This Is a quick and pleasant way of shifting a plant without disturbing tender roots, and endangering a loosely-held-together ball. I have used it for years, and in some oases it is invaluable.

Place the new pot before you; crock it, drain it, moss it, and bottom it with soil as in the usual way. Now take the plant in its old pot, and place it bodily on the bottoming of the new pot; fill up the space between the inner side of the new pot and the outer side of the old one, using the potting stick or your fingers, as the case may require. Now take out the old plant, pot and all, and you will have a beautiful mould or matrix, a little larger or smaller than the ball of your plant, according to the depth in which you potted the old pot in the new one. Now turn out the ball, pop it into the hole, press it down, and the thing is done. If the rim of the old pot is kept a trifle higher than the rim of the new, the ball will generally fit. This part will depend on the operator. I can only describe the operation. A Practical Friend.

Mr. H. W. Sargent, of Wodenethe, has sent us an excellent article on the state of his various evergreens this spring, which shall appear in our next.