184 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN’S COMPANION.— June 10,1856. 
never hear the cnckoo before Tenbury fair, or after 
Pershore fair.” Tenbury fair is on April 20, and 
j Pershore fair is on June 26, which two dates pretty 
correctly mark the duration of the cuckoo's note.— 
Here is another Worcestershire saying, apropos to the 
present season :— 
“ When elm leaves are as big as a shilling. 
Plant kidney-beans, if to plant ’em you ’re willing. 
When elm leaves are as big as a penny, 
You must plant kidney-beans, if you mean to have any.” 
(Notes and Queries.) 
HINTS FOR JUNE. 
I will endeavour to meet a number of inquiries and 
complaints in this somewhat desultory article. 
Cineraria Seed and Seedlings. —“ We can get no 
seed from our best Cinerarias; we fear we shall lose 
them, as the plants, from being rather dry, are getting 
covered with insects.” Place them in a close frame, or 
box, and smoke them with shag tobacco twice, at an 
interval of two days from each other, shading them 
from bright sun in the interval, and for a few days 
afterwards. Then select a piece of ground on an east 
or west aspect, dig it finely, and turn the Cinerarias out 
of their pots, placing a little fine, rich soil round the 
ball, and sinking the ball so much that the top may be 
rather below the surface of the soil. Do this only with 
such kinds as you wish to have seedlings from, or that 
you wish to grow again next season. Pat the ground 
fine between the plants, and place all over it half-an- 
inch of fine, light, sandy soil left loose. If there is 
any seed at all in the Cinerarias, it will shed and sow 
itself by its own weight in the line soil; and to help it 
when the flowers are all faded, you may give them a 
good shake, and then water the ground through a fine 
rose. Keeping clear from weeds, and watering in very 
dry weather, will be all the attention necessary. Dy 
September you will have nice little seedlings, that will 
bloom in the beginning of winter in small pots. By 
the same time you will also have fine sucker-plants 
from the old shoots, which, if potted in small pots, will 
bloom early, or, if grown on by successive sliiftings, 
may bo had of large size in April and May. There is 
much pleasure in growing seedlings, and many flowers 
may be bad in little room from using four and six-inch 
pots ; but all amateurs, who care not so much for 
quantity of bloom as having well-bloomed, well grown, 
large specimens, should confine their attention to the 
very best kinds sent out by our best florists, as the 
most beautiful and symmetrical of these cost no more 
time and labour in their management than so many 
seedlings, not one of which may possess any good florist 
property, though a mere lover of floral beauty might be 
greatly delighted by them. Those with little room, yet 
having florist tastes, should do little with seedlings unless 
for raising new improved varieties, and these should be 
proved in small pots before they are honoured with 
larger ones. 
Calceolaria Seedlings and Cuttings. —“Iliad a five 
shilling packet of seed. I have now a house full of 
nice-looking, healthy plants, the flowers of all sizes, 
shapes, and colours, and, I must own, very showy at a 
distanco; but on near inspection the flowers are so 
flimsy, thin, broad, and notched, that, with the exception 
of one or two plants with pretty, well-formed flowers, a 
florist would turn up his nose at the whole of the 
remainder, and hardly look even at them. The seed 
was to be the best: do not you think the seedsman is to 
blame?” Possibly he may; and yet it is equally 
possible he did his utmost to serve you faithfully. I 
have had the veriest rubbish from seed saved from the 
finest flowers. The greatest care in hybridising, and 
leaving only a few seed-pods on a plant, is the best 
security for having good seedlings; but even that will 
not always be successful in the case of every seedling. 
No man who made seed-selling a trade could possibly 
be so careful and supply you with packets, such as he 
now sends out, for 2s. fid. and 5s. The great mass of 
people who purchase these packets are delighted with 
large, finely-coloured flowers such as you possess. They 
have not the slightest dislike to the crumples—rather 
the reverse—that so offend your fastidious taste. The 
seedsman, though gathering from good flowers, knows 
he must have quantity, and that an almost imperceptible 
pinch would not please his customers. Let us just 
glance at your own case. You have two good varieties; 
one has a fair flower, and first-rate, compact habit of 
plant, with the leaves rising well up as a back ground 
to the flower; the other plant is rather spindly in its 
growth, but the flower is fine-formed and beautifully 
marked. You remove the anthers from a number of 
the flowers, say half-a-dozen on the fine-habited plant, 
before their pollen has been shed, and fertilise the pistil 
from the farina of the higher-coloured flower. Yon set 
the plant by itself; you allow none except the hybridised 
flowers to ripen seed ; and you may expect that part of 
the progeny, at least, will partake of the good properties 
of both parents. Now, you place a group of the best of 
your other flowers together; you allow them to hybridise 
as they like, only assisting them a little at times by 
daubing the pistil of one with the anther of another, 
and allowing the plants to ripen almost as many pods 
as they like. Many of your acquaintances have admired 
your Calceolarias; tens and twenties jog your memory 
that you promised them a pinch of seed, and with the 
characteristic generosity of a lover of flowers, you cannot 
refuse, even should you be candid enough to say that 
the seed is not worthy their acceptance. Now, from 
what repository would you supply your friends ? from 
the small stock of the one plant tended with such care, 
or from those second best plants, that were allowed to 
yield a more plentiful supply—plants which pleased those 
that asked for the seed, and the plants from which were 
likely to be as good as the progenitors? A candid reply 
will dispose of many of the allegations against really 
honest tradesmen, and solve the problem why, at times, 
though anything but always, their own seedlings may 
be better-formed flowers than those of their customers. 
With all the expanded, generous ideas of the times, 
men have not yet progressed enough to forget self, 
and not to look at home first. Customers should also 
bear in mind, when they look upon a fine house of 
seedlings in the possession of a tradesman, and these to 
bo left for seed, that he only seeds the best of them, as 
all the inferior flowers would be weeded out as soon as 
they showed themselves. 
All the herbaceous and semi-slirubby Calceolarias 
are much easier grown from seed than kept on from 
cuttings and divisions; but, for the reasons adduced 
above, it will be wise policy, when the seed is not home- 
saved, to use rather small pots until the plants show 
their bloom. Just as in the case of the Cineraria, all 
who are rigid florists, and like to see fine specimens, 
ought to confine themselves chiefly to approved kinds, 
and keep these on from season to season by means of 
cuttings. The best way to do this is to set the plants, 
when done flowering, on the north side of a fenoe, and 
shade them from the afternoon sun, or plunge the pots, 
or turn them out in a similar place; and take cuttings 
off in August and September, inserting them under 
hand-lights in a similar position. The herbaceous kinds, 
if planted out, will yield suckers or rooted cuttings, like 
the Cineraria; and these once secured, the old plants 
may de done away witii. The smallest-rooted cuttings, 
In September, may be grown to any size before the end 
of May; but in winter they require more care than 
seedlings, their vitality seeming to be less strong. A 
