42. THE FLORIST. 
scarce. I do not, for instance, know another grower in this county ; 
and I am so small a one as not to be worthy of being counted as such. 
With other flowers the case is different; and until the taste for them 
is revived in and around London, I fear the plan must be in abeyance. 
“Tam much troubled with a black spot on my leaves ; can you tell 
me what it is?” Thus writes one correspondent, evidently nervous 
about the black rot, for he adds, he has lost several of those he got 
in last year from , with some disease at the root, which, he adds, 
has no bad smell, and which he attributes—justly, 1 believe—to over- 
stimulating growth, previously. The black spot is a species of mildew: 
a piece of it under a quarter-inch object glass shows a number of fila- 
ments and spores, with the exuvie of green-fly ; and I am inclined to 
think that these latter gentlemen are the cause of it. My friend adds, 
these gentlemen have been a great trouble to him, and I think he will 
find that where the one exists the other follows. The remedy is, care- 
fully brushing off the “‘ varmint” with a good-sized camel’s-hair 
brush. The spot itself will often give way to the same treatment; but 
if not, the handle of the brush, or a touch with the nail, will remove it. 
With regard to the showing of Auriculas, of which, both publicly and 
privately, I have been asked about, my own idea is, that there are few 
if any flowers where the treatment for one’s own growth and for exhi- 
bition vary so little. I should now, in either case, e.g., prepare for 
top-dressing by removing with a blunt piece of wood all the soil as far 
as I could without disturbing the roots, and then fill in with a rich 
compost composed of well-rotted cow-dung and silver sand, and haying ~ 
given the plants a gentle watering, should leave them to grow away. 
They will require abundance of air end light, and the frames should, 
except in cold biting winds, be kept open. When the vile north-eastern 
is “‘a-blowing,” either admit the air from underneath, or else have a 
calico screen to break it off; as the temperature increases and the 
plants grow, more water will be needed ; there is no staking and tying- 
out, no carding and binding, no cutting-out and potting, as in Geraniums, 
Picotees, or Dahlias, the most necessary duty to be done being reducing 
the number of pips in the truss, and as these increase in size, keeping 
them apart by a small piece of cotton wool. With regard to their 
appearance on the exhibition tables, no plant ought to be allowed a 
prize with fewer pips than seven ; and it should be specially borne in 
mind that the pair (as they are generally shown so), should be well 
matched as to height, and contrasted, if possible, as to colour. It would 
be as outré to place together two plants, one with a flower-stem six 
inches and another four, as to drive a horse of sixteen hands and a cob 
of thirteen in the same carriage ; and if in colour you can get one, say, 
with a dark black ground, as Ne Plus Ultra, and another bright and 
clear, as Maria, or in self Blackbird, Hannibal, and Metropolitan, it is 
surely prettier than two nearly similar. One great art in showing is 
the advancing or retarding the blooms, as the case may be. ‘The 
former is most difficult, but it may be effected by placing under a 
handglass in the sun, shading slightly and well watering all around; 
the latter, by removing to a shady place, and pursuing just the opposite 
treatment, — 

