The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, Adapted to the Use of Private Families

sloping three feet forward. A mat is to be let down from the top in severe weather, and taken up when it is mild. This will preserve them, without making them weak or sickly. The beds and boxes of seedling flowers should also be covered, and the fence removed when the weather is mild. Clean the auricula plants, pick off dead leaves, and scrape away the surface of the mould. Replenish them with some that is fine and fresh, set the pots up to the brim in the mould of a dry bed, and place behind them a reed edging. Cover carnation plants from wet, and defend them from mice and sparrows.----FEBRUARY. Make hotbeds for annual flowers, of the dung reserved for that purpose, and sow them upon a good thickness of mould, laid regularly over the dung. Transplant perennial flowers, and hardy shrubs, Canterbury bells, lilacs, and the like. Break up and new lay the gravel walks. Weed, rake, and clean the borders; and where the box of the edging is decayed, make it up with a fresh plantation. Sow auricula and polyanthus seeds in boxes, made of rough boards six inches deep, with holes at the bottom to run off the water. Fill the boxes with light mould, scatter the seeds thinly over the surface, sift some more mould over them about a quarter of an inch thick, and place them where they may enjoy the morning sun. Plant out carnations into pots for flowering.----MARCH. Watch the beds of tender flowers, and throw mats over them, supported by hoops, in hard weather. Continue transplanting all the perennial fibrous rooted flowers, such as golden-rods, and sweet-williams. Dig up the earth with a shovel about those which were planted in autumn, and clean the ground between them. All the pots of flowering plants must now be dressed. Pick off dead leaves, remove the earth at the top, and put fresh instead; then give them a gentle watering, and set them in their places for flowering. Be careful that the roots are not wounded, and repeat the watering once in three