General Notices. 273 



ciated the use of Chicory as a salad. The frost and snow were severe ; all 

 endive, lettuce, celery, &c., became rotten. Nevertheless, our salads 

 were the very best in London. Every one who dined with my employers 

 enquired what it was they so much liked, and every one ordered it to be 

 grown afterwards. 



" Twelve years ago, when I came to Camberwell, I grew the roots with 

 the view of introducing it as a salad into Covent Garden market. I had it 

 planted in a pit where there was a flue, and I covered the glass with mats 

 to exclude light. I also had five or six roots put into a large-sized pot, and 

 inverted another pot over the heads, stopping the hole in the bottom of the 

 top pot. This is an easy plan, and it answers well for a small family, just 

 introducing a few pots into heat anywhere. In the winter of 1839, or early 

 in 1840, I carried to market a basket of this fine salad, tied up into sixpenny 

 bundles, a price which I thought would pay well. No one had ever seen 

 it — no one had heard of it — and no one would buy it ; an old herbalist (Mr. 

 Steptoe) examined it ; he was a buyer of Dandelion leaves and all sorts of 

 things for foreigners. He bought all my Chicory leaves, and paid 9s. for 

 tliem, but iie could not sell them. Next morning he said, "Tis of no use 

 bringing these things, I have only sold a few bunches to foreigners.' Then* 

 I said, ' Take the lot this time for nothing." He did so a third time with no 

 better success ; then I gave up its culture, pitying poor John Bull for des- 

 pising the finest of all salads, the best of all tonic bitters, and that too at a 

 fair price. I am in hopes even now to see it yet, however, largely brought 

 into public markets. It often takes many years' hard fighting to persuade 

 people for their own benefit. In the various places in which I had lived 

 previous to my paying attention to Chicory, I had been continually annoyed 

 by ladies and gentlemen who had travelled abroad telling me how much 

 superior foreign salads were to English ones. The broad-leaved Belgian 

 Chicory is best for salad."— {Card C/iron., 1852, p. 276.) 



Management of Plants in Pots when turned into the open 

 Ground. — A correspondent asks us the following questions, and as they 

 are intimately connected with and refer to some of the most important of 

 all the practical operations of horticulture we willingly give it prominence. 

 He says, " You recommend the roots of all plants that are to stand more 

 than a year, to be unravelled and spread out when planted. Noav is the 

 same practice applicable to magnolias and camellias ? The roots of these 

 are very much matted in the pots, and easily broken and injured. I pur- 

 pose planting out permanently some magnolias in the pleasure ground, and 

 camellias in the conservatory pit. What, therefore, ought to be my course .^" 

 To the experienced horticulturist two things will here present them- 

 selves : the first is, the importance of carefully disentangling and spreading 

 out as straight as possible the leading roots of all plants whatever, which 

 are planted out, and are naturally capable, under favorable circumstances, 

 of attaining a large size ; the next is, the great care and watchfulness re- 

 quired to secure success in planting out into the free soil such plants as 

 camellias when they have become large. These are the leading points of 

 VOL. XVIII. NO. VI. 35 



