sap bud a little closer; but do not remove it utterly till about midsummer, when it may be cut off close to the inserted bud, and that should be the end of all wild growth. Now you have made your roses, and may transplant them in the autumn to their blooming quarters in the garden or rosery.

I must now suppose the reader to be familiar with the art of budding, in order to understand what remains to be said about it. From frequent observation I am satisfied it matters not from what sort of wood we take the bud, whether from a flowering shoot or the growth of the season, provided the bud itself is of the right sort-plump enough to be visible, not plump enough to be on the point of opening into leaves, and the bark about it so full of sap as to separate easily from the wood of the shield. There is this advantage in working roses on strong stocks, that we get blooms the next season; and if the culture is thoroughly liberal and the buds are entered in June, the greater part of the wild wood cut away to force the bud, one season's growth from the bud is enough to make respectable heads. On their own roots they need another year to make a similar effect, and thus, by using foster roots, we steal a march on time. Now, as to the process of budding. Roses differ among themselves as men do, some are tractable, and some are stubborn. Jules Margottin will give good buds from the end of June to the middle of October, but Aimée

R

Vibert will never give a bud such as a beginner can handle with safety. If you cannot remove the wood from the shield by a neat action of the thumb-nail, or the back of the point of the budding-knife, the nail being the best, let the wood remain, and make of it a summer graft in the same method as inserting a bud. Through not knowing this practice, or not thinking of it at the time of operating, many amateurs fail with roses that make thin wood and wiry buds; whereas, by retaining the wood the difficulty is at an end, and you may work such a rose while the bud is invisible, especially after heavy rains, when the stocks are full of sap and ready to nourish them forthwith. Another point to be remembered in using plump buds from shoots of the season, the shields of which perhaps are very soft, is this, that a little wood left in the eye is of no consequence at all. When you have peeled the bud there will be an obstinate bit of wood left, to get out which will probably destroy the eye altogether. You must throw that away and prepare another, which may share the same fate; and if you happen to have but one plant of the variety to be propagated the whole shoot may be cut up, and the chance of propagating lost for the season. Peel the shield as clean as you can without splitting it, and if a bit of wood remains in the eye, there leave it. The grand thing is to unite the edges of the two barks at the top cut, where the union will take place, and to have the

shield pressed close to the wood in the incision on the stock, a result to be obtained only by binding it carefully. Another and still more important point is, not to mind the apparent loss of the eye when the shield has been dexterously separated. Immediately after flowering the buds are not always so prominent that you can be sure you have it safe after removing the wood, but be assured it is there. Insert the bud, tie such a bud not extra tight, but with an extra thickness of cotton wool to prevent exhaustion by evaporation, and it will come as certainly as the plumpest. Nevertheless, dismissing these exceptional cases, I prefer a visible bud from the growth of the season, and the removal of the wood clean and complete. Example-Géant des Batailles, General Jacqueminot, Auguste Mie, Jules de Margottin, William Griffiths, Madame Vidot, Madame Louise Odier budded at the end of June, 1859, on short stout briers, wild wood all got rid of before winter, moved from nursery quarters on the 15th of May, 1860, had fair-sized heads, a few blooms produced, and nipped off to give them a fair chance of blooming in the autumn of the same year. Mind, they were only moved at such a time to fill up blanks caused by the severe winter, and would have been lost unless shaded with wet mats, except in such a tremendously wet season. As it was, they were only shaded for two or three days, and suffered nothing.

"Don't do as I do, do as I tell you." Another advantage in budding is its certainty. What a perplexing task it is to get plants of Rosa Alba on their own roots! Even Aimée Vibert and Ophirie puzzle the amateur propagators; but most of the Perpetuals come from cuttings as readily as Calceolarias, and by much the same sort of treatment. The rose that refuses to make roots for itself must be worked, and the fashion of working must be in accordance with the circumstances of the cultivator and the habit of the variety in hand. Look over your briers in June and you will probably see lots of smart green upright suckers, or you may have kept down suckers according to the routine prescribed in the books. I shall call you a wise man if you let all the best of the suckers rise, and I can tell you that for the past seven years, being a little out of reach of good stocks from the hedges, I grow my own stocks from suckers on the ground.

Here is a nice three feet stem, with at least two shoots at top in good positions to take buds. Remove all the other shoots by a clean cut, and shorten in those to be budded, not to cripple them, but so that you can get along the rows conveniently and work at ease. There is also one stout green sucker, which, in the ordinary way on the routine taught in books, must grow another year to form hard wood and side-shoots for budding. Work the two shoots at top with a bud on each, and let it be your fixed

and unalterable law, on the fashion of the Medes and Persians, to form a head from one bud only. At the nurseries they enter two buds, to make assurance doubly sure. You do the same. At the nurseries they let both buds start to get a head quick that will bear a price, but don't you do that. Whichever takes the lead keep, and cut the other clean away. One bud will ultimately form a better head than two, though the first season the two might give you the most to look at. It is important to work them early so as to get a good start the same season, and have the wood well ripened at its close; and if towards the middle of October the new shoot is still growing away, and you see reason to believe it will be soft when the frost comes, nip out the point for the last time; and then take your largest digging fork, thrust it in the earth nine inches or so from the collar of the brier and give it a gentle heave, not to shake it much, but enough to check it, and the wood of that new shoot will ripen in a fortnight.

GUN-BARREL BUDDING.

Now, about these suckers. Run your eye along them from head to foot. Say the sucker is three feet high, at two feet from the ground the young wood is in just the same state of greenness and ripeness as the base of the summer shoot, which you have just budded, on the top of the stock.