to be unable to 
endure the rigours of frost and snow when these tokens 
of winter visited us; now we know that crops which 
last year were sown at the same time they had been for 
many years perished as above, while, in former seasons, 
they had flourished and done well: the reason was 
obvious—the mildness which continued so long, favoured 
their growth to such a degree, that many crops were a 
full foot high, or more, when hard weather set in, be¬ 
sides being in that delicate state which moisture and 
mildness imparts. The time at which such crops were 
sown was somewhere about the middle of November; 
later crops stood better; those at or about Christmas 
being the best. Now, this was sufficient to teach all 
those who did not know before, that, besides the No¬ 
vember crop, it was also advisable to put one in at 
Christmas, the latter being the more certain to succeed. 
Independent of taking care to have a successional 
crop, it is also advisable to look to, and preserve the 
