238 
THE LADIES’ FLORAL CABINET. 
ing; second, good, vigorous grower; third, good form 
and substance of petal, with a nice fragrance combined. 
As a type of this, take our old friend Bon Silene, in many 
respects not equalled and certainly not surpassed to-day. 
When you have selected the varieties to use as parents, 
grow them into healthy, good-sized plants, then get them 
to bloom as near as possible at the same time ; take the 
pollen from one flower and fertilize the other (first cut¬ 
ting out the stamens before the pollen opens), of the 
flower which is to receive the artificial fecundation. 
Keep a memorandum of day, date and varieties used; 
label each plant with numbers corresponding with notes 
in your book. Do this with all, no matter how many 
varieties you operate upon. If fecundation takes place, 
the seed pods, or heps, as they are usually called, will 
swell and grow fast; but do not be in a hurry to gather 
them before they are ripe, as that would be fatal' to your 
object, but let them remain on the plant till quite ripe 
and yellow. This will be, perhaps, October. Then 
gather and preserve in sand till January, when they can 
be sown. 
For instructions how to do this and all other necessary 
operations to the raising of seedlings, I would refer you 
to the “ Rose,” by my late and very much lamented friend, 
H. B. Ellwanger, than whom no better informed or more 
thoroughly practical rosarian of his age did not exist 
among us, and I regard his loss as a national calamity-- 
horticulturally. 
My object to-day is rather to impress upon those of us 
who have the means and time to devote to raising seedlings 
to try and see what we can produce; certainly we have 
everything in our favor for such trials. We have a splen¬ 
did climate, plenty of sun and warm, dry atmosphere, all 
essential points to ripen the seed and mature the plants. 
And certainly an appreciative public to buy a first-class 
production after it is assured of being a real improve¬ 
ment on existing kinds. On this particular point there is 
one thing I would like to impress upon beginners, namely, 
be sure it is an improvement before offering it to the 
world. Far better throw every’plant away and “try, 
try again,” as one real gem is worth all the imitations in 
the world, so is one really fine new rose worth all the 
poor ones that will ever be produced on this or any other 
continent. And although many of your seedlings will be 
beautiful in color and form, yet “ all is not gold that glit¬ 
ters your fine color and form may not be any improve¬ 
ment on existing kinds, you may find it hard to realize the 
fact that your pets are doomed to oblivion. In this you 
will find that they have been real friends to you by con¬ 
stant care and watching, nevertheless you may find it 
absolutely necessary to destroy a great many of them 
to make room for others, but by steady perseverance 
you will gain the prize in time. In this as in all other 
branches of the cultivation of the rose, it is only by per¬ 
severance you can succeed. There is no “ royal road to 
success,” but rather k is strewn with thorns and briars 
all the way ; but when at the end of the thorns we meet 
our beautiful queen in all her glory, what a recom¬ 
pense ! 
Many people rave over a blue dahlia and some I have 
heard express a desire for a blue rose. Gentlemen, we 
see, too, many blue Jacks now every season, what I want 
to see, and I speak for many others also, is a bright scar¬ 
let rose—color of General Grant geranium. I tell you 
there’s “millions in it,” gentlemen, for the fortunate be¬ 
ing who can produce it with a good healthy free-bearing 
constitution and a flower of good substance and size. 
In other colors there is plenty of room for improvement 
also ; we are only in the infancy of this as yet. Twenty- 
five years ago who thought We should have such glorious 
roses among Teas as Marshal Niel, Catherine Mermet, 
&c. Come down again to the present time and see what 
lovely varieties we have had put upon the market this 
spring in W. F. Bennett and American Beauty, and we 
are promised a still more glorious flower in Her Majesty 
this coming winter. During the period mentioned above 
we have had very many worthless varieties palmed off 
upon us. Of those I can only say that they have passed 
into oblivion, their proper place, which only leaves us 
better reason to go into the race and win the colors. 
Vivat Regina. 
John M. May, at Florists’ Convention. 
STEAM VERSUS HOT WATER FOR HEATING GREENHOUSES. 
T HE heating of greenhouses has been so well carried 
out the past twenty years by the hot-water system, 
so thoroughly understood and generally adopted, it would 
seem useless to advocate any other method. The same 
was said thirty years ago, when the majority of green¬ 
houses were heated by flues. We have now, in the in¬ 
troduction of heating by steam, a rival to the almost uni¬ 
versal hot water. In this paper I do not intend to cham¬ 
pion either the one or the other, as I know we have 
among us able advocates of both; at the same time, I 
am always on the side of progress, and if steam-heating 
is the best, let us accept it and do as did those of thirty 
years ago in the case of flues versus hot water. Admit¬ 
ting that all new-fangled ideas are not worthy of adop¬ 
tion, yet many experiments help to solve difficulties, it 
would seem that as far as heating by hot water, the 
best application of it is as perfect as that system can 
well be. I can remember quite well the battles fought 
on the different plans of hot-water heating and the vari¬ 
ous sizes of pipes used for the purpose. It was claimed 
by one that large pipes were the best—so large as one 
foot in diameter—-and few of them. It was claimed by 
another that small pipes, one inch and one inch and a 
half, with plenty of them, were the best. Another 
claimed that a small flow-pipe was the best, while an¬ 
other claimed that a very large flow-pipe, supplying 
smaller ones, was the best. Yet another, which perhaps 
was the stupidest of all, claimed that very small return 
