i8o Notes and Gleanings. 



London Long Green Cucumbers. Properties essential in Prize Speci- 

 mens. —We have been applied to by several correspondents for some rules appli- 

 cable to deciding the comparative merits of cucumbers exhibited to compete for 

 prizes. We are not surprised at such applications, because there is often great 

 and just dissatisfaction when a huge brace, thicker than a man's wrist, twenty or 

 twenty-four inches long, yet yellowish at the ends, and so flexible from keeping 

 that if held in the middle the ends would bend down far towards meeting, are 

 passed over for a neat, perfectly fresh brace, green throughout, not much above a 

 foot in length, nor more than one and a half inches in diameter. To the latter we 

 should award the prize, for they would be far superior in crispness and sweet- 

 ness. To meet the wishes of our correspondents, we reprint from a former vol- 

 ume of our Journal the following : — - 



1. The first essential is, that the brace of cucumbers be young, fresh, and 

 green. 



2. Both the cucumbers forming the brace should be straight, and the one a 

 counterpart of the other in thickness and length. 



3. Though young and crisp, the fruit should be sufficiently grown to be free 

 of anything like deep sutures along the sides, as these involve as much loss in 

 preparing for table as deep-eyed potatoes. 



4. The shorter the shoulder of the cucumber, and the more distinct it is, the 

 better ; that is, no blending of the shoulder with the . general length of the 

 cucumber ; but that general length, or gun-barrel part, should start, with an abrupt 

 roundness, at once from the shoulder, and proceed with the same diameter until 

 it ends as abruptly at the point. 



5. It is well that the point should be quite green ; and if the blossom be at- 

 tached to it, all the better. If the bloom on the cucumber is fresh from end to 

 end, an extra point will be gained. 



6. As respects proportion, nine diameters used to be considered a good pro- 

 portional length ; and hence a well-grown symmetrical brace, nine inches in 

 length and one inch in diameter, will have many admirers. We would prefer, . 

 for longer cucumbers, that the chameter should be a little less, proportionally ; 

 that is, a little less than two inches for eighteen inches in length. 



7. We have kept length to the last, but it will ever form a favorable item in 

 judging, when united with freshness and symmetry. Shorter fruit will win, if 

 shown against long, only when more fresh, more symmetrical, covered with 

 richer bloom, etc. Eng. Jour. Hort. 



Candytuft. — None of the perennial species of Candytuft are, according to 

 Mr. G. Maw, so ornamental as that which takes its name from the Rock of Gib- 

 raltar — Iberis gibraltarica. Plants procured and .sent home last April were 

 almost continuously in flower up to November ; and one specimen in the open 

 border, which had been frozen hard three weeks previously, was on November 

 19 covered with delicate lilac flowers, the corymbs and individual flowers twice 

 the size of those oi Iberis sempervirens. It differs from all the other species in 

 being a continuous bloomer, the lateral shoots outgrowing and hiding the old 

 flowers as they decay. Florist and Pomologist. 



