We are pleased to note that the hints we recently gave in this department for good potting as a 'means for good plant growing have attracted wide attention. We have not seen for a long time anything in our pages that has been so widely copied and commented on as that chapter. We would now suggest, that next to getting good healthy roots so that a plant can grow freely, training is an important element in getting good specimen plants. We often see plants at exhibition of good form and good size, but the result rather of age or accident than of skill on the part of the grower. In exhibitions of Chrysanthemums, as we have had occasion to notice before, much of the interest in the fine specimen is lost because of the bundles of stakes and almost miles of twine that we see everywhere about them. The art should be to so give the plant a start that it will grow of itself the way we want it to grow. " As the twig is bent the tree's inclined " should never be lost sight of by the plant grower. The shoots may be staked out a little at the first start, so as to fill in a hollow space if there be one; and if there be not shoots enough, a strong one may have its point pinched out, so as to make it push some secondary side ones.

But only the strong ones must be pinched back, because pinching has a somewhat weakening tendency, and we do not wish to weaken a shoot already weak. The object is to strengthen rather than put back a shoot already weak, so that all may have uniform vigor. In this way shoots at the base of a plant that are always weaker than those above, are strengthened by having the uppermost pinched back as they grow. We give herewith a sketch of a Fuchsia which we take from the London Gardeners' Chronicle, which plant was eight feet high, and, as the great number of flowers and leaves in the small space indicates, taken at a long view, illustrates what good culture can do. There is of course pleasure in having a Fuchsia plant, and in a few score of its beautiful blossoms; but how much more is the pleasure enhanced when we can have a specimen like this. It was grown by Mr. James Lye, a gardener near Bath in England, whose greatest pride is that no one has ever been able to beat him in growing a Fuchsia. He has scores of plants as good as this.