APRIL. 117 
produce it, causing a smeary léok when the cotton is withdrawn. I 
can recommend the following as a better and not at all more trouble- 
some operation. ‘Take a sheet of pasteboard, one-eighth of an inch 
thick ; or, better still, some sheet zinc, and cut out as many rounds 
about 6 inches in diameter as you require. Bore a hole in the centre, 
and cut a groove from thence to the edge, large enough to admit the 
stem of the truss. Make three more holes at equal 
distances on the edge of the round, about a quarter 
of an inch wide, to fit the tops of three pegs or 
sticks, which are to be stuck in the soil round the 
pot, to support the round as a table. Adjust this 
to the proper height, so as to come about as high as 
the bottcm of the footstalks of the pips. Then take 
a quantity of pistol bullets, No. 32. Give them a 
rap with a hammer on two sides, to “flatten their poles,” and with a 
sharp chisel cut them in half. Cut a notch in the round top of each 
half, into which insert the end of a piece of thin copper 
wire, about 24 inches long ; with a tap of the hammer 
fasten it to the half bullet; 
make a small hook at the 
other end of the wire, and 
the whole apparatus is com- 
plete. Having arranged the table on the three sticks, 
at the proper height, and placed the truss in the central hole, take one 
of the hooks, and place it round the stem of a pip, 
SY ee close to the calyx, and draw it as far apart from the 
uy a others as you wish, and place the half bullet on the 
ene Pe table. If heavy enough, this will retain the pip 
where you wish it until it grows to the position 
required. When fully expanded, remove the bullet 
hooks and table, and your truss is complete. It may 
sound more troublesome than the cotton wool, but it 
is far less so. Crede experto. 

\ 
i 

Section. 
® 
THE GENTIAN. 
CoLERIDGE (says Lady Wilkinson in “ Weeds and Wild Flowers ”) 
has used, with happy observation, the effect produced by the heaven- 
like blue of the little Gentian amidst the grander components of such 
Alpine scenery as he describes ; and elsewhere we find :— 
‘¢ Ye living flowers that skirt eternal frost ;” 
—words which are, in the’ strictest sense, literally true. For in no 
part of the world does the bright blue Gentian smile so brightly as on 
the verge of the snow-line in our frozen Arctic regions, or, in the chilly 
Terra del Fuego; where the mountain crest that slept, but yesterday, 
shrouded in its mantle of snow, feels to-day the glad influence of the 
gentler spring; where the same ray that dissolves the snow of winter 
