297 
THE LADIES' FLORAL CABINET. 
“ They received no watering, petting, nor fertilizing 
beyond our usual treatment. When the garden has its 
first clearing up in the fall we dig in lightly ‘ fine stuff,’ 
well rotted two-year-old farm-yard manure of the very 
best quality, and over all, later on, we give a winter 
covering of ‘ coarse stuff.’ This last tucking-in of the 
coverlet was omitted last winter, as both ground and 
barren fields near by. This bed of loam is about a foot 
deep, more or less, has coarse gravel underneath, I 
think you would call it red, to the depth of from one to 
two feet, and under that yellow clay, so hard and 
heavy and compact as to require a pickaxe for removal. 
The deepest cutting made by us in this stratum of clay 
showed no change, no suggestion of anything different 
Lilium Auratusi. 
stuff froze hard while we were waiting for a man to 
spread it. The only reason suggested to us, after the 
fine quality of the bulbs, are the presumably short time 
they remain out of the ground and the deep planting. 
“With regard to the soil in which the Lilium Aura- 
turns grew, it was, when we came here, nearly seven 
years ago, a rich, black loam; it is now loosing that 
dark, rich appearance, said to have been produced by 
cultivation merely, a succession of grain crops, rye and 
barley, as we have since seen going on in the formerly 
below. This was learned by having a few excavations 
made in different parts of the garden several years in 
succession, to fill up with good garden loam from a 
cultivated farm near by. All these pits showed the 
three distinct strata, as described Above, with slight 
differences only in depth. The deep planting, always 
remonstrated against here, by those who know the con¬ 
dition of things underneath, brought the bulb almost 
down to the gravel, and so came near giving it ‘ the 
bed of sand,’ so often recommended for Lilies.” 
