iSyi.] NOTES ON WATERING. 271 



and fruit which may rival a white stone Turnip in flavour, though not 

 in juiciness, and " give me water, else I die," is silently repeated there. 

 You may carefully inspect everything artificially grown in such a place, 

 and, except in species where little water is required, there is evidently 

 a struggle for life. Perhaps some one will say we are going too 

 far : we can only answer with sorrow that it is simply the truth. 

 We have seen the original of the pictures just drawn — we have seen 

 Grape-vines checked time after time through want of water when re- 

 quired, crops of Grapes more like good-sized Currants than the name 

 of the variety would lead one to expect, with thrip and red-spider 

 constantly at work on the foliage, as the result of such treatment. 

 We have seen Verbenas " struck " in autumn, in quantity doubly 

 sufficient for the wants of the place, and yet in spring a system of 

 "cadging" has to be resorted to, in order to get as many as would 

 barely fill the beds for which they were wanted, the simple reason 

 for all this " labour in vain " being, that the soil was allowed to get 

 dry before watering, and damping was the order of the day, and every 

 recurring neglect left a continually diminishing quantity of plants for 

 propagating purposes in early sj^ring. 



On visiting a garden last year once famous for its Pine-Apples, we 

 saw a very striking illustration of the baneful eftects of keeping Pine- 

 Apples short of water. They looked a most wretched lot of plants, taken 

 as a whole. The young man who had charge of them imputed the 

 greater portion of blame to the construction of the pits ; however, that 

 could not be the " loose screw," as first-rate examples of Pine-growing 

 used to be constantly seen there when we visited it in former years. 

 We had our own thoughts as to the probable cause of this state of 

 matters, so the inquiry was made as to how often they were watered. 

 " Oh, it could not possibly be in the watering ; he watered them regu- 

 larly every eight days, so it could not be that.'^ When told that we 

 watered our plants two times for his once, he appeared rather scep- 

 tical about receiving it as quite authentic. He never had had any- 

 thing to do with Pines before taking charge of these, and he seemed 

 to have imbibed the idea, so very prevalent, that Pines do best kept 

 dry at root, and thus made a mistake of the greatest importance for 

 the successful growing of this fruit. It appears, in our estimation, to 

 be one of the grossest errors horticultural writers fall into — the con- 

 tinually advising of carefulness in watering, and being sure not to 

 water plants till they are dry. This teaching is in direct opposition 

 to that of nature. The rain does not wait till the earth is dried before 

 saturating it — nothing of the sort : any one can find out this for himself 

 by examining the soil at regular intervals during the year, and, except- 

 ing in the hot summer weather, no great depth need be gone to before 



