It will sometimes happen, early in the season, that one desires to retard the development of the head until a convenient time for marketing. For this purpose the plants may be lifted, when the heads are nearly mature, and set under a shed or elsewhere in the shade. It may be well here to remind those who grow only a few plants in a garden, and who wish to prolong the season, that several cuttings may be taken from a single head if desired. A portion of the head should be left each time. Occasionally, but not often, a stump will sprout and form a second crop. A method of accelerating the formation of heads, which is practiced in Ireland, may also be worth recording. It consists in slitting the stalk from near the ground upward toward the heart, and placing a stick in the slit to prevent the parts reuniting. The soil is then drawn up around the cut, and the plant staked to prevent its breaking off. It is said that plants so treated will form their heads from six to eight days earlier than they otherwise would. CHAPTER IV. THE EARLY CROP. I cannot do better in treating of this crop than to first quote the following, by the late Peter Henderson, of New York City, from his work on "Gardening for Pleasure": "There is quite an ambition among amateur gardeners to raise early cauliflower, but as the conditions necessary to success with this are not quite so easy to command as with most other vegetables, probably not one in three who try it succeed. In England, and most places on the Continent of Europe, it is the most valued of all vegetables, and is grown there nearly as easily as early cabbages. But it must be remembered that the temperature there is on the average ten degrees lower at the time it matures (June) than with us; besides, their atmosphere is much more humid, two conditions essential to its proper development. I will briefly state how early cauliflowers can be most successfully grown here. First, the soil must be well broken, and pulverized by spading to at least a foot in depth, mixing through it a layer of three or four inches of strong well-rotted stable manure. The plants may be either those from seed sown last fall and wintered over in cold frames, or else started from seeds sown in January or February in a hot-bed or green-house, and planted in small pots or boxes, so as to make plants strong enough to be set out as soon as the soil is fit to work, which, in this latitude, is usually the first week in April. We are often applied to for cauliflower plants as late as May, but the chances of their forming heads when planted in May are slim indeed. The surest way to secure the heading of cauliflowers is to use what are called hand-glasses. These are usually made about two feet square, which gives room enough for three or four plants of cauliflower until they are so far forwarded that the glass can be taken off. When the hand-glass is used the cauliflowers may be planted out in any warm border early in March and covered by them.