[Illustration: Fig. 14. Cross-Cut Bulb.] The scales of bulbs are often employed to multiply scarce varieties. From ten to thirty of the thicker scales may be removed from the outside of the bulb without serious injury to it. These are treated in the same manner as single eye cuttings. They are usually handled in flats or propagating-frames, and are pressed perpendicularly into a light and loose soil--half sharp sand and half leaf-mould--for nearly or quite their entire length, or are scattered in damp moss. Keep the soil simply moist, and for hardy and half-hardy species keep the temperature rather low--from 45° to 60°. Slight bottom heat may sometimes be given to advantage. In from three to ten weeks a little bulbel, or sometimes two or more, will appear at the base of the scale, as shown in Fig. 15. [Illustration: Fig. 15. Bulb-Scale.] These pots or flats may be plunged out-doors during summer if the planting was done in winter, or the scales may be potted off or transferred to the open border as soon as rootlets have formed. It is the common practice with most hardy species to allow the scales to remain in the original flats during summer and to cover them the next fall, allowing them to remain out-doors over winter. The succeeding spring they are shifted into a bed or border, and by the next fall--having had two summers' growth--most species will be ready for permanent planting in the flower border. A _bulblet_ is a small bulb borne entirely above ground, usually in the axil of a leaf or in the inflorescence. Familiar examples occur in the tiger lily and in "top" onions. In the former instance the bulblets are direct transformations of buds, while in the onion they are transformed flowers. It is impossible to draw any line of separation between bulblets and buds. In some plants, certain buds detach themselves and fall to the ground to multiply the species. Sometimes these buds vegetate before they fall from the plants, as in the case of various ferns. For purposes of propagation, bulblets are treated in the same way as bulbels, and like them, they reproduce the variety upon which they grow. They will develop into full grown bulbs in from one to three years, according to the species. [Illustration: Fig. 16. Gladiolus Corm.]