Most gardeners snip off the tips of the outer leaves of pipings and cuttings, because then they can see more easily when new leaves are forming. CARNATIONS FROM SEED. The most attractive way of increasing your stock of Carnations is to grow them from seed. In this way you get a great variety, and take a sporting chance of raising a new specimen. But you _must_ buy your seed from a first-rate firm. As it is rather expensive, you will wish to give it every chance, so you must prepare the soil carefully for your seed-pan or shallow box. Whichever of these you use must have a few holes in it, then some broken crocks for drainage, and then the compost made of leaf-mould, loam, and silver sand. This mixture should be moist when you use it, as then you will not have to water much. The seed of Carnations is big enough for you to plant one by one with the point of a knife if you have a little patience. When this is done, take a little fine soil between your hands and sift it evenly and lightly over your seeds. Then cover with a glass, and, if you can, place in a frame or greenhouse. If you have neither, you must make shift with a sunny window as long as there is danger of frost; but we must warn you that it is not easy to raise seeds in a room. Even in an unused one they are likely to be too damp, or too dry, or to grow spindly in their effort to reach the light. March, April, and May are all months when gardeners sow Carnation seed, and by the end of May you might set your pan out of doors if you can keep slugs from it. In ten days or a fortnight the seedlings should appear, and then you must face the fact that the biggest and strongest—those about which you feel most triumphant—will be the single ones, while the poor little weaklings will give you the best double flowers. All should be pricked off when they have four real leaves, either into boxes or pans or into the open ground. If you have raised your seed under glass in March, you must keep your pricked-out seedlings in a frame or greenhouse till all danger of frost is over. When you have neither, you must do the best you can with a room. The important thing is to keep away frost at this early stage. Be careful, when your Carnations are in the open ground, to keep away slugs with soot or lime, and look out for Leather-jackets and Wire-worms, both fatal to Carnations. The Leather-jacket is the larva of the Daddy-long-legs, and in this state has no legs at all. In spite of this, they can get along as fast as they wish. They are slaty-brown in colour, and look like short, fat, lifeless grubs. Wire-worms have yellow bodies, brown heads, and three pairs of legs behind their head. Both these pests may be trapped by burying small pieces of raw potato, carrot, or turnip, beneath the soil, with skewers through to mark where they are. These traps should be examined every morning. Another way to catch Leather-jackets, or Chop-worms, is to put pieces of slate,