made two or three leaves they will bear handling, and may be pricked out into other pots with fresh soil, made of equal parts of sand and peat. As their growth progresses, they may be potted in thumbs or small sixties, in which they may be allowed to remain all the winter. The pots should be half filled with rough drainage, for which purpose coarse coal ashes answer well. Their subsequent treatment will be the same as cuttings.

BY CUTTINGS.-This is the more common and perhaps the most expeditious way of raising young plants. This operation should be performed when the wood is not quite half ripe. In some cases this may be as early as May, when there are shoots about an inch and a half long; in others, it may not have attained the requisite degree of ripeness until July or August. But at whatever period the work is done, the pots in which it is intended to strike the cuttings should be half filled with broken potsherds, covering these with a thin stratum of coarse, rough peat, by the intervention of which the smaller particles of the finer soil are prevented from being washed down, and thus filling up the spaces between the sherds. The experience of different growers induces some to think that cuttings most readily strike in a soil composed of equal portions of peat and sand, while others prefer a mixture of two-thirds peat and one-third sand, sifted through a fine sieve. Fill the pots with one of these, using the latter if the atmosphere be comparatively dry, to within about a quarter of an inch of the rim. Press the soil gently with the bottom of a pot or saucer, and

then fill the pot up entirely with silver sand, and water lightly from a watering-pot with a very fine rose. The cuttings being prepared, insert them in the soil and cover them with a bell-glass; then plunge the pots into a bed of tan, having a bottom heat ranging from 60° to 70°. The cuttings may be about an inch and a half long, a little more or less is of no consequence. The cuttings having been duly set, and the pots plunged, the former will be found to have made their roots in the course of six or eight weeks. At this time a little air should be admitted under the glass by raising it on one side, and supporting it in that position by means of a piece of wood. A week later they will be ready to remove to the greenhouse, where they may remain until the middle of February, when it is desirable to plant them in thumb-pots, in peat and sand mixed. A little bottom heat may then be supplied, by setting the pots in a hotbed of near 60°, where after remaining three or four weeks, they may be transferred for a while to the front of a warm house. In the early part of May the young plants may be again shifted into three-inch pots, using the same mixture of peat and sand, pressing the soil compactly round the ball of the plant. Place them in a cold pit at this stage, and keep them there for eight or ten days quite close, taking care to screen them from the direct burning rays of the sun until thoroughly established. Then admit air and light gradually; examine your plants, and stop such branches as need it. The young plants are benefited by shading throughout the summer, until their growth is completed; after which, all the light they can have may

be given to promote the ripening of the wood. No further shifting will be needed before the ensuing spring, when they may be moved once or twice, when the plants are thought equal to the shock. In the middle of June following, if they have thrived well, another shift will improve them; and if the operations have been carefully and successfully performed, the plants will be in fine flowering condition in five or six-inch pots in the succeeding spring. As plants become older, they will bloom more freely if a little loam be added to the soil, in the proportion of about one-sixth of the whole, the remainder being peat, with a quantity of sand to keep it porous.

At whatever part of the spring or summer the operation of striking cuttings is performed, care should be taken to select them from those plants which are in the full vigour of their growth, for then, as may be supposed, the cuttings partaking of the vigour of the parent shrub from which they have been taken, will more quickly throw out roots than they would at a time when the juices are thickened and inactive.

BY GRAFTING.-Azalea cuttings generally root freely, but it is found that some thrive better by being grafted. Though the more tender kinds do well when growing on their own stocks, yet since they do better, and yield flowers of twice the magnitude, by being grafted on those of hardier kinds, it is well worth the labour of performing the operation. The more delicate kinds are greatly improved by this mode of propagation, and for a stock the Azalea phoenicia is the best, as it grows strongly and freely. Grafting may

be done at any time when the wood is ripe, and perhaps July and August will be the best The stock may be a year old; the scion should be from a well-ripened shoot, and about an inch and a half in length. An incision must be made in the stock, a quarter of an inch long or thereabouts, and the scion must be cut so as to fit it; if it should touch the bark on both sides it will be the better. The graft must be bound to the stock by a ligature of matting or worsted, the latter being preferable to tie small scions, not cutting the stock so much when it swells. The smaller the incision at the point where the stock and scion meet, the sooner will the union be effected. When the scions are secured to the stocks, plunge the pots containing the grafted plants into a bed of ashes or old tan, in a warm house, and cover them with a handlight. The glass must be removed every third or fourth day, so that any moisture which may have adhered to the graft may be evaporated. In the course of three or four weeks, the union of the stock and scion will be perfected, and then the light should be propped up a little on one side to admit air. The hand-light may be taken away a week later, and the plants moved to the front of a close house, and be lightly syringed now and then overhead. If the stock emits any buds, these must be rubbed off as soon as detected, since by their growth they deprive the grafted shoot of nourishment. It is found that if the grafting be done so late as August the scion shows but little vitality before Christmas, at which season it is well to re-pot the plants so as to give them room, by which they will be stimulated into growth; at the

same time the grafts should be examined, and care taken that the ligatures be not too tightly bound. When the graft begins to swell, the ligature may be loosened, but not removed too hastily, because the graft has a tendency to grow itself off.

In the operation of grafting, it is well not to cut away the head of the stock until the graft has grown considerably, for otherwise the roots of the stock are injured by the system being too small to relieve the roots of the food it has absorbed; the effect is sometimes indeed fatal to the plant. The future treatment of grafted Azaleas is the same as that applied to those grown on their own stocks.

BY INARCHING.-This is a species of grafting; the difference being in applying the scion to the intended stock without separating it, in the first instance, from its own parent plant. The plant which is to form the stock, and that from which the scion is to be derived, are placed in juxtaposition, and if one be taller than the other, the pot containing the shortest is raised by artificial means, so that the points at which the stock and scion are to be united may be easily brought into close contact. Then, if the two branches to be united are of the same circumference, each is gently bent, and a sharp thin knife passed into the bark, through the centre of the branch, cutting away the segment of a circle, so that the cut side of the branch, when bent, shows a long oval wound. These two oval spaces, in equal-sized branches, should exactly correspond in size. If one branch be smaller than the other, the smaller should be first prepared,