THE FLORAL WORLD AKD GARDEN GUIDE. 



135 



bud, and it will start away and make a plant 

 the first season; which, if not cut bick, it will 

 probably never do, havinfj been stunted so 

 long. In a lawn of spergula, weeds will cer- 

 tainly make their appearance, and their re- 

 moval is the only trouble occisioned by the use 

 of spergula, beyond roilinL', which is requisite 

 also with grass. The wi^cds must be removed 

 by hand. We use a large old pruning knife to 

 lift the weeds out, and if tiie sperjjula is dis- 

 turbed by the process, it only needs to be 

 pressed down again into its place and be well 

 rolled after weeding. To gather the blooms of 

 Lily of the Valley, makes no difference at all iu 

 their future blooming. 

 Floor op Greenhouse. — Thorn. — There is 

 nothing better than foot tiles, laid on sand 

 and without cement, and sand grouted in be- 

 tween then ; these cost in London Zd. per 

 square foot. Coal tar and ashes would emit 

 an odour for a long time, but as the house can 

 be cleaned out now, the smell would be gone, 

 or so much reduced before stocking it again, 

 that we think you may safely use it, but it 

 should be done at once. Or a concrete walk 

 may be made with chalk and stones one foot 

 deep, with a sprinkle of gravel on the top, to 

 be watered and rolled, or beaten firm, liut 

 there is nothing to equal red tiles ; they can be 

 kept ao clean with water and broom. 

 EosEs IN Pots. — &. W. F. H. — Your frame, ten 

 feet by sis feet, with three lights, is just the 

 place in -which to get up and keep a nice stock 

 of pot roses, including teas, because you cau 

 give them as much air, sun, shower, shade, and 

 shelter as you like, by means of mats, removal 

 of lights, etc., etc. They must be plunged, 

 and you will find coal -ashes, or sand, or sifted 

 gfravel the best. Your friend, whose roses 

 suifer from mildew through being plunged in 

 spent hops, is a victim of a new-fangled notion 

 that is doing a deal of harm. Tell him to con- 

 sign the hops to the muck-pit, where they will 

 rot away and do no more harm. Sulphur is no 

 use in such cases, because the hops are a seed- 

 bed for the most destructive of lungi. Make 

 your roses from eyes, as described by us last 

 year, and you mil have better stock than you 

 can buy ; the trade are obliired to work them 

 to sell tliem at a price the public is not alarmed 

 at ; people will not pay enough for roses on 

 their own routs. 

 ToequayClimatk.— In your July number, 1860, p. 

 160, you inserted my statement of the effect of the 

 then previous winter on the shrubs and plants 

 at Torquay. I now report the result of last 

 winter's hard frost. The bottle-brush (Beau- 

 fortia splendens), that has been out unsheltered 

 for si.K years, was cut to within an inch of the 

 ground, but my two plants are now sprouting 

 out again from the stump. The Begonia dis- 

 color close to the above is throwing up its beau- 

 tiful leavesuninjuredby the frost ; both usually 

 sold as stove-plants. The Passiflora cerulea, 

 four plants of ten years' standing, all round 

 the verandah, are killed to within a few inches 

 of the ground, where it is again throwing out 

 shoots, ^hile two or three small plants (last 

 year's suckers) have stood the winter close by 

 uninjur. d. All the veronicas, except the very 

 narrow-leaved one, are killed, the bark having 

 split to the roots, like a water-pipe, by the 

 fiost. The euonymus were in seme places 

 killed in the same way, in other situations 

 much cut up. The cordnillas were all killed to 

 the ground, except two wcj'kly-looking plants 

 that were raovtd on to a dry bank last autumn, 

 and exposed to the east winds, so that I doubted 

 if ihey would grow at all, and they are the only 

 ones doing anything; seedlings are springing 

 up by hundreds under the old plants. The 



magnolias were much injured. Our laurestinag, 

 laurels, etc., were mostly uninjured. There 

 is very little blossom on the white thorn in 

 the hedges this year, and very few bees visit 

 their favourite plants in the garden, so many 

 swarms being killed this winter. — Yours truly, 

 A.-B. S., Torquay. 



Son.s FOE Fi.owEiis. — H. H. S. — N"o doubt the 

 proposed list would be useful, but it would 

 occupy a great deal of space, and would looJc 

 more useful than it would be, in (act. AVe 

 must always bear in mind the UiiTerence be- 

 tween a journal and a book. As to soils, you 

 have but to hit upon the way your friends make 

 up what you describe as yeranium soil, to be 

 able to do as tliey say, that is, grow almost 

 anything in it. With us, the incorporation of 

 soils is a very simple ail'air ; we keep bins 

 filled with sand, leal-mould, rotten dung, peat, 

 and loam, all separate, and another for the 

 sweepings of each, and the waste out of pots, 

 and for every batch of plants potted, a mixture 

 is made at the time, and in ninety-nine cases 

 out of a hundred, the mixture consists of about 

 equal parts of loam, leaf, dung, and sand, the 

 coarser parts at the bottom of the pot, and the 

 finer at the top. But the question arises, what 

 is loam, and what is peat ? Instead of at- 

 tempting now to define and describe, let it suf- 

 fice that, where buttercups grow luxuriantly, 

 you may call the soil loam, and good loam ; and 

 ■where heaths grow luxuriantly, with fine 

 grasses and wild thyme, you may call it peat, 

 and use it as such, and the more fibrous its 

 texture the better ; it ought to be tough, like a 

 felt, and the loam ought to be pulverable in 

 the hand, and rather retentive of moisture. 



Pie Juice. — The time is now fast coming on for 

 fruit pies, and, therefore, for pie-juice ; and as 

 our readers strive all points for the practical 

 and useful combined, we intend to offer a sug- 

 gestion for "the better arrangement" of pie- 

 juice. Some people place an inverted cup in 

 the pie, thinking this catches juice that would 

 otherwise boil over, but that is a mistake, for 

 though juice is found under the cup when 

 the pie has cooled, yet it never entered the cup 

 whilst the pie was in the oven ; for this simple 

 reason, the inside of the cup was as hot as the 

 inside of the pie. The case of inverting a cup in 

 the pie does more harm than good, for, as the 

 heat cooks the fruit, it also expands the air in 

 the cup, which air tends to blow out the juice 

 from the dish : but if a small hole, say a quarter 

 of an inch, be made in the bottom of the cup, 

 which, of course, comes to the top of the pie 

 when inverted in the dish, the hot air will 

 escape into the oven, and leave room for the juice 

 to run into the cup, which again will descend 

 amoniist the fruit on the pie cooUng. "Now 

 how are we to make this small hole in the bot- 

 tom of the cup?" says the reader. "Listen, 

 and you shall hear," says the writer. "Take a 

 six-inch flower-pot, fill it with dry sand, or 

 mould, then take your cup, invert it, and push 

 it down into the mould or sand till only the top 

 is just seen, by which means the inside of the 

 cup is as full of sand or mould as it will be of 

 juice when in the pie ; then take a sharp pointed 

 instrument, like an old pair of scissors or a 

 one-pronged fork, and begin to peck away little 

 by little, and you will soon have a small hole, 

 which can ea>ily then be made bigger before 

 taking the cup from the flower-pot. The sand 

 or mould prevents the cup from cracking or 

 breaking during the chipping process. When 

 the cup is used invert it in the pie, but take 

 care that the siiiall hole iajfree from the crust." 

 Here is a very simple contrivance that will soon 

 prove itself. A grand plan is to make three 

 pies, one without any cup, one with a cup, and 



