404 THE GARDENER. [Sept. 



SHELTER. 



^YE have long had great faith in old herring-nets as shelter against 

 winds, frosts, and animated plagues of the higher winged class. Against 

 wasps and flies, to which we are now compelled to add hornets, nets of 

 the flner textures are necessary ; still the old herring-net is the most 

 generally useful as a protective material. It is only since reading Mr 

 Sutherland's sensible article on the subject that we have the moral 

 courage to say so. Some years ago a celebrated clerical amateur gardener, 

 a near neighbour of ours, all but excommunicated the old herring-net 

 in severely caustic terms. He said that the hanging up of a herring-net 

 before a Peach-tree, in order to shelter it, was like the shelter a sheep 

 would experience behind a hurdle on Salisbury Plain in a snow-storm. 

 The apparition of that luckless sheep has ever since haunted our mind 

 when the old nets have been brought into use, and made us half 

 ashamed of our faith in them. We have never, however, abandoned that 

 faith, and hasten to make a public confession of it. At first sight, 

 there does not seem to be much shelter behind a herring-net, but in 

 practice it is found to have a wonderful effect in breaking the force of 

 the wind, and also in retarding radiation ; and when it is doubled or 

 tripled, it is sufficient for anything in spring. 



Almost everybody will have observed the wonderful effect the 

 branches of deciduous trees have in warding off frost from the ground 

 underneath ; or how a very thin sprinkling of litter, amounting to the 

 thickness of three or four straws or leaves, will quite prevent frost 

 from entering the soil; or, more correctly speaking, the few straws pre- 

 vent the heat from escaping from the soil. We have repeatedly had 

 occasion to observe that a Rose arbour, of 9 -feet span, with a lattice- 

 pattern of wood-work 6 inches wide, on which the Roses were trained 

 leafless in winter, and not much better than the Salisbury hurdle, would 

 resist frost, if the wind was still, up to 10°. Now, the virtue of the 

 herring- net does not, we believe, lie so much in itself, but from its 

 acting as an auxiliary to the brick wall behind it, or the ground under- 

 neath it; and all the better if the wall be hollow from the foundation, 

 with a good sound coping projecting well over. This conservation of 

 the heat of a wall, but especially of the earth, is not half taken advan- 

 tage of in spring. Every one looks out their old herring-nets when the 

 birds begin to peck the first-ripe Strawberries, but the proper time should 

 be when the first blossoms are beginning to open, the nets elevated 

 sufficiently above the beds to allow a man to walk underneath in a 

 stooping position. The same remark applies to Gooseberries and Red 

 Currants, which are often spoiled by late spring frosts. The cloche, 

 the ground-vinery, and the numerous new modifications of the same 



