THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
September 
298 
ing. At the end of the second spring, when the coal 
ashes are removed, the same thickness of fresh soil 
should be laid over the roots, to be kept stirred and 
watered as through the first season, and in October 
of the second season go through the same process as 
before. The following spring will then be the third 
spring of their existence, and most of them may be 
expected to flower. For that purpose, some people 
would take them up last October, and keep them in 
pots in a cold frame, or under the stage of a green¬ 
house, but they are much safer where they are : 
some of their roots might die off, and often do so, 
and otherwise get injured, when they are potted in 
the autumn. 1 see no feasible excuse for the plan 
at all. What would Mr. Barnes or Mr. Errington 
say to me, if I were to recommend rhubarb, sea kale, 
and asparagus, to be taken up and potted five months 
before they were wanted for forcing? Why, they 
would say I was daft; that the roots of such plants 
could not be removed and potted without some injury 
from breakage, that such injuries could not be repaired 
by the energy of the plants until they were in full 
growth again, and that in the meantime rottenness, 
damps, and a long dreary winter, would be sure to 
leave their bad consequences entailed on plants so 
treated. It would be just so with our campanula 
potted in October, and yet half the gardening people 
will either not believe such things or else act as if 
they took no thought on the subject. I know a gar¬ 
dener who was more successful with these plants than 
any of his neighbours, and he never potted his plants 
from the nursing row; and he would grow them in 
rows till late in March, and some seasons not till 
April, his criterion for seedling plants to flower 
being their beginning to push up from the centre of 
the crown as soon as vegetation began in the spring, 
and he would pot none unless they first showed that 
sign; and I recollect very well having helped him to 
pot some after pushing up half a yard of the flower- 
stem in May, and I do not think that they were any 
the worse for it; but the surest way is to pot them as 
soon in the spring as you perceive them moving up 
in the centre. 
To make plants from the roots of such as are now 
doue flowering, shake the soil away from the roots, 
and choose the strongest of the side roots for cut¬ 
tings. If they are forked roots all the better, as they 
will make more fibres and not run so deep as the 
smooth straight ones; cut them two inches above 
the forked part, and take three inches of the fangs, 
or forked parts, themselves; then your cuttings are 
five inches long. If they appear milky on the cut 
ends, let them dry for a few hours before you put 
them in; then take a good sized pot, if nine inches 
over it will do, drain it well and place the root cut¬ 
tings all round it, leaving one inch of each above 
the soil, which must be very sandy, and if it is damp 
only, you need not water them for three or four days 
alter, and by that time the cut ends will be thoroughly 
dried or healed over, and then there will be no dan¬ 
ger from damp or watering. Place the pot in a spent 
cucumber bed, or in a warm window, and the roots 
will soon sprout, and for the rest of the winter and 
next spring treat them as the seedlings, only about 
the end of March they should be shaken out of the 
cutting pot, and each have a little 3-inch pot for 
itself, which it will fill before the end of April, when 
you are to plant them out, as I said about the seed¬ 
lings, only not so thick this time, as you have strong 
bottoms ; say ten inches or a foot between each. It 
rs best to give them plenty of room, and if you grow 
a score of thorn, they will not take up much space. 
Now, all this is the true cottage mode of rearing and 
flowering these stately bell flowers, and by far the 
easiest way; but gardeners often grow them in pots 
all along without ever planting them in a trench, 
and still have them as high as you please ; but they 
must be carefully watered and watched every day, and 
week, and month; and, after all, you may get up 
some sunny day and find their leaves curled up, 
owing to some hopeful youth having tried his hands 
at experiments with your guano cask the evening be¬ 
fore, and so dosed them too much; whereas, if they 
were in the open ground, the dose could hardly affect 
them injuriously. Side slips from the crown of the 
plant will also make roots, so that they are very easily 
increased. Here we flower two or three dozens of 
them every season: we find them very useful, and we 
plant out a lot in a mixed bed, where they reach up 
to seven feet, and look gay enough from early in July 
to the middle of September. 
Varieties and Hybridizing. —There is a kind with 
white flowers which is not so showy as the blue va¬ 
riety, and different shades of blue are always to be 
had from a batch of seedlings, and, as this shows a 
tendency to sport, I am almost sure if a little pains 
were taken to cross them new and superior varieties 
might be got, particularly if such beautiful species 
as grandis, the great flowered; nobilis, the noble flow¬ 
ered; and the old grandijlora, which Mr. Fortune 
sent from China, and to which another name has been 
given, were grown after the manner of our present 
subject, and all crossed each with the other under a 
high state of cultivation. Indeed, I cannot bring 
another family to mind now that has not yet been 
tried that way where so rich a harvest may reason¬ 
ably be expected as among these stately Bellworts, 
as Dr. Lindley very properly calls the campanulas. 
Now, if you have time and inclination to follow out 
this suggestion, set about it this month; procure the 
plants from a respectable dealer; they may be multi¬ 
plied and treated as the old one or nearly so, and, if 
they will interbreed at all, depend on it you will have 
something handsome from their union, and there are 
no plants less troublesome to cross, as the whole family 
marry clandestinely, therefore the pollen of one can¬ 
not affect any of the rest, unless by the hand of man, 
so that a whole bed of the different sorts may be 
growing together without the least danger of mixing 
naturally like many other plants. If Linnaeus had 
been aware that some families of plants were natu¬ 
rally cryptogamic ( hryptos , concealed, and gamos, 
marriage), he would have given a different name to 
his twenty-fourth class. The pollen of the Bellworts 
is ripe and its office concluded in the dark while the 
flower is yet in the bud. Their style occupies tlio 
middle of each flower as usual, and is divided at' the 
top into three, four, or five parts, according to the 
species; but these divisions stand up close together, 
and are as closely embraced hy the anthers until the 
pollen is ripe. After impregnation the divisions of 
the stigma lengthen out and curve backwards, and 
each curve is plastered with the pollen on the under¬ 
side. Then, and not till then, does the flower open, 
so that in crossing them you will have to split the 
flower-buds to cut out the natural pollen before it is 
ripe, and also take a more forward bud to get the 
strange pollen from. The divisions of the stigma 
being close together, the place to put the pollen on is 
their outside, near the top, and this part is curiously 
set with a whole network of teeth or hairs, after the 
manner of the teeth on the drum of a musical box, 
so that on the least touch of the anthers these teeth 
will hold the pollen at each stroke, and you may lay 
