314 



JOUBNAL OP HOKTICULTUBE AND COTTAGE GAEDENEE. 



[ AiJi-il 20, 1877. 



through. These pots are annually top-dressed with good 

 loam, well-decayed manure, and crushed bones, and are also 

 well fed with liquid manure in the growing season. There is 

 one great feature about this house — the trees have never been 

 known to fail in producing from thirty to forty dozens of fruit 

 annually. Noticeable in the same house are two plants of the 

 Portugal Quince in large pots C feet high, which have produced 

 fruit weighing more than 1 lb. each. These plants have a 

 very ornamental appearance, and would make fine objects for 

 standing on terraces iu the summer months. 



This house is not only useful and profitable as a fruit house, 

 but every portion of soil in the borders under the trees is utilised 

 by planting early Potatoes in the spring, also Mustard and 

 Cress, Eadishes, Lettuces, &o., and in the autumn the house is 

 rendered gay with Chrysanthemums, which are struck in June 

 in outside borders, and afterwards planted in the borders 

 under the pot trees and pegged down, the large varieties being 

 used. These at Christmas are exceedingly pretty, and furnish 

 large supplies of cut blooms. 



The kitchen garden is walled-in, is nearly two acres in ex- 

 tent, and is divided into quarters by fine espalier fruit trees, 

 which annually carry good crops of fruit. The walls are by 

 no means high, but the garden is well sheltered by outside 

 shrubberies. The south border is about 10 feet wide, where 

 early Peas, Potatoes, &c., are grown. About midway down this 

 border stands a fine Cedar of Lebanon of spreading habit, 

 which was thickly studded with cones. We were particularly 

 struck with the Box edgings in the kitchen garden, which are 

 a yard high and the same breadth through at the bottom. 

 These are dipped annually in the shape of an inverted A. 



These gardens have for several years been under the super- 

 intendence of Mr. F. BarrowoUffe, the able head gardener. — 

 G. E. A. 



PEAS IN A MILD WET WINTEB. 



A DOLEFUL tale have I to tell about the autumn-sown Peas. 

 Sown on a favourable day in November they came up quickly, 

 green as an emerald and abounding in health and vigour. 

 The weather was extremely mild and wet, causing the Peas to 

 grow so fast that soil had to be drawn up to support them. 

 Well, the rain kept falling and the Peas kept growing, till at 

 length they became so long and tender as to be unable to with- 

 stand the effects of so much wet, and gradually succumbed to 

 it, the stems rotting just above the surface, and to the entire 

 crop was lost. 



While this gradual decay of a crop, which could not be re- 

 placed, was going on I happened to read a note upon the 

 hardiness of that excellent early Pea William I., and I went to 

 have another look at my William I., but hardly a healthy plant 

 could I see ; they had perished and become victims to causes 

 entirely beyond control. It may be said that by hardiness a 

 certain power ol resisting or being unaffected by the effects 

 of severe cold was meant; but I hardly think it could have 

 been so, as the mild damp weather has been very general in 

 the southern counties of England, precisely the district to which 

 I understood the remark to apply. 



Ringleader was sown iu quantity on the same day in No- 

 vember and under similar conditions to William I., and it is 

 worthy of note that the older variety withstood the eil'ects of 

 the damp long after King William succumbed; at length, bow- 

 ever, it also decayed. Such a thing has never happened to 

 me before, and from what I have seen in one or two other 

 gardens I very much fear many of my brethren are in a similar 

 predicament. 



I am glad to add that the sowings made iu January and 

 onwards to the present time are in excellent condition, and 

 are growing so freely that a supply of green Peas will probably 

 be forthcoming very soon after the usual time, which here is 

 about the last week iu May.— Edward Luckiiobst. 



EARLY AND LATE DISTRICTS. 



Mr. Douglas has recently remarked — " Many specimens of 

 Pear and Plum trees are now in full blossom," and as this 

 indicates a somewhat earlier condition of blossoming than I 

 can speak of here, it has suggested to me that the question as 

 to what determines earliuess might be an interesting one ; to me 

 it would be so at any rate. I find on going up to London from 

 here (Ashford) that as one approaches the metropolis Pear 

 and Plum trees seem more forward ; but then one would 

 require to know the condition of the soil — for this must have 



much to do with it— and the varieties in bloom, for these differ 

 as to their period of blooming. Let me, then, take a few of 

 those which I have as standard trees, and ask some of your 

 correspondents if they would kindly say in what condition 

 their bloom is in when they receive the Journal this week 

 (April atith) — Williams' Bon Chrt-tien, Beurrc de Capiaumont, 

 Bishop's Thumb, Doyenne du Comioe, Comte de Lamy, and 

 Marie Louise. My own garden lies well sheltered (not walled- 

 in) from the north and north-easterly winds. The soil is rich 

 and open, and in most parts of good depth, and yet I have 

 not (April 18th) one single expanded truss of bloom on any of 

 the trees, and I am therefore curious to know if there are any 

 other circumstances which determine this matter of earliness. 

 Would our worthy superintendent at Chiswick kindly take the 

 trouble of saying what is the condition of his trees of the sorts 

 already named? — D., Deal. 



HEDGEHOGS AND BULLFINCHES. 



I LITTLE thought that I should ever in these enlightened 

 educated days read in actual sober print, not put in as a joke 

 or as an old superstition, " that hedgehogs will suck the cow 

 and spoil her," and that " this fact is indisputable," but so 

 in last week's Journal it is written by " A Master Gakdeker." 

 We are told also that the writer " has sought and gained this 

 information from farmers of long standing." Very long stand- 

 ing indeed. I should fancy the farmers were upwards of a 

 hundred years old. 



I take down from my bookshelves the first work that comes 

 on natural history. There I read, " Many absurd errors prevail 

 as to the habits of this animal [the hedgehog] . It is charged 

 with sucking the teats of cows by night, and wounding their 

 adders with its spines, thereby causing those ulcerations which 

 are sometimes observed. From this false accusation, however, 

 the smallness of its mouth is a sufficient exculpation." Further 

 I need not write. How strange that such nonsense should 

 still be believed in. Clever fellow was that cowman who in 

 very old days stole the milk and then blamed the hedgehog, 

 and how readily other thieves took up the tale. 



I next in positive duty must add a word about what " A 

 Master G.\rdener" says about the bullfinch, which is equally 

 erroneous. He writes, " I find that on the best authority the 

 bullfinch rarely frequents the garden, and then only when there 

 is great scarcity of food outside the garden." Well, every year 

 in January and February I have seen them in gardens for the 

 last forty years, and this year I saw five on one Gooseberry 

 bush picking out the buds. So has my squire's gardener. So 

 have the farmers in their gardens. Wisely wrote J. Gadd, 

 " The bullfinch is my game during the winter months." Then 

 comes my fiiind Harrison Weir, who has not a word to say in 

 defence of the bullfinch, and with his keen appreciation of 

 bird-beauty. I open my " Journal of a Naturalist," second 

 only in value to White's " Selborne," and I read, " Tht> bull- 

 finch has no claims to our regard. As spring approaches it 

 will visit our gardens, an insidious plunderer. Its delight is 

 in the embryo blossoms, wrapped up at this season in the bud 

 of a tree, and it is very dainty and curious in its choice of this 

 food, seldom feeding upon two kinds at the same time. It 

 generally commences with the germs of our larger and most 

 early liooseberry, and the bright red breasts of four or five 

 cock birds quietly feeding on the leafless bush are a very pretty 

 sight, but the consequences are ruinous to the crop. When 

 the Cherry buds begin to come forward they quit the Goose- 

 berry and make tremendous havoc with these. I have an 

 early Cherry," says this writer, " that has been for years a 

 great favourite with the bullfinch family, and its celebrity 

 seems to be communicated to each successive generation. It 

 buds profusely, but is annually so stripped by these feathered 

 rogues that its kind might almost be doubled. The Orleans 

 and Green Gage Plums next form a treat, and draw their at- 

 tention from what remains of the Cherry. 



" The idea that has been occasionally entertained, that this 

 bird selects only such buds as contain the embryo of an 

 insect, to feed on it and thus free us from a latent colony of 

 caterpillars, is certainly not correct. The mischief effected by 

 bullfinches is greater than commonly imagined, and the 

 ground beneath the bush or tree on which they have been 

 feeding is commonly strewed with the shattered buds, the re- 

 jectmeuts of their banquet, and we are thus deprived of a large 

 portion of our best fruits by this assiduous pillager — this 

 ' pick-a-bud,' as the gardeners call it, without any redeeming 

 virtues to compensate our loss." 



