RAFFLESIA. 
Sowings for furnishing young green tops as 
small salads, should be made once a-week. Plants 
of any of the early or summer varieties intended 
to yield seed, should be selected from a main 
crop at the time of its greatest vigour, and taken 
up with the least possible injury to the roots, 
and dibbled in, quite down to the leaves, in rows 
at distances in every way of about 3 feet, and 
watered freely till they become established, and 
afterwards watered occasionally as the needs of 
their growth and the state of the weather may 
require. Plants of the Spanish or other late 
kinds intended to yield seed should either be 
raised from a special sowing in March, or trans- 
planted in that month from a crop which has 
stood over the winter. Pods for pickling must 
be gathered while young and tender; and pods 
for seed, when they acquire a brown'hue. ‘Two 
varieties must not be raised for seed in the vi- 
cinity of each other ; but every variety must be 
brought to seed with the same precautions 
against natural hybridizing which are necessary 
in the case of cabbages and borecoles. See the 
article BRAsSsICcA, 
Field crops of radishes are raised on the rich 
loamy soils of the Isle of Thanet and East Kent, 
for the supply of the seeds to the London market. 
“ The radish seed is sown in furrows, about 10 
inches apart, in a dry time of the month of 
March, at the rate of about 2 or 3 gallons per 
acre. As soon as the plants appear, every other 
row is cut up with a horse-hoe, leaving the rows 
20 inches apart. When the plants get 2 or 3 
rough leaves, they are hoed out in rows, and are 
then kept clean by repeated horse and hand hoe- 
ing, when necessary ; leaving the plants at about 
18 inches distance. The crop is seldom fit to 
reap till October, and is sometimes out in the 
fields until Christmas, without receiving injury 
from the wet weather, it being requisite to allow 
it much rain, in order to rot the pods and facili- 
tate its thrashing. The produce is from 8 to 24 
bushels per acre.” 
The oil radish, 7. s. olifer, has a height of only 
from 6 to 24 inches, and is very much branched 
and spreading, and produces more seed pods than 
any of the common varieties. It is somewhat 
extensively grown in China for its oil; and has, 
for some time past, been cultivated in several 
parts of Continental Europe; and has been a 
good deal recommended as a general substitute 
for rape. But it does not seem to have been 
anywhere very successful in Europe; and it does 
best in countries, such as those upon the sea- 
board of the Mediterranean, where it can be sown 
in autumn and reaped in the end of spring or 
beginning of summer; and it is too tender to 
bear sowing in the fields of any part of Britain 
till after the disappearance of the frosts of spring. 
Its oil, too, though somewhat superior to that of 
rape, is more difficult of expression. 
RADISH (Horsz). See Horse Rapisu. 
RAFFLESIA. A genus of wonderful, orna- 
RAFTERING. 
mental, tropical plants; nearly allied to the 
passion-flower and the pitcher-plants, but pro- 
perly constituting an order of its own. Arynold’s 
species, 2. Arnoldii, is the most gigantic known | 
flower in the world, and is all flower together, 
and yet is merely a parasite, growing on some 
crack of the root or stem of a vine or of some 
other vast climber, which are attached like cables 
to the largest trees of the tropical forests. It was || 
discovered in 1818, in the Island of Sumatra, || 
growing close to the ground under bushes, with |; 
a swarm of flies hovering over its nectary, and 
apparently laying their eggs in its substance. It 
is called by the natives krubut or the great 
flower, or ambum-ambum, wonder-wonder, or 
the flower of flowers. It has neither root, stem, 
nor leaves ; yet, when full grown, it weighs of || 
itself about 15 Ibs., and has a breadth of upwards 
of 3 feet. It is dioecious; and the male of it was 
brought to Britain soon after its discovery. Its 
first appearance is that of a round knob; and 
this, when cut through, exhibits the infant || 
flower enveloped in numerous bracteal sheaths, | | 
which successively open.and wither away as the || 
flower enlarges until at the time of fullexpansion, 
very few remain, and have somewhat the appear- 
ance of a broken calyx. Three months elapse from 
the first appearance of the bud to the full ex- 
pansion of the flower. The segments of the 
perianth are 5 in number, roundish, of a brick 
red colour, covered with protuberances of a yel- 
lowish white, and measure 12 inches from the 
base to the apex. About a foot intervenes from 
the insertion of one petal to that of the opposite. 
The nectary would hold 12 pints. The pistils 
are nearly as large as cow’s horns. The female 
flower differs little in appearance from the male, 
except in wanting anthers ; and, in its decay, it 
extricates seeds or spores, which are dispersed 
throughout its pulpy mass—The Patma species, 
R. Patma, occurs in the south of Java, and varies 
in the diameter of its full-sized expansion from 
about 11 to about 25 inches, and is not dicecious. 
RAFNIA. A genus of ornamental, evergreen, 
yellow-flowered, Cape-of-Good-Hope plants, of the | 
genista division of the leguminous order. Five 
or six species, chiefly shrubby and about 2 or 3 
feet high, have been introduced to the green- 
houses of Britain; and a number more are 
known. The best soil for the introduced ones is 
a sandy loam. 
RAFT. A quantity of timber linked close to- 
gether in such a manner as to be conveniently 
floated along a river or canal or lake. 
RAFTER. A four-sided piece of timber used 
in roofing houses. 
RAFTERING. Sawing logs of wood or planks 
of trees into rafters; also, the ploughing of one 
half of a grass field in such a way as to turn the 
grass side of each ploughed furrow on the land 
which is left unploughed. The raftering of land 
is practised chiefly in Wiltshire, and is a cheap 
and slovenly way of rendering loose land firm for 
