ON EARLY ANNUALS. 
0 
and passed through a very coarse sieve. The parts of the peat 
that remain in the sieve I lay above the potsherds, to secure 
proper drainage. I sow the seed moderately thin, and cover it 
slightly with soil composed of sand and peat passed through a fine 
sieve. I then water the pots and put them in a frame, and keep 
it nearly close shut up till the seed vegetates ; and then the lights 
are pulled off in fine weather, to prevent the plants being drawn 
up weak ; but I put them on in heavy rains. I thin them out 
as soon as I can take hold of them with ease ; I thin them twice, 
leaving at the last four plants in the 48 size, and six in the 32. 
If the weather is fine, I let them remain till the middle of Octo¬ 
ber ; if otherwise, I remove them to a shelf close to the glass in 
the greenhouse, where they get plenty of air ; and in a short time 
they are in flower. Those of the second sowing I prefer for spe¬ 
cimen plants. When the pots are well filled with roots, so that 
they are protruding through the bottom of the pots, I shift them 
into a size larger ; those in 48’s I shift into 32’s, and those in the 
latter flower much longer and finer by being shifted into 24’s. 
I use the same soil, but not sifted ; then tie up the plants to small 
stakes. At the time they require shifting, the leading shoot will 
be in flower, which I pinch off those plants. About the begin¬ 
ning of January they will require another shift into No. 24’s ; at 
this shift I add a third of light rich loam to the former compost, 
and take in the strongest lateral shoot for a leader; at this period 
the laterals will be flowering, which I pinch off; they will now 
begin to grow rapidly, and proper attention should be paid to 
watering. By adopting the above treatment I had plants three 
feet high, and two feet in diameter, which kept on flowering till 
the middle of May ; and I am confident had they been shifted again 
they would have grown larger. Many who saw them thought it 
was some new sort. To those who grow it for cut flowers it would 
be of great advantage to shift it into a larger pot than the one the 
seed is sown in, because when the leading shoot was cut, the side- 
shoot would grow much stronger, and continue longer in flower. 
I come now to the second mentioned, the Nemophila insigna, 
the colour of which we have so little of in Flora, viz. blue, parti¬ 
cularly in the spring, when the greenhouse is ornamented with 
the white and variegated Camellia, the white, red, and yellow 
Azaleas, the yellow Acacias, the forced Rhododendrons of sorts, 
and many others of those colours which characterise that season. 
VOL. Ill, NO. I. 
c 
