318 THE GARDENER. [July 



on the 3d of March, 40 lb. having been produced by the end of May, and the 

 pickings are continued until the crops out of doors are ready. As soon as these 

 pot plants have doue fruiting, they are planted out in rows in the kitchen-garden, 

 where they fruit the succeeding year, after which they are removed for a vege- 

 table crop. The annual produce under this system is enormous, the life of a 

 Strawberi'y plant here being what might be termed a short and prolific one. 



A Peach-house has a fine tree of Royal George covering the back wall, and two 

 Elruge Nectarines and a Violet Hative Peach upon a semicircular trellis in the 

 front. This house is started during December, and ripens its fruit in June. The 

 trees are the picture of health, and full of promise. Cucumbers are grown in 

 pots in the Pine-stove all the winter through, and with the aid of those in frames 

 in the summer an inexhaustible supply is furnished. The Horton Prolific and 

 Telegraph are mostly grown. In front of the Pine-stove some pot Vines from 

 eyes are coming on ; these are for fruiting next winter. After the required 

 height is reached, the points are stopped, and the rod swells to the full dimen- 

 sions : they are then placed in the open air to fully ripen the wood. 



The kitchen-garden is very extensive, and is entirely surrounded by walls that 

 are covered with all the best kinds of fruit-trees literally loaded with fruit. So 

 also are the trees in the open ground, and especially so a fine row of Pears, 

 twenty-one in number, all of which are trained in a weeping form, and are about 

 9 feet in height and 7 feet in diameter. Vegetables of all descriptions are won- 

 drous fine and abundant, and under some hand-lights were a lot of dwarf French 

 Beans, to induce early fruiting ; and on a warm border, fine well-filled pods of 

 Sangster's No. 1 and Taber's Perfection Peas were ready for gathering. It is 

 impossible to praise too highly the fine appearance of all the various departments, 

 in or out of doors, at Mottisfont Gardens. 



We cannot conclude this notice without alluding to the famous pollard Oak at 

 Oakley, a small hamlet just at the extremity of the park. This tree has remark- 

 able proportions, for at 5 feet from the ground the circumference of its trunk 

 measures 32 feet, and a little higher there are the trunks of three huge 

 limbs, bearing the marks of many a stout wrestle with the storms of bygone 

 times. From these old trunks spring young and vigorous branches, in the 

 full flow of youth and freshness, and resemble childhood linked to decrepid 

 age. At the base of the tree, and all round it, is seen a curious development of 

 growth, as it is circled with bark-like protuberances reaching in some instances 

 4 and 5 feet outwards from the base of the trunk, just as if there had been at 

 some time or other a vegetative eruption, the excrescence partaking of the char- 

 acter of a woody lava that had welled up from the roots of the tree in past times. 

 "Within the trunk, which is so hollowed out by decay that but little else than the 

 mere lining of the bark remains, a dozen men could congregate with the greatest 

 ease. The present vigorous growth of the branches (giving it the appearance in the 

 distance of being a young tree) can perhaps be accounted for from the fact that 

 a branch of the river Test (which is supposed to have been diverted from the 

 parent stream by the " monks of old," in order to secure a supply of water im- 

 mediately contiguous to the abbey, the Test being nearly a quarter of a mile 

 distant) runs very near this old tree, and no doubt its roots have found their way 

 to the bed of the stream. The district of Mottisfont is a very moist one, as it 

 lies low in the valley of the Test, which at Romsey pours itself into the South- 

 ampton Water. 0. S. 



