These graceful, fragrant flowers are of the easiest culture. The bulbs are now sold remarkably cheap, cheaper in fact than you can save them. The species called refracta and refracta alba are mostly grown. The latter is pure white, without the yellow blotch in the throat. We too often plant a large lot of freesia bulbs at one time, thus having more than our demand makes profitable. You receive the bulbs in July, and every two or three weeks a few hundred can be started.

Their treatment is entirely different from the so-called Dutch bulbs, and sometimes mistakes are made. We usually plant seven to nine bulbs in a 5-inch pot. Put the bulbs a little under the surface and place the pots in a coldframe. Later batches you will start inside. The pots want no covering of any kind, as the top and roots start together. Water moderately till the foliage is well developed. When the pots are full of roots they should not suffer for water. They like a temperature of about 50 degrees at night and should always have the fullest light.

Those growing large quantities plant the bulbs in flats of three or four inches of soil. After November a bench in a greenhouse is used for the purpose, putting the bulbs two inches apart in the rows and six inches between rows.

A good loam with some well rotted manure or leaf-mold will grow them; do not give them poor, worn-out soil as you can a tulip.

Pots that have flowered can be stored away after the foliage is ripe and the bulbs shaken out and started again the following fall, but as stated above the bulbs are now produced so fine and cheap that it is better to buy every year. Freesias will endure a few degrees of frost without any harm, but don't let the dry bulbs freeze when out of the ground.