September 2, 1869. ] 



JOUENAL OF HOBTICULTQEE AND COTTAGE GABDENEK. 



181 



WellingtoD, John Hopper, Rushton Eadeljfie, Charles Lefebvre, 

 and the old but not to be despised Baronne Prerost, have been 

 grand this year. — Harbison Weib, Weirleigh. 



ORCHARD-HOUSE FMLURES. 

 I THINK it redounds to the credit of orchard-house cultivators 

 that they have given vent to so few jeremiads such a confes- 

 sedly disastrous season as this. The absence of complaints 

 argues a considerable amount of patience, and this is just as it 

 should be. "The husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit 

 of the earth, and hath great patience for it." But how much 

 more patience is requisite when we have to wait two whole 

 years instead of one ! How largely have orchard-house growers 

 had occasion to draw upon their stock of " sufferance " — the 

 badge of all their tribe — during a season which, to the majority 

 of them, has proved barren of all fruitful results ! They may 

 truly say with Mark Tapley, that there is some credit in being 

 jolly under such depressing circumstances. Should, however, 

 the disappointment have proved too keen to any brother ama- 

 teur when surveying his fruitless boughs, to admit that he 

 has escaped what he may deem a very pardonable amount 

 of chagrin, I would hope to administer balm to his spirit 

 by the suggestion of two considerations. The i5rst is, others 

 are rowing in the same boat. Disappointment has attended 

 human endeavour time out of mind. If even Solomon, after 

 having made him gardens and orchards, and planted trees in 

 them of all kinds of fruits (and oh, what gardens, what orchards 

 mast his have been !), yet acknowledged when he looked on 

 these, that behold all was vanity and vexation of spirit, surely 

 we, who cannot boast of his wisdom, who live in a colder cli- 

 mate than he enjoyed, and who, even in glass houses, have 

 tenfold more chances against success than he had, should not 

 be surprised at a failure for once in our lives, or suffer ourselves 

 to be too much cast down by unavoidable misfortune. The 

 second consideration is one that applies to young cultivators 

 rather than those who have possessed orchard houses for several 

 years. Depend upon it, Nature has done the best thing that 

 could have possibly happened to you. Yon know you never 

 would have had the heart to have stripped your young trees of 

 their embryo fruits. But they will bear all the better another 

 year. Remember how honest Will Shakespeare represents 

 John of Gaunt as saying — 



" Teach thy necessity to reason thus — 

 There is do virtue lilie necessity : 

 Think not the king did banish thee, 

 But thou the king." 



Which I parody thns — 



Think not that Nature banlks thy fond parsoit, 

 Bat thou thyself hast wiiely thinned thy fruit. 



Would any one of us surpass Solomon in wisdom ? Then let 

 him meet reverses without sharing his vexation of spirit. 



Honour, all honour, to those who, in spite of sullen skies, 

 have retained their own serenity of spirit — who, in the face of 

 a dearth of Peaches and Nectarines this year (but not of Apri- 

 cots; with me they have been plentiful), have themselves 

 brought forth the precious fruits of longsuffering and of patience 

 — who have prosecuted their daily routine of orchard-house 

 labour, pinching, root-piuning, syringing, and watering, just 

 the same as though their trees were well laden with fruit, in 

 anticipation of better luck next year. And honour to those 

 also who, in a manly spirit, have candidly owned to a failure 

 this year, yet fully assured that the well-established principles 

 of_ orchard-house culture are not in fault, but that the general 

 failure is to be attributed to circumstances beyond control, and 

 so exceptional as to be likely to occur only once in a Lifetime. 

 My friends come to me and say, " Well, Mr. So-and-so, how 

 does your orchard house answer this year ?" I reply, " Fish- 

 ermen sometimes come home with empty creels, and I confess 

 to a failure this year." " Indeed ! " say they, somewhat super- 

 ciliously, " but we thought that glass insured a remunerative 

 crop." "As a general rule," I rejoin, "it does. But there is 

 an exception to every general rule. Have you considered," I 

 ask, " what we have had to contend against ? Last summer 

 onr trees fainted under a long continuance of tropical heat, 

 very prejudicial to the proper ripening of the wood, and causing 

 likewise a scarcity of water." And then (remembering how 

 old Socrates used to floor opponents by asking embarrassing 

 questions— questions the obvious answers to which proved the 

 case against them), I proceed to inquire, "How would you 

 like, after a long day's grouse-shooting in this August tempe- 



rature, to get no sleep ? or, just as you were comfortably 

 snoozing off, to be awakened by an alarum in your ears, or some 

 other horrid sound, and after such a night as that to have to 

 renew your sport for another sultry day, as though nothing 

 had happened to mar your rest ?" " Not at all," responds my 

 friend. "Well, then," say I, "that is just what our poor 

 trees have had to do. Not only had they to endure last sum- 

 mer's baking, but root action was kept up to a late period in 

 the autumn — in other words, they could not go to sleep. They 

 had no rest all last winter ; or, whenever they did get a ghost 

 of a nap, some fine genial sunny morning, when it ought to 

 have been snowing, woke them up again. Then, poor things ! 

 they did all they could. They put forth a rich profusion of 

 buds and blossoms, and I fully believe they quite intended 

 keeping the fair promise which those blossoms indicated, even 

 to their own prejudice, but a cold ungenial spring set in, and 

 those smiling blossoms could make no progress. They re- 

 mained on the trees, looking very pretty, but almost in a dor- 

 mant condition, for a longer period than usual, during all which 

 time the bleak east wind prevailed ; the consequence being, 

 that when they should have set the blossoms fluffed off, as my 

 brother, writing from Horsham, classically expressed it. It 

 was not that the frost penetrated the glass and nipped the 

 blossoms — no fear of that ; but the cold depressing weather 

 lasted so long, that the blossoms sank under it, the flower 

 perished, and so the fruit failed." 



I believe you invite your correspondents to record their own 

 experience as regards orchard-house culture, and so I will just 

 add a line to say, that although upon the whole I must class 

 myself with those who have failed to bring much fruit to per- 

 fection this year, yet I can show some very fine samples of 

 fruit, especially on one or two of my triple cordons, which have 

 been treated according to directions furnished in Mr. Brehaut's 

 invaluable work on that system, the perusal of which I cannot 

 too strongly recommend. My crop of Grapes is very satisfac- 

 tory. Many bunches have now coloured. I cover them in- 

 muslin bags, which will protect them from wasps, but not from 

 rats. Eats, by-the-by, would make excellent judges of the 

 flavour of Grapes. They always attack the best first ; and I 

 cannot blame them, for I know I should do just the same had 

 I been born, as Sam Weller would have said, in that station 

 of life. I have a Peach tree on a west wall outside my house, 

 the fruit of which has in two former years carried away the 

 first prize at a fruit show. It has fifty Peaches on it, which 

 promise to be remarkably fine. I did not give any protection 

 to this tree last spring, but by a thorough fumigation destroyed 

 all the aphides. I am convinced that an early fumigation is 

 one of the chief things to be attended to both in-doors and cut, 

 but is very often omitted until too late. Some of my trees, I 

 am sorry to say, are afflicted with mildew, and this is a disease 

 which at present baffles my skill. 



In my miniature orchard I have a fair crop of Apples, Pears, 

 and Plums. With regard to the latter, it is quite a sight to 

 see the lady birds preying upon the innumerable aphides. 

 They go at it con amore, and I only wish that butchers' meat 

 (at this season when it wo'n't keep), were as tender as those 

 delicate morsels seem to be— I mean the aphides, not the lady 

 birds. Some ignoramus the other day in a newspaper spoke of 

 " the plague " of lady birds. Plague, indeed ! How little he 

 knew with what exuberant feelings of joy the Hop-grower wel- 

 comes an immigration of those red-jacketed beetles, or with, 

 what exquisite delight an orchard-house grower observes them 

 making a raid upon the " varmint " that infest his trees. 

 " They seem jolly hungry," my boy said to me as he viewed 

 them through a microscope. "Yes," I said; " they must have 

 fasted when they came across the sea." I hope they may long 

 continue to enjoy the same hearty appetite, and that they may 

 be troubled with no dyspeptic consequences. — A CoNSTANr 

 Eeadek, Herts. 



LOUISA SMITH TRICOLOR PELARGONIUM. 



" After all, is there anything better for a bed amongst the 

 Tricolors than Mrs. Pollock ?" is a question often asked in a 

 very triumphant tone by those lovers of old times who always 

 like to disparage novelties. It has been difficult to answer it, 

 inasmuch as the high price at which these Pelargoniums are 

 sold, has prevented persons from trying them in a mass. I 

 am, however, now enabled to assert, that in every respect Mrs. 

 Pollock is distanced by Louisa Smith ; the latter is brighter 

 in the yellow margin, smoother in leaf, and twice as good a 

 grower, and I would advise all who wish to have a good Tricolor 



