113 



JOURNAL OF HORTIOULTUEE AND COTTAGE GAEDENEE. 



[ February 5, 1874. 



produciDg the leading shoot, which being trained erect grows 

 stronger than the other side shoots. We then have one lead- 

 ing shoot and four side shoots produced as the result of the 

 first season's pruning. It is no matter what the strength of 

 the stem may be, it must be cut down to the point stated in 

 order to secure the branches or side shoots at the proper place. 

 We can only, at this stage, depend upon four or five of the 

 buds breaking, prune it where you will. If the stem is pruned 

 at a feet from the ground the top five eyes only would break, 

 and the lowest branch would then be 2 feet 6 inches from the 

 ground. 



Fig. 2 represents the pruning of a maiden tree for the form- 

 ation of a single cordon. This may, of course, be trained 

 either horizontally as represented, or upright. In this case 

 no side shoots or branches are required, only buds for the 

 formation of fruiting spurs ; and so we are enabled to leave the 

 stem at double the length, the top bud being the only one 

 required to form a shoot. — B. 



THE POTATO DISEASE. 



Afteb reading the report of the Judges, and their reasons for 

 not adjudicating Lord Cathcart's prize to any of the ninety- 

 four essayists competing, I think with Mr. Luckhurst (page 72) 

 that they arrived at a most lame and impotent conclusion. 

 There would, no doubt, be a great sameness in the diiierent 

 essays, both in the theories advanced and in the practical 

 suggestions made to prevent the disease ; but there must have 

 been something worthy of publishing in the Society's Journal 

 amongst the twenty-three selected essays, if not eligible for 

 the prize. 



In their Eeport the Judges say that the ninety-four essayists 

 " generally consider it sufficient to assign a cause and a mode 

 of prevention of the Potato disease, without giving any scienti- 

 fically accurate theory of their proposed remedy, or sufficient 

 experimental proof of the accuracy of their statements." Now, 

 if some of the essayists have described what they believe to 

 be the cause of the disease, and have likewise given a mode 

 for its prevention, surely the lapse of more than twenty years 

 is a sufficient proof that their theories and remedies have 

 had time to be exploded if not accurate, and one of the con- 

 ditions was that all prize essays shall be founded on expe- 

 rience or observation. No doubt some of the theories as to 

 the cause of the disease and the practical suggestions as to its 

 prevention made in these essays have been familiar to agri- 

 culturists and horticulturists previously, but if they have stood 

 the test of practical experience so long they must be the best 

 hitherto revealed, and the safest to rely on. 



Another portion of the Eeport says, " As regards the botanical 

 part of the subject, it must be confessed that all the essayists 

 appear to be in the arrear of the present state of scientific 

 knowledge." From this extract it seems that all the essayists 

 were regarded by the Judges as not being up to the present 

 standard of good botanists ; but that botany has had much to 

 do with the discoveries of the cause of the disease is doubtful, 

 and the present state of scientific knowledge has as yet added 

 very little to our knowledge concerning it. 



The recommendation of the Judges to apply the £100-prize 

 to some competent mycologist, so as to induce him to under- 

 take the investigation of the life history of the Peronospora 

 infestans, or Potato fungus, will if followed lead to no result. 

 The life histories of the mildews or fungi which attack the 

 foUage of the Pea and Turnip in dry warm autumns, and the 

 Vine in spring and summer, must be known to mycologists 

 before this; but despite the cures tried, the fungi regularly 

 appear in the years when the weather is favourable for their 

 development, and so it will be with the Potato fungus. 



The recommendation of the Judges likewise to award valu- 

 able prizes for the best disease-proof early and late Potatoes 

 is another ridiculous portion of their Eeport. These prizes 

 are not to be awarded till after a three-years trial of the Pota- 

 toes entered, and they are to resist the disease, and raust, 

 besides, be of good cropping, keeping, and cooking qualities. 

 The three-years trials will be so much time lost ; for it will 

 be found that none of the early and second early varieties are 

 disease-proof, being only so when ripened in July and the 

 beginning of -August, before it usually appears. Even if some 

 of the sorts escaped in a dry season, or in localities with a dry 

 soil, they might become diseased in other unfavourable soils 

 or seasons. As to the late varieties, it is only a few with 

 thick, leathery, red sldns, and strong woody haulm, that resist 

 the disease the most, but they are not proof against it on 



some soils, and cultivators of them know as much already 

 about them as will be learned after a three-years trial. The 

 handsome prizes to be offered for disease-proof sorts, to be 

 raised from Potato plums, will, doubtless, be intended for 

 seedlings of this section ; but as it will be the spring of 1879 

 before the competition commences, the Potato beetle will be 

 here by that time from America, and be a new enemy to 

 conquer.— W. T. 



What Mr. Luckhurst says of blight-proof Potatoes being a 

 fallacy, at least at present, is quite true ; also that it would be 

 a costly remedy for the Potato farmers of Lincolnshire and 

 adjoining counties to discard old sorts for new. They have 

 done BO to a very great extent ; Victorias, American Rose, and 

 Eegents fresh from Scotland being very largely grown ; but I 

 fear that though there is nothing like a change of seed for a 

 crop, the result has not been to show much diminution of 

 disease, especially in 1872. Mr. Luckhurst's opinion appears 

 to differ from that of some of our new raisers as regards where 

 we are to look for the remedy — viz., between the early and late 

 sorts. In 1872 my Ashleaf, American Eose, Shaws, Nonpa- 

 reils, and other early varieties were nearly annihilated, scarcely 

 producing enough for seed, while Sutton's Flourballs kept 

 growing till October with scarcely'a tithe bad, the quality 

 being what I once heard an Irishman describe as " buthery." 

 Certainly some other late red sorts seem to have more power 

 to withstand the disease than any early ones, from which I 

 augur that some good late sort may yet be raised that will 

 altogether resist it. I do not think that the disease is due to 

 degeneration, for many of our recently-raised sorts are quite 

 equal, if not superior in size, quantity, and quality, to any 

 of their ancestors, and Potatoes grow as vigorously now as 

 ever they did, those being the points in which degeneracy 

 first shows itself. But we must first find what the disease 

 really is before we find the antidote.' — John Plati, Gardener, 

 Hillington Hall, Lynn. 



THE BEAUTIFUL AND USEFUL INSECTS OP 

 OUR GARDENS.— No. 15. 



MncH that has been written of late years on the subject of 

 Nature's mimicry, as it is called, appears to me to savour of 

 the imaginative. No doubt there are protective resemblances 

 traceable between some insects and the plants or other sub- 

 stances upon which they feed, or to which they resort. What 

 has brought this forward more prominently is the circum- 

 stance that the upholders of the theory of evolution press 

 certain of these instances into their service. After acknow- 

 ledging that they are unable to explain the conditions under 

 which a change in some species originated, they beUeve that 

 by "natural selection" a mimicry occurring at first in but 

 one, or at least in a few individuals, led the way to the develop- 

 ment of a new type, and the continuance of that was insured 

 by its close resemblance to an object which would protect it 

 from danger. Now, it is quite evident that all these resem- 

 blances are not protective, and even those that are seemingly 

 so have not quite the value sometimes assigned to them, 

 curious and often beautiful as they are. Thus the large moth 

 known as the " Red Underwing," sitting on the grey tranks of 

 the Willows, with the under wings concealed from view, may 

 be easily passed unobserved, yet it will not unfrequently sit on 

 a tarred paling, or on a trunk or branch that has lost the bark, 

 and then be visible enough. Mr. T. W. Wood asserts that 

 butterflies have, in some instances, after they have gone into 

 the pupa state, a peculiar sensitiveness of skin, so that the 

 insect takes just the colour of the object to which the pupa is 

 attached, very much as a photographic plate catches an image. 

 He gives the common Nettle Butterfly (Vanessa Urtica;) as an 

 example, and tells us that the pupas are of a greenish hue 

 when attached to the Nettle leaves or stems, and more or less 

 brownish if secured to palings and walls. Other entomologists 

 have not found this exactness, and further observations appear 

 needful ere it can be regarded as a fact. It is at least singular 

 that Mr. Newman, whose knowledge of British butterflies is 

 equalled by few, makes no allusion to so striking a peculiarity 

 in his work on these insects. May not the truth be that we 

 are going from one extreme to the other in the matter of 

 natural resemblances? Our forefathers called these things 

 simply " freaks of Nature ;" we want to produce a " cut-and- 

 dried " explanation of the reason of each, and with all our 

 research must sometimes fail. 



Hoping the reader will pardon this large introduction to a 



