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JOURNAL OF HOBTIOULTUBE AND COTTAGE GAEDBNER. 



t May 20, 1875. 



with the toast, eaid that he had no hesitation in saying that the 

 Show they had seen that day was the finest that had ever been 

 seen in England. London nould not approach to it. 



Mr. Williams and Mr. Wills returned thanks on behalf of the 

 nnrserymeu. 



Mr. G. Paul proposed the health of the Judges, which was 

 responded to by the Rev. H. Dombrain. 



" Success to the Manchester Botanical and Horticultural So- 

 ciety " was proposed by Mr. W. Paul, and warmly responded to. 



AMERICAN ALOE'S BAPID GROWTH. 



It is not unusual in the email island of Guernsey to see fine 

 specimens of the Agave americana, commonly called American 

 Aloe, from thirty to forty years old, throw up a flower spike of 

 nearly as many feet in the space of a few weeks' time. There 

 is one still standing on the property where I am gardener, 

 which flowered in the autumn of 1873, growing at the rate of 

 G inches per day during three weeks. 



It commenced flowering the first week of September. About 

 the 10th I took the actual measurement and found it stood 

 12 feet 6 inches high, and in exactly twenty-one days more it 

 measured 23 feet. The scape now measures 25 feet in height, 

 and 25 inches in circumference at 5 feet from the ground, 

 where it starts up from amongst the numerous large fleshy 

 leaves, about fifty in number, each measuring 8 to 10 inches 

 across and G to 7 feet long. The leaves are now almost 

 withered and dilapidated, but before flowering the plant was 

 12J feet in diameter and 8 feet high. 



From strict inquiries I understand it to be now about thirty- 

 eight years old, But four years ago a similar one flowered in 

 this locaUty, which stood, I am told, 35 feet high. The flowers 

 of the present plant opened freely and showed their yellow 

 anthers to great advantage, trembling with the slightest wind, 

 but no seeds have ripened. 



What I found remarkable was, a number of small offsets 

 flowering last year round the base of the old plant. This Aloe, 

 and two others equally large, which I daresay will soon flower 

 also, have been planted in their present poeitions in 1872, 

 under the able instructions of Mens. Andre, during the form- 

 ation of one of the beautiful pares of which he is the origi- 

 nator in Guernsey, and which will long remain as a souvenir 

 of his genius. — J. J. G. 



"WATER-CREASES!" 



Fabeinodon Market at four o'clock in the morning was a 

 curious sight. As many as twenty enormous raDway vans, 

 laden with baskets of Water-cresses piled tier above tier, 

 blocked up the street leading from the main thoroughfare. 

 The hampers were being rapidly distributed along two rows uf 

 stalls, close to the market-gates, which were thronged by such 

 a collection of men, women, and children as I had never seen 

 except in Seven Dials on Saturday night, or in Iventish Hop 

 fields at the time of the picking. Nine-tenths were Irish, and 

 the chaffering all along the line was proportionately lively. 

 The sales varied in amount from the modest four-penn'orth 

 doled out by the handful to the five pounds' worth which was 

 carried to the go-cart of the flourishing greengrocer. For the 

 most part, however, a sum of four to five shillings was in- 

 vested by the hawker or hawkeress, but few parted with their 

 money without a considerable amount of bargaining. The 

 "creases" were packed in little hampers in four separate 

 layers, and there was often a keen competition for particular 

 "middles" or "sides" (i.e., for the layers occupying those 

 places in the hampers), which to a practised eye appeared to 

 D6 especially tightly compressed. As to the coarseness or 

 fineness of the plants, too, much connoisseurship was called 

 into play. " Just look at them middles," said a dealer : 

 " why, they're so tender as your grandmother, without any 

 teeth, 'ud be glad to eat 'em." "Keep? They'll keep till 

 Sunday morning, and parties comin' out o' chapel '11 be glad 

 to take 'em home to dinner." One magnificent specimen of 

 an old Irishwoman enlivened the proceedings with much 

 jocular comment, interspersed with queer scraps of old verse, 

 before she walked off with a huge basket of "creases" that 

 even a Swiss porter would have found rather heavy. With 

 long white hair, with eyes of the lightest blue that Tipperary 

 ever produced, with a complexion that needed no adventitious 

 colouring, with a bright-red shawl, and a coarse stuff dress 

 looped up over tremendous boots, she was as picturesque an 

 object as one often sees. Presently there came tripping 

 through the big iron gates a couple of little children, evidently 



brother and sister, who proceeded to trade with the most 

 business-like air. " One middle and a side " were what they 

 wanted, and it was curious to see how cleverly they beat down 

 the price from 2s. Gd. to Is. Wd. The little girl did not seem 

 to be more than ten or eleven, and her brother was at least a 

 couple of years younger ; but even at that age they were alone 

 in the world, earning their own livelihood. They had, as I 

 learnt, no father, no mother, no relations at all; they rented, 

 for Is. Gd. a-week, a room in a court near Drury-lane; and 

 here they were, looking tolerably tidy and clean, laying in their 

 stock-in-trade for the day. The dealer, an old woman, who 

 was too fat not to be good-natured, confided to me that she 

 had let them have the "creases" for 2d. less than she had 

 just been offered. "Them kids is wonders," she observed, 

 " and most of us is pretty easy with them." 



Water-cresses, I learnt, are about the best paying of all 

 vegetables to hawk about the streets, for the profit is rather 

 more than 100 per cent. ; so the " kids " would make about 

 2s. for their day's work, provided they could sell off their 

 whole stock ; and this they generally succeeded in doing. 

 " Why, there's people as 'ud give them children tuppence for 

 a bunch as they'd grudge a penny for to you or me," said the 

 old lady; and I must admit that if I ever go into partnership 

 with the speaker in the Watercress line, then we shall have no 

 chance against the two brats if the interesting appearance of 

 the sellers is to be an element in the business. 



Most of the Watercresses, it seems, are sold in poor neigh- 

 bourhoods. Cabmen, railway porters, and 'busmen are all 

 good customers, and a regular trade is also driven among the 

 lodging-houses at Highbury and Hoxton, where the German 

 clerks live, and in some of the foreign quarters about Soho. 

 At the West-end the householders are above buying from 

 costermoDgers, and order their "creases" from their green- 

 grocer. One club in Pall Mall buys from an old Irishwoman 

 who has supplied it for the last twenty years, but this is a 

 solitary exception. In parts of the slums of Westminster 

 there is a large demand, for there is a wide-spread belief 

 among the poorest classes that there is nothing so good as 

 "creases" to purify the blood. My informant had known 

 them cure a man whom she described as "spotty all over," 

 when even Holloway's pills had failed, and the force of 

 panegyric could go no further. "Famdon," it appears, is 

 not open on Sunday morning, being under the control of the 

 Corporation of London ; and on that day the market is held 

 in the Seven Dials, but the " creases " sold there are mostly 

 those brought to London on Saturday morning, and not dis- 

 posed of on that day. 



They are grown in all parts of the country. Liphook ia 

 Hampshire, Springhead in Kent, the Valley of the Thames 

 above Beading, and that of the Kennet beyond Newbury, 

 furnish a large proportion of the daily supply ; and a clever 

 cultivator who knows how to humour his crop with the water 

 and the mud that they like finds the business very profitable. 

 — (Morning Post.) 



PRIMULA CORTUSOIDES AMCENA HARDY. 



Seeing in one of your late numbers a doubt as to the hardi- 

 ness of Primula cortusoides amcena, I think you may like 

 to know that I removed a bed of them, and also one of P. cor- 

 tusoides, from a south border to one facing north after the 

 bloom was over last summer. Here they were forgotten, and 

 when I wished to put them into shelter for the winter I could 

 not find them, the plants having all died down. I made up 

 my mind I should never see them again, but this spring they 

 came up vigorously. 



The P. cortusoides is now in full flower, but the P. c. amcena, 

 though in vigorous leaf, shows no sign of flowering. Having 

 survived the late severe winter in the neighbourhood of York, 

 proves it to be tolerably hardy. — P. M. 



EoYAL Horticultural Society. — The meeting of the Scien- 

 tific, Fruit, and Floral Committees fixed for 2Cth inst. has been 

 postponed on account of that day being Derby day. The next 

 meeting of these Committees wiU take place on Wednesday, 

 Jane 2nd. 



PORTRAITS OF PLANTS, FLOWERS, and FRUiTS. 

 DicuoRisANURA Saundebsii. Nat. ord., Commelinacete-. 

 Linn., Hexandria Monogynia. Flowers white, broadly edged 

 with blue. — " Introduced from Brazil by W. Wilson Saunders, 

 Esq., F.R.S., and given by him to Kew, where it flowered in 



