April 80, 1871 1 



JOURNAL OP HORTICULTUBE AND COTTAGE GAKDENER. 



345 



fruit will not be produced by the ordinary processes of fruit- 

 growing for marliet. 



Mr. Temple goes on to state, that when he took the house a 

 year and a half ago there were no Vines, nor are there now, 

 and as objections had been formerly made to them be aban- 

 doned the idea, and " prepared the trees for work, and many 

 of them, especially Plums, Peaches, and Nectarines, bore fine 

 •crops of large, finely-flavoured fruit." " I never saw," he says, 

 " Green Gages so fine in the most favoured districts of England. 

 The trees evidently had been managed with skill before they 

 fell into my hands, and I would follow out the pot-system were 

 it not the enormous labour it entails from the water-pot." 

 Mr. Temple may, on account of the watering, object to the 

 orchard-house principle generally, and especially where the 

 trees are grown in pots, which many prefer, but he must at 

 least admit that this applies to my branch of the system in- 

 finitely less than to any other, inasmuch as the trees may at 

 five minutes' notice have the benefit of any amount of rain he 

 may think fit to give them. 



The objection I have always heard made by amateurs against 

 orchard houses, and which I have myself experienced, is not 

 30 much the labour, as the bad flavour of too large a pro- 

 portion of the fruit. Of course, there is more labour through 

 the summer attached, to an orchard house than to walls, 

 especially if the spring frosts should have destroyed all the 

 fruit on the latter, when they would require but little further 

 trouble that season ; but the labour is generally repaid by a 

 orop being insured, which cannot be relied upon for certain by 

 any other process. It is upon this that the orchard house has 

 stood its ground. 



Mr. Temple goes on to state, that " the interest and know- 

 ledge it affords in a pomological sense is of great value, but 

 proprietors generally prefer profits in a tangible form." The 

 interest and advantages are very great, though not alone in 

 the sense which Mr. Temple means. It is most useful to have 

 the trees so arranged on the trucks that the fruit comes-in in 

 succession instead of being all ripe at once. Thus there should 

 first be, say a truck of early Peaches, and so in succession till 

 the last outer truck contains only the late sorts. The fruit on 

 the early trucks may be encouraged in maturation by the 

 assistance of the house, and that of the late sorts retarded 

 by the open air. The season may by this process be much 

 prolonged, which is surely a great desideratum in a gentleman's 

 garden. 



He says " In conclusion, I believe Mr. Fountaine's system 

 can be adopted with success, and if I were to give it a trial on 

 its widest merits I would take out the end of a well-established 

 ■vinery," &c. If instead of being so lavish of taint praise, and 

 proposing to try the system on ideas of his own diametrically 

 opposed to the principle advocated, Mr. Temple were, in good 

 faith, to try it on its own merits, and in its own house con- 

 structed for the purpose, he would be in a better position to 

 offer the advice contained in his concluding remarks to the 

 inexperienced. Let him plant Vines 7iot less than 8 feet apart 

 on the rafters, upon the close-spur system, so that the trees 

 may have the benefit of the sun when in the house, especially 

 in the autumn after the fruit is gathered, when they always 

 require it to insure the ripening of the wood for the following 

 year, as do also the plants on the back wall, which ought to 

 be Vines, not Peach trees as at Blenheim, but this is not of 

 moment ; and then let him say honestly whether he has any 

 other houses in Blenheim Gardens which grow finer Grapes or 

 finer stone fruit either separately or conjointly, and this alone 

 ought to be the test whether the system and structure are a 

 " burlesque upon fruit-growing to the experienced." I myself 

 have only had fourteen years' experience in gardening, devoted, 

 it is true, to this one subject alone ; but when the Blenheim 

 house was first built, a long article appeared in the Gardeners' 

 Chronicle, September 10th, 1870, signed "B.," and written, 

 as I afterwards ascertained, by no less an authority than Mr. 

 Barron, stated that "decidedly the most important feature, 

 in a gardening point of view, and the best piece of gardening 

 in all that wide place was the orchard house ft la Foun- 

 taine," &e. 



Mr. Temple may have created great improvement since then, 

 but I will nevertheless endorse with confidence his advice to 

 the inexperienced with which he closes his remarks—" to go 

 and see any system of fruit-growing before they spend their 

 money on structures, &a." (the &c. may mean anything) ; but 

 I say. Let them go to Ohiswick and see the house which was 

 built there for that express purpose ; and although only a plain 

 «heap house, let them ask Mr. Barron it he has any other in 



the gardens constructed on more scientific principles, or better 

 adapted for producing fine Grapes, or to assist the stone fruit 

 when required, for I admit that the open air is the real life and 

 soul of the goodness of the latter. I engage to say they will 

 at least receive a straightforward and honest answer to their 

 question. — John Fountaine, SoiUhacre Rectory, Brandon. 



THE BEAUTIFUL AND USEFUL INSECTS OF 

 OUR GARDENS.— No. 19. 



Theee is something so refreshing to the eye and so gladden- 

 ing to the spirit in the appearance on the wing of the first 

 butterflies of the season, that it is almost a wonder these 

 insects have not been regarded as joyful omens, and the indi- 

 vidual who sees the earliest out after the cold and gloom of 

 winter as specially favoured. I do not discover any traces of 

 Buch beliefs, though some people from a long time ago have 

 paid attention to them as weather prognostics, since it was 

 supposed that when butterflies, few or many, were observed 

 taking their constitutional in the early morning, a fine day 

 might be looked for. This may occasionally be the case, but 

 it is not to be relied upon as an indication ; and certainly not 

 the reverse, for the absence of butterflies from the landscape 

 may arise from a variety of causes, and it would not follow 

 that they are keeping under shelter because of an anticipated 

 downpour. It is just now, in the fresh springtime, that but- 

 terflies seem even more appropriate to the garden or the rural 

 scene than in the height of summer ; and, in lict, some inves- 

 tigators have made out that our ancestors ca'led these gaudy 

 insects " butterflies " on account of their emergence in plentiful 

 numbers just about the time when butter was obtainable in 

 more abundance than at other seasons of the year. I doubt 

 this explanation, and also the semi-jocose one that " butterfly " 

 is a corruption of "bother-fly," and the uncomplimentary 

 epithet applied to the species seen in gardens by some irate 

 horticulturist, who thought they loved his Cabbages " not 

 wisely but too well." 



There is a species now coming abroad which, from its often 

 flying in suspicious company, may be assumed by the little- 

 informed observer to be one of our garden foes, whereas in reality 

 it is as innocent as a baby. This is popularly known as the 

 Orange-tip, Anthocharis Cardamines {fifj. 1), and it has a wide 

 if not a general distribution throughout these islands. Frequent 

 in woods, it also visits gardens in search of the honey which 

 may often be more plentiful there than in the flelds or pastures 

 not far off where the insect had passed its preparatory changes. 

 Some years ago it was abundant in April as near London as 

 Shepherd's Bush, north of Hammersmith, and Norwood on the 

 south, but the destruction of the food plants thereabouts and 

 the researches of juvenile entomologists have borne hardly 

 upon it. In May, 1860, a traveller observed this butterfly at 

 Sligo flying in such large parties that he was reminded of the 

 South American hosts of an allied species which he had seen 

 in other days. This, however, is a circumstance unusual, and 

 the Orange-tips are seldom noticed in a greater number than 

 two or three together, oftentimes accompanied by the common 

 Garden White, in size and mode of flight much like its more 

 showy brother. The English name of the insect has been 

 given from the conspicuous orange spot displayed on the upper 

 and under sides of the fore wings of the male, while it is want- 

 ing in the female, where we have only a grey border. In both 

 there is a dark central spot on the white ground- colour of the 

 fore wings. The hind wings are much the same in the two 

 sexes, their beauty being especially on the under surface, where 

 we have a fine green tracery, which reminds us on a small 

 scale of the straggling growth of some minute muss on a hoary 

 stump. By a moderate magnifying power we can resolve this 

 green shading into a mingling of yellow and black scales 

 sprinkled over the white ground, but the effect of this is lost 

 when the field of the microscope is not Uluminated by daylight. 

 Now and then a male Orange-tip turns up wit'u one orange 

 blotch deficient ; and I possess a curiously dwurfrd female 

 specimen in which the expansion of the wings is only about 

 one-half the average, due, doubtless, to mal-nutrition in the 

 larval state. 



Though the butterfly has received its Latin appfl'ation from 

 the species of Cardamine, mostly C. pratensis (Li'lj'o Smock), 

 on which it has been traditionally reported to feed, Mr. Double- 

 day has, with his usual discernment, pointed out that the 

 caterpillar is often foun«l on allied plants of the Cruciferous 

 order, such as Erysimum Alliaria, Barbarea vulgaris, and Hes- 



