QUERIES AND ANSWERS. 
185 
requiring large pots, they should be shifted as seldom as possible; but they 
ought to have plenty of water in the growing season; and when it becomes 
necessary to repot them, that should be done as soon as the flowering is over, 
and then they should be started into growth for wood. They should be kept 
rather cool until the growth is completed and the flower-buds pretty large. 
After this they should be placed in a moist and rather warm atmosphere, in 
order to get the flowers to expand, and then they should be removed to the 
greenhouse to finish their flowering. 
The Bog Myrtle will grow and flower very well if placed in any shady 
situation out of doors, and planted in a compost of peat and sand. The other 
odoriferous plant I do not know, not having seen it; but if it was found along 
with the Bog Myrtle it should be treated the same way as that. 
P. N. Don. 
Note by the Editor. —The correct and circumstantial directions which 
our highly-esteemed correspondent gives for the cultivation of Azalea induces 
us to add a few remarks, in order to render the account more full, for the 
benefit of those tyros who are only beginning to study the nature of plants. 
The Azaleas belong to the same tribe and genus of the order of heaths as the 
Rhododendrons; and they have this property in common, that the bringing 
forward of the flower-bud is the last effort of growth in any one year, and the 
expanding of the same flower is the first effort in the year following. Thus 
the season of growth for increasing the individual plant is in the latter part of 
the summer, and the flower-bud, which is always terminal, advances and 
becomes firm in the autumn. 
Plants which have this habit require a peculiar treatment, especially for 
the production and ripening of new wood, and the bringing forward of the 
flower-bud, so that it may be in condition of expanding well when the proper 
season comes. If the flowering is weak, or if the plants get too much water 
either naturally or artificially, while in progress cl flowering, the buds which 
produce shoots, but not flowers, the same season, are apt to be started prema¬ 
turely, and the flowering is imperfect and the plant weakened by the double 
operation. Very moderate watering, and shelter of the plants from the natural 
rain, are the best means of preventing this double or unnatural action, and 
securing perfection in the flowers and health in the plants. After the flowers 
have gone off, at full maturity, there is still a good deal of care necessary in 
regulating the after-growth of the plant, so as to secure vigour in the individual, 
and size and perfection in the flowers. Moisture is the grand stimulus to 
individual growth; and if this is given in excess, the energy of the plant will 
be so much exhausted as that it will be incapable of producing flower-buds in 
any great number, or in the more shy flowering varieties of producing them 
at all. On the other hand, heat is the grand stimulus to flowering in most 
plants ; but not in those plants which, like the Azaleas, form and forward the 
bud toward the close of one season, and expand it in the beginning of the next. 
That the bud may be produced at all requires a certain vigour of the indivi¬ 
dual growth; and to obtain this, a certain degree of watering must be employed. 
This must not be, however, overdone ; and the plant must be gradually let 
down in order to ripen the wood previous to the annual repose between tne 
VOL. II. NO. VIII. B B 
