215 
IRE COX I AGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, July 12, 1859. 
ike best thing to do vvitli it is to fill it with commoner plants in 
winter, and give air at top about eight or nine o’clock in the 
morning, and take it away about three in the afternoon. After 
the middle of March a little air, unless in severe weather, may be 
left on all night; and more given about breakfast time, and 
roduced again in the evening. By April air will give no trouble, 
as plenty may be left on from thence to October. 
The tree Lupine, when raised, does best out of doors. Y'ou 
may lift it in the autumn, cut it back a little, and shade until it 
lias taken fresh hold of the soil. 
We find CuUdlVs Black Prince the earliest profitableStrawberry. 
This season the berries have been remarkably fine:—black, firm 
as cheese, and as large as ordinary Keen’s, but so much better 
shaped.] 
SUMMER PROPAGATION. 
f 
The last experiment I conducted is as new as the ! 
fashions for this month of July ; and you may search all 
the hooks, new and old, and you will not find it in any one 
of them. It belongs to the florists first, and then to the ! 
flower-gardener. It is, altogether, a very great mistake 
to think for one moment that I am not most friendly to 
the tlorists—I think I am the best friend they ever had in 
this world, and I like their flowers. The great bar 
between us is this,—I tliiuk they are ou the wrong side 
of the great gulf, and I have beeu trying to get them 
over to the right side ; first, by attempting to divide the j 
waters ; and, secondly, by the use of plants and scaffold- 
boards for bridging it. Blit, I have received no encourage¬ 
ment from themselves. 
However, for my good intentions to the lovers of the 
ribbon style of flower planting, I am rewarded in a 
worldly point of view. I raised a yellow Polyanthus 
two years back, at which an ardent florist would eveu 
attempt a “loup” over the great gulf itself. This was 
the flower at which one of our Editors exclaimed, “ Good J 
gracious, what a Polyanthus !” when he saw a cut truss of 
it. The first thing I did was to seed every flower; and 
all the seedlings failed to run after the mother in looks or 
colour, except one, which is yellow, but I have not seen 
it yet. It turned up in a lot I sent out to get proved for 
me far dowu in the country. Several first-rate men have 
seen it, and, like the said Editor, almost regretted that 
Polyanthuses, and, more particularly, such a one as this, . 
could not be increased faster, so as to get them at once into 
(he ribbon lines,—being the finest yellow we have for the 
spring bedder. But who knows this cannot be done ? 
Where is there the account of any great or enterprising i 
experiment having ever been made on the point ? Or, 
why is it that Polly’s Nightcap Auriculas are selling to 
this day at so many half-sovereigns a piece? Why, 
indeed, but for the great secret of their propagation, 
which has all along been in the hands of the florists ; and 
they keep their secrets so well, that we need never think 
of ferreting it from them, or of fathoming a quarter of 
their depth at shy propagation. Therefore, we must put 
up with the crumbs till accidents, or eventful occasions 
like the present, throw something more useful in our way, 
and more palatable than “broken victuals.” 
The first turn I made of my yellow 'Polyanthus, 
gave 11 plants, the second turn 34, the third turn 
120, and the fourth turn 300 plants, all in eighteen 
months ; and if all be well with me by this time next year, 
I do hereby engage to jump across the gulf backwards, 
and never again part from the florists, if I cannot produce 
2000 plants of it ready for the ribbon-border the following 
spring. So you see it is no joke. But it is all from law¬ 
ful and scientific propagation. Would you not think it, 
therefore, great folly on my part to divulge the secret of 
how it is done, and so let any one else take the bite out of 
my mouth ? But there is where one-half of the world, 
and three-quarters of the florists are wrong—radically 
wrong, as I could prove; hut the weather is too hot now 
for a dry disquisition on the philosophy of the doings. 
When the flower-truss of a border Polyanthus is seen 
in tlie heart of a cluster of leaves, in March, is the best 
time in all the year to propagate, or divide it, for stock, 
but not for flowering. I should think September would 
he the best month to divide them for the flower garden, 
as one had merely to part a large lump of it into four 
quarters, and make four plants to bloom quite well the 
following spring. I have seen them divided into such 
quarters, and much smaller, and planted, and he 'in full 
bloom next week, as far back as in the spring of 1818, and 
the three following years the same ; and I never saw such 
another sight of Polyanthuses from that day to this. The 
plan was then a novelty near Inverness; and what can 
be done witli Polyanthuses is just as great a novelty near 
London at the present moment. 
To divide a Polyanthus, we must have it taken up out 
of the border with all its roots, aud the same way as one 
would divide an old Strawberry plant, and as all Haul- 
bois ought to he increased is the way to do the Polyanthus. 
Such plants art divided into so many “ crowns,” or 
divisions. The larger the plant, or stool, the more divisions 
or separate crowns it has ; aud each of these divisions 
make roots for itself, independently of the bottom roots, 
which are common to all the crowns of a plant. The 
smallest quantity of roots, to a slip or division of Poly¬ 
anthus, will set it right in March, when growth is rapid 
in spring flowers. After all the crowns have been care¬ 
fully separated, with more or less roots to each, there still 
remains the old block, the bottom and centre core of the 
plant, just divested of all the side and top shoots : it is a 
pollard, and is thrown away along with the leaves and 
rubbish. I did so with my first dividiugs, without giving 
it a thought. But, like the stool of a Pine Apple plant, 
after all the suckers are taken off, if you save it, aud 
plant it, aud tend to it for a while, it will throw up more 
suckers from buds which are, like moles’ eyes, hardly to 
be seen. In looks they are latent or insipient; but iu a 
good, rich border they will soon he neither, hut rise into 
so many palpable “ offshoots,” as they are sometimes 
called. This second crop of suckers did not appear above 
ground with me till the end of May ; and by that time 
the first crop was well established—each sucker or crown 
now an established plant on its own bottom. 
To push the propagation with all my might, I now 
earthed up all the plants with very light mulching ; and 
by the beginning of July—just this present month—fresh 
roots were made up to the surface, or near the surface 
of the mulching, atid I cut off all the tops again, and had 
new roots to every one of the divisions. My plants are 
now like Vines or other fruit trees after being stopped 
early. The hack eyes will not long be Latin adjectives 
in the dog days : and who shall say that for every head 
I out off iu the first days of July I shall not have foui- 
heads next September—all rooted of course, and ready 
to come off again, then leaving me so many more sources 
of mole’s-eye buds, which no man can number till they 
sprout ? Aud if that is not fast enough for all conscience, 
we must try another turn. 
Now, every one of the florists’ Auriculas, and Poly¬ 
anthuses, and “ alpiues ” or “ seifs,” are quite as sus¬ 
ceptible of this rapid, rollicking way of propagation as 
my “ good gracious ” yellow bloomer Polyanthus. There 
is no end to the host of plants that might thus ho kept iu 
perpetual motion from the first rise of the sap in the 
spriug to the edge of the frost in the autumn. 
But the most astounding way of propagation I ever 
heard of is in Gilbert’s “ Vade Mecum,” which was to 
layer with the “ tongue ” of the layer the reverse way. 
In our way of layering—say the Carnation—we make a 
tongue by cutting up from a joint; and when this is fixed 
the tongue opens downwards, and the sap, returning, gets 
stopped at the tip of the tongue, breaks off into roots all 
round the mouth, tongue and all. This plan was reversed 
in olden times; and we must take to it again, for it is 
extremely useful: the wonder is how we could have done 
so long without it. It is more applicable to very rare 
