weather, that being the best time for performing the operation.

The Two-Pronged Fork is useful in a large garden, for turning over manure, making up hot-beds, shaking out dry litter, distributing the dressing spread over the ground previous to digging and trenching, and other purposes too numerous to mention.

The Garden Steps, a kind of double ladder, will be found of service in gathering fruit, training wall trees, or in doing anything that cannot be very well reached without some such aid.

The Three-Pronged Fork answers the purposes of a spade in many instances; but is most useful for taking up. crops of Potatoes, Parsnips, Carrots, Horse-radish, and so forth, where it would be dangerous to employ the latter implement. It is also particularly adapted for loosening the soil between shrubs and plants, as it is not so liable to injure the fibres of the roots, and has a better effect in breaking up the soil so loosened.

The Water Barrow will be found very convenient where you have to transport that commodity to any distance; it saves a deal of labour on account of its enabling the gardener to wheel at once a quantity sufficient to answer his purpose, instead of having to carry it in small quantities, as he would have to do with the watering-pot. If he choose, he can have a tap fixed to the barrel, and with a length of hose, with a rose on the end of it, attached to this, spread the water to a considerable distance, in a shower resembling moderate rain.

The Hammer is another essential tool, especially where you cultivate fruit on walls. Any ordinary hammer of sufficient weight to drive nails into walls and fences will do, but it should be reserved for use in the garden only.

The Nail-Bag is an adjunct to the hammer, and

should have four separate pockets for the hammer, nails, knife, and shreds. This should have a strap for buckling round your waist, which will enable you to mount the steps, and have your hands at liberty to prune or do anything you may find necessary for the benefit of the trees.

The Scythe is the last implement we need refer to, but that it is an essential one there can be no doubt. Without it we should be unable to keep the lawn in good order, and nothing has a worse appearance than a neglected Grass-plot. In fact, mowing is one of those operations that should be performed with the regularity of the clock, and early morning, when the dew is on the grass, is the time to do it; any other period of the day being unsuitable to the work.

THIS is, or should be, performed when the leaves of plants have grown to their full size, and the bud is to be seen plump at the base of it. The relative nature of the bud and the stock is the same as in grafting, of which we shall speak presently. Make a slit in the bark of the stock, to reach from half an inch to an inch 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. Next take a very thin slice of the bark from the tree or plant containing the bud, a little below a leaf, and bring the knife out a trifle above it, so that you remove the leaf, and the bud at its base, with the small 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 head, just to draw the sap past it.

Grafting in Various Ways.

Grafting is one of the most simple and yet most important operations in the garden, as by its means a worthless subject may be converted to a valuable tree-the Briar changed to the finest Rose, and the wild Crab to the best Apple. The operation is the splicing of a bit of the tree you want to the one that is useless. There are many ways of doing this. The plant to be grafted is called the STOCK, and the piece to be attached is the SCION. The necessary conditions are-first, that both stock and scion shall be cut so that they shall fit close; second, that the bark of each shall meet on one side at least. When the size of the stock and graft are equal, a sloping cut in each, they may be tied together like a broken stick, the joint covered with prepared clay, or wax; or one may be split and the other cut like a wedge. The one is thrust into the other so that the barks must meet on one side; and if the stock is larger than the scion, the latter must be placed on one side to make it flush. When the stock is much larger than the scion, and the sloping cut is large and wide, the scion must be cut sloping and be tied close to one side, that the barks of the two may be even. It will not only unite, but in time the small one will spread and cover the stock. Another way of grafting small scions on large stocks is to cut an angular groove down the side of the stock, and cut the scion to fit in exactly, and bind it in. Another method is to split the stock, and cut the graft like a wedge and put it on one side, or, as some of the Continental nurserymen do with Orange trees, one on each side.

Inarching (or Grafting by Inarch).

For this purpose

Is grafting a living branch on the stock. select a branch on a potted plant, and bring it to the stock; cut, or rather shave, one side of both nearly half-way through, and so prop or fix the pot that the two flat sides may be bound together. These will unite sooner than a separate graft would, and with greater certainty, the graft being kept growing. The last method we shall refer to is that of assisting a graft, by cutting the scion long enough to allow the bottom end to go into a suspended bottle of water. It is not so certain as when growing on a plant, but if well managed, it will sustain the scion till it has been united. These hints will give as good an idea of the many ways of grafting as if we minutely described them all; for it matters not how you make a good fit and bring the barks to meet on one side, the grafts will unite; all you have to do afterwards is to cut away all the growing parts of the stock, and thus throw all its strength into the graft.

Layering.

This is performed on many kinds of plants that do not strike root very readily from cuttings. It is done by bending a shoot or branch down under the surface of the soil, and pegging it there to prevent its springing up again, leaving the end exposed and turned upwards. Some plants

will strike root very readily when so pegged underground, such as Laurels, Hollies, Rhododendrons, and shrubs in general; but the operation is greatly facilitated by intercepting the flow of sap in any way-for instance, by notching the branch or shoot half-way through, by twisting the shoot,