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quired in the squares to the vinery, where they grow beautifully, not sending up merely fine heads of bloom without a vestige of leaf, but growing as they would in spring out of doors with a mass of foliage, among which one has to search for the spikes of flower, so precious for all sorts of purposes at that early season of the year.
The spikes produced in this way do not equal in thickness and substance of petal the flowers which come from more carefully prepared clumps imported from Berlin, but they are fine and strong, and above all most abundant. I can not only supply the house and small vases for the church, but also send away boxes of the flowers to friends at a distance, besides the many gifts which can be made to those who are ill or invalids. Few gifts at such a time are more acceptable than a fragrant nosegay of lily of the valley. In order to keep the supply of prepared roots ready year after year, a plot of ground has only to be planted each autumn, so that in the rotation of years it may be ready for forcing when its turn shall come.
As the season advances, as every one knows who has attempted to force the lily of the valley, much less time is taken in bringing the flowers to perfection under precisely the same circumstances as those in which the first sods are forced. In February or earlier the buds are more unwilling to start; there seems to be a natural repugnance against being so soon forced out of the winter's sleep and rest. But when the flowers do come, they are nearly as fine and their leaves are quite as abundant in this way of forcing as from the pieces introduced much later into heat. It would be easy to preserve the squares after all the flowers are gathered, but I found that they would not, like strawberries, kindly furnish forth another crop later on in the year, and, therefore, mine are flung away; and I have often pitied the tender leaves in the frost and snow after their short sojourn in the hot climate of the vinery. But the reserve bed will always supply an ample qu