A Rustic Basket gat? in Summer. — The Rustic Basket is the best design for 

 a flower-garden ; and if people would but countenance such artistic designs, 

 instead of the present race of hideous mongrels which olfend the eye at almost 

 every turn, it would be really worth while to write about how to fill them with 

 the most appropriate flowers. 



" W. W.'s" rustic basket should not have more than twelve inches depth of 

 mould in it. On no account leave the pedestal full of mould, at least, not more 

 than this season. All baskets and vases should have more holding soil than 

 flower-beds for the same plants ; a stronger kind of loam : in a country place, 

 sheep's droppings, gathered a month before, make the best manure, and give the 

 best mechanical texture to the loam. Three inches at the top should be mixed 

 with leaf mould and some sand, so as to make a light, rich, mellow soil of it. 

 They plant and manage the vases very well indeed at the Crystal Palace. But 

 you may make your rustic basket more gay and telling thai) any of their vases, if, 

 after attending to the compost just indicated, you keep the planting siridhj to 

 three kinds of plants ; two of them to be of most distinct colons — scarlet and 

 yellow ; and the third, a half-distinct color — a pale blue ; and plant them on this 

 wise : Take, first, a pale blue running Lobelia of the Erinus breed ; they are in 

 all the nurseries, but avoid Emnosoides ; it is too upright, and too dark a blue 

 next the wood-work. Nothing suits so well here as a pale blue. The plants are 

 in sixty pots ; turn one out, awd flatten the ball gently between your hands till it 

 is nearly as flat as a pan-cake, but do not hurt a root. Open the side at the very 

 edge of your basket, and lay down the flattened ball with the root end of the 

 plant as near the rim as possible ; the herb part of the plant will then point out 

 horizontally over the edge of the basket, and so on all round, making nearly a 

 continuous hedge all round. Smooth the surface of the basket now, and plant a 

 row of young To7n TJivmhs, with the heads slanting. After the Lobelias, then 

 another row of old Tom lluimbs, quite upright, and fill the middle with yellow- 

 bedding Calceolarias, quite full; and the plants must be old ones, and higher 

 than the last row of Geraniums. Water well through a rose, and the thing is 

 done for this season. — D. Beaton, 



The Scotch White Cluster Grape. — This was distributed by the Ilorticul- 

 tural Society some years since ; it is a robust grower and very hardy, with large 

 leaves, but slightly lobed ; a most abundant bearer, and rather earlier than the 

 Muscadine ; its berries are much crowded in the bunches, and require severe 

 thinning. It is an old Dutch variety ; I have received it from Holland under the 

 name of " Yroege Vanderlaan," and " Yanderlaan Precoce." — T. Rivers. 



The Apple. — Apples liave been believed by some to have been introduced into 

 Italy from Media, and that the Falisci, or inhabitants of Montcfiascone, were the 

 first to plant them in rows. But this must apply to some particular variety, not 

 to the species, which we have already stated to be indigenous, but very early cul- 

 tivated. Pliny enumerates twenty-three varieties, which appear still more diffi- 

 cult to identify with ours than the pears. Among the few that modern authors 

 have recognized, the A]>piani of the Romans are supposed to be the Apple or 

 A])piole of modern Italians, the Appia pyriformis to be the Api)iolona Innga, the 

 Syriaca ruberrima to be the red Calvetto, &c. In more modern Tuscany, Micheli, 

 in his above-mentioned manuscript, describes fifty-six sorts under the Medici 

 princes, fifty-two of which are figured by Costello. — Journal of the Hart. Society. 





Vol. VII —Auo. 1857. 25 



