MANURE.—­Almost any thing that rots quickly is a good manure.  It is possible to manure too highly.  A plant sometimes dies from too much richness of soil as well as from too barren a one.

WATERING.—­Keep up a regular moisture, but do not deluge your plants until the roots rot.  Avoid giving very cold water in the heat of the day or in the sunshine.  Even in England some gardeners in a hot summer use luke-warm water for delicate plants.  But do not in your fear of overwatering only wet the surface.  The earth all round and below the root should be equally moist, and not one part wet and the other dry.  If the plant requires but little water, water it seldom, but let the water reach all parts of the root equally when you water at all.

GATHERING AND PRESERVING FLOWERS.—­Always use the knife, and prefer such as are coming into flower rather than such as are fully expanded.  If possible gather from crowded plants, or parts of plants, so that every gathering may operate at the same time as a judicious pruning and thinning.  Flowers may be preserved when gathered, by inserting their ends in winter, in moist earth, or moss; and may be freshened, when withered, by sprinkling them with water, and putting them in a close vessel, as under a bellglass, handglass, flowerpot or in a botanic box; if this will not do, sprinkle them with warm water heated to 80 deg. or 90 deg., and cover them with a glass.—­Loudon’s Encyclopaedia of Gardening.

PIPING—–­is a mode of propagation by cuttings and is adopted in plants having joined tubular stems, as the dianthus tribe.  When the shoot has nearly done growing (soon after its blossom has fallen) its extremity is to be separated at a part of the stem where it is hard and ripe.  This is done by holding the root with one hand and with the other pulling the top part above the pair of leaves so as to separate it from the root part of the stem at the socket, formed by the axillae of the leaves, leaving the stem to remain with a tubular or pipe-looking termination.  The piping is inserted in finely sifted earth to the depth of the first joint or pipe and its future management regulated on the same general principles as cuttings.—­From the same.

BUDDING.—­This is performed when the leaves of plants have grown to their full size and the bud is to be seen at the base of it.  The relative nature of the bud and the stock is the same as in grafting.  Make a slit in the bark of the stock, to reach from half an inch to an inch and a half down the stock, according to the size of the plant; then make another short slit across, that you may easily raise the bark from the wood, then take a very thin slice of the bark from the tree or plant to be budded, a little below a leaf, and bring the knife out a little above it, so that you remove the leaf and the bud at its base, with the little slice you have taken.  You will perhaps have removed a small bit of the wood with the bark, which you must take carefully out with the sharp point of your knife and your thumb; then tuck the bark and bud under the bark of the stock which you carefully bind over, letting the bud come at the part where the slits cross each other.  No part of the stock should be allowed to grow after it is budded, except a little shoot or so, above the bud, just to draw the sap past the bud.—­Gleenny’s Hand Book of Gardening.