Sliadcs for Garden Scats 



93 



of ^5 for his ingenuity from the International 

 Horticultural Congress held last year. 



The principle on which these shades are 

 constructed is that of a lady's fan, or, as the 

 inventor describes it, "the fin of a fish, or a 

 pair of wings horizontally expanded, with the 

 two front edges brought together." The 

 framework is either of iron, cane, or whale- 

 bone, covered with blue or red striped canvas. 

 The horizontal action enables the maker to 

 give a round, square, oblong, or any other 

 shape required, and to place the stem at any 

 part from centre to edge, the latter being a 

 very great advantage where required, as ti 

 leaves the whole of the centre of the canopy 

 unobstructed. This canopy, with the addi- 

 tion of a curtain, forms a most complete sun- 



shade,which can be erected or taken down in 

 one minute. 



In erecting the canopy a tubular spike is 

 first driven into the ground, and the stem in- 

 serted therein, which, acting telescopically, 

 can be raised or lowered, by means of screw 

 nuts, to any height required. The canopy is 

 then placed on the stem and opened. The 

 facility with which this canopy can be ex- 

 panded, or collapsed and taken down, offers 

 the opportunity of kee]Ding it clean and free 

 from insects. 



These canopies may also be used, made in 

 suitable material with proper fittings, upon 

 open carriages, such as waggonettes, park 

 phaetons, perambulators, &c. 



A NOTE. 



LIKE many suburban flower growers, I was sadly- 

 annoyed by mischievous children, as well as by 

 some of maturer age, plucking my flowers whenever 

 they could reach them, till T fell upon the following 

 mode of prevention, which I hope the most sensitive 

 will not deem unnecessarily cruel. Recollecting the 

 nettle-like stinging properties of the pretty harmless- 

 lookingannual and biennial Loasads, as well as of that 

 once favourite flower-border annual, the Roman 

 nettle Urtica pilulifera, I introduced them into the 

 borders next to my entrance gate, and at other 

 places where depredations had been most frequently 

 made. No sooner had the former begun to dis- 

 play their beautiful yellow and orange - coloured 

 flowers, than some of my tormentors laid hold 

 of them, as they had been in the practice of 

 doing, but they as quickly let them go ; first look- 

 ing, in a bewildered-like manner at their smarting 

 fingers, then at the pretty innocent-like nodding 

 flowers, and ultimately moving away as if they had 

 learned a lesson which they were not likely soon to 



forget— forming resolutions at the same time to be con- 

 tent by admiring without touching in future, and 

 which resolution I am glad to say has been well 

 kept, for I frequently see some that were among the 

 worst depredators now admiring my flower-beds 

 through the way-side railing, without attempting to 

 put forth a pilfering hand, and this, I am convinced, 

 not so much from any fear of renewed punishment, as 

 from a conviction that they had been taught good 

 behaviour, through the circumstance of having had a 

 smart, and upon the whole, a harmless practical joke 

 played off upon them. The species which I have em- 

 ployed thus usefully, and, I trust, harmlessly, are the 

 rambling and free-growing pretty yellow-flowered 

 annuals, Loasa Placei and L. nitida, together with the 

 showy reddish orange L. lateritia, which last does best 

 when treated as a biennial, aud accommodated with 

 gi-eenhouse protection in winter. As the seeds are not 

 so easily got as formerly, it is of importance to know 

 that they will retain their vegetative powers, for four 

 five, or six years, probably longer.—^. W. 



