Dooomber 23, 1875. ] 



JOURNAL OP HORTICUIiTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



547 



A CHRISTMAS GREETING. 



l^^^^HRISTMAS has a wonaerfal power over an 

 Englishman'd mind and heart. In the 

 dread Crimean winter twenty-ono years 

 ago, amid all sorts of miseries, our soldiers 

 did their best to keep Christmas. Then 

 there are the thousands of Englishmen with 

 their feet to our feet in Australia, with a 

 different sky above them, different stars to 

 look at, no '' Charles's Wain " over their 

 housetops ; they cannot as wo do 

 " Watcli the Pleiads, risinp; through the mellow shade, 

 Glitter like a swarm cf fireflies tangled in a silver braid." 



Who, instead of looking 



" Ou great Orion sloping slowly to the west," 

 look on the Southern Cross. These our Australian 

 brothers, emigrants from old England, with a sky above 

 unlike our sky — with an earth beneath with its animals 

 and birds so different to ours, and, harder still to bear, 

 with a total change of seasons to live in : our summer 

 their winter, our winter their summer ; their midsum- 

 mer day our midwinter time in feeling, and their Christ- 

 mas day one of the hottest days of the year. A young 

 man in North Queensland wrote to me last Christmas 

 day in the words, " Here I am eating my Christmas 

 plum pudding, and beating off the huge musquitoes from 

 my face ; for in spite of the difference of weather, I would 

 keep my Christmas day and think of the dear ones at 

 home." Oh ! what a power has Christmas over English- 

 men. At the Reformation many feast days and holidays 

 were abolished, and the " gospel of idleness " no longer 

 preached ; but Christmas remained, and remains dearer 

 than ever — a holiday time, a social time, a time for plea- 

 sant greetings. This is well, but " the gospel of idleness " 

 has of late years been too much preached again and over- 

 much of holiday time talked of. Give the labourers 

 and mechanics higher wages to meet dearer times ; but 

 as yet, in multitudes of cases, shorter hours of work have 

 come to mean longer hours at the public house. Edu- 

 cate to a higher standard, and higher pleasures will be 

 loved ; but preach not too much the gospel of idleness 

 of over-holiday-making, but cling and cleave to and keep 

 rightly Christmas-tide, and greet lovingly all around you. 

 There is another way in which Christmas time may bo 

 viewed. It is the last part of the old year that is thought 

 about. The year is about to leave us in these latter days 

 of Deofmber, and so up conies Father Christmas and 

 puts out his hand very cordially, seeming to say, " Well, 

 if the year, O men ! has not been a very good one, let us, 

 nevertheless, part friends ; let us shake hands and hope 

 for a better." Truly the past year has not been a good 

 one for the gardening world. A terribly severe winter 

 did not bring us the wished-for early genial spring, but 

 cold and wet, floods and storms ; and then when summer 

 months came, scarcely came summer weather. Not the 

 glorious quiet warm time, scarce a leaf sth-ring, the trees 

 knee deep in fern, the cattle standing in streams, the 

 bright Geraniums budding and blooming, an J glowing in 



No. 769.— Vol. XXIX , Kew Series 



the fcunshine, not growiog for ever with huge leaves as 

 this year. 



"Father Christmas, we gardeners take your hand and 

 X)reES it warmlj', and greet you kindly, but please speak 

 to the clerk of tlie weather and provide a better year for 

 us in tlie one that's coming." 



Next let mc turn to gardening advances. First and 

 foremost this year has brought us the new edition of our 

 Doctor's "Fruit Manual." This not only a standard 

 wcrk and showing such accurate knowledge and dihgent 

 research, but is so interesting. " Sir," said grand old 

 Dr. Johnson, "Dr. Gollsmith will write a natural 

 history and make it as interesting as a fairy tale." This 

 is what " our " Doctor has done with fruit history. The 

 book is on my shelf of favourites, and is already pencil- 

 marked and thumbed, and threatens to want binding 

 from constant reading of it ; and as with me so I doubt 

 not with many others. 



Fruit culture needs more attention than it receives, 

 and from all classes. In farm and cottage gardens it is 

 now common, even in very out-ofthe-way places, to see 

 standard Roses of named varieties and prize quality ; but 

 look at the Apple trees and other fiuit trees of such 

 gardens. These are generally very old, very cankwed, 

 very mossy — all the upper roots cut by the spade, and so 

 the lower penetrating deeper and deeper, and the trees 

 growing or declining worse and worse. Such trees too ! 

 so straggling, shading much ground, and injuring all 

 crops; unsightly, half useless, scrubby ugly trees, but 

 kept in the gardens because they have be€n there so long. 

 Now, I hope in a few years to see pyramid fruit trees in 

 such gardens — pretty trees, early-yi'-lding trees, and trees 

 that do not shade valuable land. Said a man of more 

 than ordinary knowledge to a man in his forties who was 

 flunking of planting fruit trees, "It is too late in life 

 for you to do that." Indeed it is yet to the general 

 world an unknown thing that Apples on the Paradise 

 stock and Pears on the Quince stock produce fruit-bear- 

 ing frees at once. " Plant Pears, plant for yom- heirs," 

 that is old-world nonsense now. Plant them and gather 

 the fruit yourself the year after next. 



One great means of causing improvement in the humbler 

 class of gardeners is for the upper classes — gentry, clergy, 

 and others, to encourage district horticultural shows em- 

 bracing many parishes. The one in which I take a per- 

 sonal interest in the district in which I live has in its 

 progress gratified me much. At the first show four years 

 ago the cottager classes were poorly filled, and the speci- 

 mens were poor too, but four years have shown a great ad- 

 vance — the classes well filled, and the specimens far finer. 

 They have shown a greater improvement than any other 

 classes, but the fruit is still poor, the varieties of Apples 

 ind Pears the older and the commoner, and scarce a dish 

 where beauty and ufihfy were combined. This will con- 

 tinue to be the case until pyramid fruit frees find their 

 way into the humbler gardens as choice Rose trees have 

 already found places there. 



The mention of Roses reminds me of another advance 

 —the estimating tho beauty of a Rose by its perfume. 



No. 1121.— Vol. LIV., Old Series. 



