March 7, 1887. ] 



JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



175 



alias Late Fortyfold of the south and west, alias Red Bread- 

 fruit of the midland counties. It is also sometimes called 

 "Rough Red" in the north, but do not let the old Scotch 

 Rough Red be mistaken for it; the latter is red all over, and 

 ugly, too, but the Freebearer is uglier still, having very deep 

 eyes, and it is of a mottled purplish red and white. The flesh 

 is quite white, of excellent flavour, and it is of a rare quality 

 for "laying ou" the flesh of pigs, and bringing down the 

 scales. Whether the land be wet or dry, it is one of the very 

 best Potatoes for the cottager, particularly where the ground is 

 manured with " seaware," or vraic. I have helped to collect 

 it for the purpose in Jersey for many a long hour. — Upwaiids 

 AND Onwaeds. 



RENOVATING OLD WALNUTS— VENTILATING 

 VINERY. 



I AM desirous to make known a discovery I have made — that 

 Walnuts, after being kept for two or three years, and until so 

 dried up that you would suppose you were handling empty 

 shells, are restored to a perfect state by steeping them in 

 water for a couple of day.s, and allowing them to remain one or 

 two days longer out of the water before using them. Foreign 

 Walnuts, which have a thicker shell, require longer immersion, 

 say about three days. I have some of the latter at the present 

 time that I prepare as a dainty for my canaries, and such look 

 and feel as well, and are, I think, as well-flavoured as the first 

 hour they were gathered. If you think it worth while to publish 

 this in your Journal I shall feel that I may have suggested an 

 agi'eeable after-dinner occupation to a considerable extent. 



I have been greatly interested for some time past in the 

 many and various articles in your very interesting Journal on 

 the subject of the Vine ; it is, in my opinion, a subject that 

 never wearies. I am myself a little of an experimentalist. I 

 began to use lime rubbish and oyster-shells in the composition 

 of my Vine borders many years ago, and in addition to this I 

 add a considerable quantity of charcoal, a substance which is 

 beginning to be appreciated by the gardening world, but I 

 think it is not so extensively used as it deserves to be. 



My vinery is constructed after a plan of my own ; the roof 

 and about two-thirds of the front being glass, with about 1 foot of 

 galvanised wire netting next the ground in front, which supplies 

 a constant ventilation, and my Grapes are often pronounced 

 better than most hothouse Grapes. I have not yet had any 

 artificial heat, but this year I intend to have Hays's patent 

 stove to give a few weeks of warmth in the early part of spring, 

 and I am all anxiety in case of a sunless summer. — T. M, 

 RoBSON, Penally. 



TREES NOT INJURED BY GAME. 



Fob " E. F. G.'s " information, I am sorry to say that very 

 few trees and shrubs are not liable to such injury. 



I happen to be in one of those places where game is reared 

 on a large scale ; I should think last year there were 1500 

 rabbits on about one hundred acres, and hares and pheasants 

 in proportion. The only trees and shrubs which I do not re- 

 member the game to have injured, are the Beech and Birch, 

 Alder, Black Thorn, common Thorns, Elms, Willows, Deci- 

 duous Berberis, Dogwood, common Laurel, Portugal Laurel, 

 Rhododendrons, Ribes, Snowberry, Sweet Briar, Wild Rasp- 

 berry, Yesv, and Gueldres Rose. 



The following may, however, be planted with safety, if care 

 be taken in very severe weather to paint the stems with cow- 

 dung, soot, and clay, or to bind some Gorse roimd them. Some 

 trees and shrubs, however, are so bushy that it is impossible 

 to get at their stems without damaging the branches ; but 

 those which I shall now name I have never found injured by 

 game, except in very severe weather, when a little extra feed- 

 ing for a short time with Swedes for rabbits and hares, will 

 often prevent damage. These are — Acacia, Ash, Aralias, 

 Evergreen Berberis, Cercis or Judas Tree, Cherries, Horse 

 Chestnut, Hornbeam, Maple, Oak, Poplar, Prunus, Rhus, Ribes, 

 Spiraeas, Sycamore, Syringas, Viburnums, Walnuts, Weigelas, 

 AJndromedas, Abies, Aucubas, Box, Cedars, Holly, and Loni- 

 ceras. Perhaps there are a few more which I have omitted ; 

 I only write from experience. — T. Elcome, Bhiig Gardens. 



Chimonanthos gkandiflorus. — I was not aware of any 

 special merit due to a propagator for obtaining the above from 

 cutting^ ; for several years ago I had cuttings put in in two 



successive years, and nearly every cutting rooted ami made a 

 plant in the following year. The cuttings were pnt in about 

 the same time as those you mention, and were of the current 

 year's wood, but taken from the tree with a small sboalder of 

 old wood. — T. 



FLOWEES AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 



There is a common saying, " Call a Rose by whatever name 

 you will, it is still a Ro.=ie ; " and when we have expended all 

 our enthusiasm flowers are but flowers, the frailest, yet the 

 most beautiful things earth holds in her keeping. Dear they 

 are to most, if not to all of us. Few have the courage to ac- 

 knowledge insensibility to their transient charms. Some may 

 live away from their influence in the centre of a large town, 

 where flowers grow not, where they are seldom seen ; but this 

 very rarity gives to their beauty a power which is often dimmed 

 by constant sight and usage. -\nd then, too, their power, 

 beauty, and influence vary to each of us. Time, circumstances, 

 and associations give a deeper, sometimes a very painful in- 

 terest to individual plants and flowers, connecting them in- 

 dissolubly with the events of our passing years, with our joyg 

 and sorrows, with our heavy losses, with our long weary hours 

 of work, with our longer and more weary hours of waiting, 

 with our misunderstandings and separations, which fret the 

 spirit, and leave life-long heart-burnings ; with our hasty out- 

 spoken words of anger, which fill us with gnawing regret ; with 

 days of sickness, of painful suffering when the hands lie use- 

 less, and the aching head feels like Tennyson's " Deaerted 

 House," empty quite, for thought is not — cannot be; and 

 with that deeper misery, that misery which is so hard to bear 

 — the sense of utter failure, and cold neglect, and unfoigiven 

 faults. 



Yes, full of associations to some one or other are most of 

 the every-day common flowers. Some minds may feel less of 

 this than others, but all in some measure. That field of 

 Buttercups and Daisies burning beneath the June sun — a 

 marvel of beauty, making the costl.y garden within the park 

 gates pale in comparison, and seeming like very cloth of gold 

 set with silver stars — brings back to the mind fields of long 

 ago, where truant children, caring nothing for torn or soiled 

 clothes, wandered, climbing over gates and walls to gather the 

 forbidden flowers, and wishing the days were weeks long, and 

 wondering, like the little school boy wading knee deep in Wood 

 Anemones, if heaven would be half as lovely. 



Those little Speedwells, how dear they are to us yet ! and 

 how beautiful they were growing in the soft grass of that 

 home meadow, a long broad patch of blue — intensely blue — a 

 bit of the summer sky come down to dwell upon the earth, 

 never to be seen in after-years without a yearning desire for 

 the home, the hedge, and the meadow. 



Those deep pink Cabbage Roses which we stood watering one 

 July evening in the near-to-town garden, watering with much 

 noise and mirth, when the tidings of a great grief reached us, 

 never looked the same after; the spirit of unconscious beauty 

 seemed driven away, and you might have thought sorrow had 

 entered in, for they hung down their heads as if weary of their 

 own weight ; and though we cared for them and grew them 

 afterwards, we never loved them, and never could entirely 

 separate them from the trouble of that summer evening. 



And the Heliotrope — I never see it or catch a passing breath 

 of it, but I think of one Heliotrope before which the thought 

 of all other Heliotropes fades away — an old plant sending out 

 its perfume into a dingy parlour, where a mother, growiBg 

 old faster than her plant, sat watching and waiting for her 

 son's return. Oh, the bursts of passionate grief and anger ! The 

 poisoned words come back to memory ever with the Helio- 

 trope — cannot be parted from it — leave ever a sense of pain 

 which even its sweet fragrance cannot banish. 



"Maud, dear, do not give Polly those Wallflowers, I cannot 

 endure the smell of them," said a young mother to me. 

 "They remind me so of poor Edith, though she has been 

 buried more than fifteen years ; she died early in the spriiig, 

 and we could get nothing but Wallflowers to put into her coffin. 

 I have never liked them since ; I know it is foolish — mother 

 says it is wicked — but I cannot help it. I cannot bear them. 

 I never go into the market during April or May for fear I 

 should see them, or smell them. I cannot think whatever 

 they do with the immense quantities of cut Wallflowers they 

 bring in. If I had miles of garden I would not grow one ; 

 they make me live over again that dreadful time — fill me full 

 of unpleasant memories." And yet when Mrs. Cromptoo 



