September 23, 1875. ] 



JOUBNAL OF HORTIOULTUBE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



275 



Beech its purity of colour is heightened. We find amongst 

 Conifers, too, the Wellingtonia, the Cypress, and the Thuja 

 aurea. We note walls draped with Roses, and Jasmines, and 

 Clematis, and, above all, we find neatness and order, which 

 hetoken the owners' love for these gardens. It is this love 

 and consequent care which brings out a garden's beauties and 

 makes it a teacher and a gladdener — not to the owner only, 

 but to passers-by. The charms of a garden consist not in its 

 size but in its keeping, and those of " large views " may well 

 take a lesson from the trim and faultless plots of many sub- 

 urban homes. 



But where am I ? Actually thus cheerfully scribbling in my 

 dingy office. I could not have been in this happy vein but for 

 my afternoon's airing. Such is the influence of gardens not 

 one's own. Those who possess them mayhap do not always 

 recognise the good they do in fringing the suburban pathways 

 with trees and flowers which cheer the hearts of hundreds. I 

 am now ready for business again, and am the better for my visit 

 and my pleasurable attempt at describing it. — A City Man. 



STEAWBEKRY CULTURE. 



YouB correspondent at pages 182 and 242 has made some 

 observations, to which I think so many exceptions may be 

 taken that I am induced to pen a few lines, in the hope that 

 those of greater experience may give the readers of " our 

 .Journal " their opinion for the benefit of all interested. 



We have certainly had an exceptional year for quantity, 

 though the rain has very much injured the quality of the fruit ; 

 hut the produce of 67 lbs. on sixty plants planted last Septem- 

 ber, grown in very light soU after Potatoes (a crop not heavily 

 manured in general), without any manure added at the time 

 of planting, and twice transplanted, is beyond my compre- 

 hension. My objections to the mode of cultivation recom- 

 mended are, twice transplanting ; deferring the final planting 

 till September ; planting without manure ; planting after Po- 

 tatoes ; taking the runners from each alternate row ; and con- 

 tinning the plantation after a heavy crop. 



I think the young plants should be removed to their fruiting 

 quarters and allowed to make all possible growth there, for 

 which purpose they should be moved as soon as they have 

 made sufficient roots for their support ; that the ground 

 should be heavily manured and consolidated by roller or ram- 

 mer before planting, and then mulched to enable the plant to 

 become strong liefore the frost sets in ; that Potato ground 

 is objectionable from the annoyance caused by young Potatoes 

 sending their shoots up ; that it would be more in accordance 

 with horticultural practice to take the runners from every 

 alternate plant (which are proposed to be cut out) than from 

 every alternate row, every other plant of which must be 

 weakened by taking four to six runners from it ; and finally, 

 that when a plant has brought to perfection 1 lb. of fruit— if 

 such can be produced on one-year-old plants — it would be 

 more economical to destroy than continue the cultivation. 



I will very shortly state my mode of cultivation, which has 

 been very successful on plants two years old. I grow large 

 crops and then destroy them. If they fail to bear a crop the 

 second year I keep them the third year, but never beyond. I 

 grow them where Cabbages have been, and for which I manure 

 heavily. I do not cut spring Cabbages, but pull them up, and 

 at the same time water the hole with ammonia water, which 

 brings forth the slugs. This leaves my ground free by the 

 time the runners are ready to plant out, and I prepare the 

 ground for them by taking out as much as the spade lifts from 

 a trench 1 foot wide and wheeling it away, bringing back a 

 ■compost of three-fourths heavy loam, one-quarter manure, 

 consisting of pig and cow manure in equal proportions. This 

 I have rolled or rammed down 1 foot wide and 3 or 4 inches 

 above the level of the soil. These flattened ridges are 2 feet 

 from centre to centre, and made as solid as possible ; I then 

 have holes made with the dibble 2 feet apart and 5 or C inches 

 deep and filled with liquid manure. My runners are rooted in 

 the same compost rammed into gutter tiles 4 inches wide and 

 a foot long in which two or three are rooted, and when suf- 

 ficiently strong are removed to their fruiting quarters. A 

 puddle is made so that the young plant when pressed down 

 stands just clear of the ground, a Seakale pot is put over each 

 (without the cover), for a few days and the ground mulched 

 till the middle of October, when it is removed and dug-in to 

 the quarters for Cabbages. .Just before November I cover all 

 the ground with dry leaves with something thrown on to keep 

 them from blowing away. This is removed in the spring, the 



ground well watered with lime water, dressed with soot, and 

 mulched at once with long manure, which the rains render 

 clean before the harvest is reaped, and I have never failed to 

 secure one. — An Old Subscriler. 



CHAPTERS ON INSECTS FOR GARDENERS. 



No. .3. 



I MUST own that I have sometimes felt a malicious satis- 

 faction in acquainting persons who have twitted me with a 

 liking for insects, and who had a partiality for crabs, lobsters, 

 or shrimps, that they were given to devouring creatures which 

 were once actually classed with insects, and which are beyond 

 all doubt near kin to spiders and woodlice. We must clear 

 our ground as we go, and therefore I at once put aside all 

 the regiments of spiders, mites, woodlice, &c. Numerous and 

 oftentimes annoying as they are in gardens, they are not 

 properly insects, and therefore I, as an entomologist, am not 

 bound to give account of their proceedings. So far it is well 

 that I am not answerable for their manoiuvres, since on the 

 whole they are more injurious than beneficial. The Arach- 

 nida!, now forming a separate class in science, of course come 

 nearer to insects than our aquatic friends that are so freely 

 devoured and all their brotherhood, some of microscopic small- 

 ness. But the legs are eight in the spiders, the head and 

 thorax are continuous, and there are successive moults, but 

 no true metamorphosis exists. These characters, without 

 going further, are to me conclusive as to the separation now 

 agreed upon by most naturalists, though one whose name must 

 certainly be ranked high in our annals upholds the theory 

 that the class Insecta should comprehend all these eccentric 

 individuals. About the large tribe of the Acari, I merely 

 venture the remark here that we are only just beginning to 

 discover the influence they exert throughout nature, and 

 especially amongst vegetation. And to me one of the most 

 peculiar circumstances in the history of these mites or ticks 

 is the fact that many species can live indifferently on animal 

 or vegetable substances. Often butterflies and moths are taken 

 at large attached to the wings or thorax of which are a number 

 of these small fry, sometimes operating so successfully as to 

 exhaust the insect and render it incapable of flight. It would 

 be going too far to assert that the Acari have in all cases been 

 obtained from flowers that the insects have been visiting, yet 

 it is certainly the fact that they do transfer themselves from 

 flower to insect, and, perhaps, vice versa. I have never heard 

 it suggested that these mites when young prefer vegetable 

 food and when older prefer an animal diet, but the hypothesis 

 may be started. The evidence at present is rather against it. 

 For example, I have repeatedly found that one species of tick 

 which infests cage birds is conveyed to them, sometimes, with 

 the seeds supplied as food. Among these seeds, however, I 

 have found Acari, both full grown and very small. The injury 

 Acari or mites do to flowers is of no great consequence or- 

 dinarily, but some species " ply their vocation " in a manner 

 very objectionable to the horticulturist. They visit his seed- 

 drawers and parcels, and owing to their rapid multiplication, 

 and the difficulty there is of detecting them amongst some seeds, 

 they may occasion much disappointment as well as money loss. 



To proceed : I must here also caution-off the Myriapoda, 

 they have no claim upon my attention. A series of develop- 

 ments they may pass through in the majority of species, but 

 there is nothing approximating to the transformations of 

 insects. The head is distinct, not so the thorax and abdomen 

 as in true insects. With the Myriapoda the two form one con- 

 tinuous body, remarkable also for the number of legs attached 

 to it, and thereby again separated from the class Insecta. It 

 is rather ludicrous to read in one author that these creatures 

 are to be divided into two sections, the " Hundred-legs" and 

 the " Thousand-legs," and he immediately proceeds to show 

 that both names are incorrect. We find neither the hundred, 

 nor the thousand legs, the difference being mainly this, that 

 in the first each segment has one pair of legs, and in the 

 second two. The Scolopendra electrica, or electric centipede 

 of our gardens, is a familiar example of the moderately-legged 

 group, a creature decidedly of ferocious habit, and feeding by 

 choice on small insects and other living things. Another 

 resident in most gardens represents the Thousand-legs — viz., 

 Julus terrestris, popularly called Maggy-many-feet, at least 

 this is the name applied to it in some English counties. It 

 has not a thousand legs, yet several hundreds might be reckoned 

 up"; and though it occasionally devours the rootlets of plants, 

 this Myriapod subsists largely on decaying vegetable sub- 



