310 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
September 
Pyrenaicum (Pyrenean); pomponium (pompone); a. 
monodelphum (one-brotherhood) ; tigrinum (tiger- 
spotted) ; pumilum (dwarf); a. tenuifolium (slender- 
leaved) ; a. Buschianum (Busch’s) ; peregrinum 
(beaked); a. eximiam (beautiful); speciosum (shewy); 
aurantiacum (orange), 4 var.; atrosanguineum (dark 
blood-coloured); Thunbergianum (Tkunberg’s); co- 
Tuscans (glittering); and Sibericum (Siberian). 
Cultivation. —Lilies love a sandy, deep, rich soil, 
and an open situation. The flowers being large and 
weighty, and the stems of most kinds but slender in 
proportion, they require supports. Stakes of the 
proper height and strength must be procured, and 
placed to the flowers at the proper time, that is, 
a little before the flowers expand. As they have 
bulbous roots, care must be taken not to injure these 
by driving the stakes down so near the plants as to 
touch the bulbs. 
Propagation. —These plants may be propagated 
by seeds, which, however, is not produced very plen¬ 
tifully on some kinds, and, as seedlings are a con¬ 
siderable time before they flower, it is a method not 
much practised. This is to be regretted, as the 
chances are that if raised by seeds we might obtain 
some fine varieties, and the Japan lilies, T,ili um lan- 
cifolium, the Tiger lily, and the Martagon, are all 
likely to hybridize with each other, and produce either 
a finer variety or a more hardy one. The usual way 
to increase lilies is by offsets, which are produced 
pretty freely on the under side of the parent bulb. 
If these are taken off as soon as they are the size of 
a walnut, and planted in rich soil in a nursery bed, 
in two or three years afterwards they will be large 
enough to flower, and should be transplanted into 
the blooming situation. When lilies have stood 
several years in the same place they exhaust the soil, 
and make small bulbs and few flowers. In such a 
case, about the end of September take them up, and 
replant them in another situation and fresh soil. If 
you have no other situation, remove the old soil away; 
put in the hole some rotten dung, and mix it with 
the soil below; then place as much fresh sandy earth 
as will fill up the hole level, or rather above the 
level of the surrounding ground. Plant the roots 
immediately, as they are much injured by long expo¬ 
sure to the air. The right depth depends upon the 
habit of the species. If of strong growth, like the 
common orange lily, the top of each bulb should be 
at least four inches below the surface, but for weaker 
growing kinds, like Lilium concolor, two inches will 
be proper. 
There is a method of increasing very scarce kinds 
which we have practised successfully. The lily is a 
bulb, as is well known, of the scaly kind: that is, each 
bulb is made up of a number of scales seated upon a 
common receptacle or bottom. Each one of those 
scales has, within itself, the power to form a separate 
bulb. To put that powder into play, all that is neces¬ 
sary is to separate each scale carefully from the rest, 
preserving, if possible, the small portion of the re¬ 
ceptacle that it sits upon. Plant the scales so sepa¬ 
rated under a hand-glass, in pure sand, and they will 
soon send out roots, and form a small bulb at the 
base of each. These must be carefully nursed, rested 
through the winter, and set to grow in the spring, to 
go through the same system of development as the 
offsets above mentioned. 
Some lands of lilies produce offsets on the flower- 
stems annually, particularly the Tiger lily, and the 
bulb bearing. These offsets, or small bulbs, fall to 
the ground in the autumn, and will, if covered with a 
httle soil, soon make plants. The best and more 
scientific mode is to gather these embryo plants and 
put them in a bed by themselves, and, as soon as they 
are large enough, which will be in about three years, 
to plant them where they are to flower. 
FLORISTS’ FLOWERS. 
The Tulip. —In our last Number we gave some 
instructions about forming or renewing an old tulip- 
bed in which the soil was exhausted. We purpose, 
to-day, briefly to state what we consider necessary to 
be done now with a bed or beds that are not ex¬ 
hausted. Proceed as before to stretch a line on the 
side of the bed, provided it is not edged with slate or 
wood; thrust the spade down to the depth of the 
soil and work it backwards and forwards all round the 
bed; then commence at one end, and throw half the 
soil on one side and the other half on the other; ex¬ 
amine the drainage, and if it is not right make it so. 
Let the soil thus thrown out be exposed for a month 
or more, to mellow and receive all the benefits an 
exposure to the air ■will give it. T. Appleby. 
GREENHOUSE AND WINDOW 
GARDENING. 
Housing. —Nurserymen in all qiarts of the kingdom 
are now busy among their young stock preparing for 
“housing” it, by which term they describe putting 
plants under glass. You may see rows of men at 
this work in every great nursery, and there the divi¬ 
sion of labour is carried out to a great extent. The 
first person takes up the pot, raps the edge of it on 
something solid—sometimes on his own knee, or 
against the point of his shoe, or, what is not a bad 
contrivance, against the tread, or shoulder, of the 
blade of a spade stuck firmly in the ground beside 
him for the purpose. This first move is, or should be, 
done rapidly, and is intended to look out for worms 
which may have got access to the pot, and if they 
get the least warning of approaching danger you lose 
sight of them for that day. The next move is to see 
that the drainage is perfect, and a little adjustment 
of the crocks, if needs be, will soon put that right. 
Then the pot is passed to a second person, who, with 
an old knife or a flat piece of stick, removes any dirt 
or moss, weeds, &c., from the surface ; therefore this 
division of the occupation is called “ surfacing.” The 
pot is then handed on to a third person, to be cleaned 
with a wisp of dry hay or straw, or with a cloth, or, 
if very dirty, with a scrubbing-brush and water. This 
last, though the most drudging part, must be put into 
careful hands, as an unaccustomed workman might 
destroy a valuable collection by the mere simple pro¬ 
cess of washing the outside of the pots, so that my 
readers who are nursing on a smaller scale had better 
see to this important point. The water in the tub 
must soon get very black and nasty from the slime 
and dirt scrubbed off the pots, and if this is allowed 
to soak the earth inside the pot it will glue the whole 
together, so that the plants will not seem to want for 
water for many days, and when it is given them it 
will hardly pass into the soil at all, but must run down 
by the sides; therefore it should be made conditional 
with him, or her, who washes flower-pots in the autumn, 
or, indeed, at any time, that none of the water touches 
the soil, not even if the inside of the rim of the pot 
is green and must be washed. After that, the old 
stakes, if any, should all be tested, to ascertain if they 
are still sound and in then proper places, but, if the 
plants are intended for a greenhouse or window, this 
