]87i.] STOKING AND VENTILATING. 361 



should have quarters nowhere. Clarke's insect-destroyer, tobacco- 

 powder dusted on and washed off again, and fumigating with tobacco, 

 are remedies easily got at. Forcing plants, such as Lilacs, Deutzias, 

 Hardy Azaleas, and many similar winter and spring forcing-plants, 

 should be placed full in the sun, to forward their flower-buds and get 

 them in order for flowering. M. T. 



STOKING ANT> VENTILATING. 



We venture to discuss this matter more with a desire to conform to 

 the Editor's wish, as expressed in the June number of the ' Gardener,' 

 than with any expectation of being able to supplement his very excel- 

 lent and generally applicable remarks on the same subject. In view of 

 past experiences, we could hardly help smiling at some of his observa- 

 tions regarding the position of the stoker and ventilator when placed 

 between a hot day, hot pipes, and a hot superintendent. True it is 

 that few things are productive of more irritation and annoyance in a 

 garden than the stoking and ventilating ; we have always found it so, 

 and we have had something to do in that way in different capacities. 

 It was our lot as a learner to be under somewhat fastidious masters at 

 diff'erent times, who in the matter of firing and ventilating exacted 

 very scrupulous attention ; and although we look back upon that period 

 as the most actually laborious time of our career, still the schooling has 

 proved to be of more than compensating value to us since. We fancy, 

 if our memory was nudged in the way the Tichborne claimant's has been 

 done of late, that we could rake up some wonderful meteorological dates 

 of the period to which we refer. It was a profound conviction amongst 

 us, particularly those in the forcing departments, that we lived in a time 

 of surpassing meteorological phenomena. The spots on the sun were 

 nothing to the vagaries that planet was credited with : none among us 

 doubted the influence of the planets, or at least the sun, upon the hor- 

 ticultural fraternity at all events — extending, indeed, in a very marked 

 degree, even to the vocabulary. It was a settled belief, founded upon 

 the most extended experience, that, let the weather be ever so constant 

 and settled, the sun was sure either to show or hide his face just at 

 dinner-time, upsetting the most careful calculations and arrangements 

 for an hour's rest and peace. It could also be noticed, that if Sunday 

 was intended as a day of rest, neither the sun nor the wind had been 

 a party to the agreement, but combined once every seven days to pro- 

 test against the arrangement by conducting themselves in the most 

 erratic manner imaginable, necessitating a corresponding amount of 

 mental and physical exercise on the part of those who were unfortu- 



