106 UTENSILS USED IN HORTICULTURE. 



gardens sieves may be substituted for screens. The smallest may have 

 the meshes a fourth of an inch in diameter, and the larger half an inch. 

 The wire of the smaller sieves should always be of copper, but of the 

 larger sieves and of screens it may be of iron. 



Carrying utensils are sometimes wanted in gardens, though flower- 

 pots, baskets, and wheelbarrows form very good 



lg * ' substitutes. The mould-scuttle is a box of any 



convenient shape of wood or iron, with a hoop- 

 formed handle, for carrying it ; sometimes it is 

 formed like the common coal-scuttle, but rect- 

 angular. The pot-carrier, fig. 73, is a flat 

 ========== ^ board about eighteen inches wide and two feet 



p . l n g> with a hooped handle, by means of which, 



with one in each hand, a man may carry three 



or four dozen of small pots at once, which is very convenient in 

 private gardens where there are many alpines in pots, and in nurseries 

 where there are many seedlings or small cuttings. 



But the hand-barrows carried by two men, or a wide frame mounted 

 on wheels, are the carriers mostly used in large gardens. For light 

 plants and short distances, sieves are likewise much used for carrying 

 purposes. The spring-barrow should, where possible, be used instead 

 of the hand-barrow for carrying plants. 



Several different kinds of baskets are used in gardens. They 

 are woven or worked of the young shoots of willow, hazel, or 

 other plants, or of split deal or willow, or of twigs ; but by far the 

 greater number of baskets are made of the one year's shoots or wands 

 of the common willow, Salix viminalis. They are for the most part 

 used for carrying articles from one point to another, though some are 

 employed as a substitute for a garden-wallet; others are used for 

 growing plants ; some for protecting plants from the sun or the 

 weather, and o.thers as utensils for measuring by bulk. 



Details of basket-making will be found in the 4 Arboretum Britanni- 

 cum,' vol. iii. p. 1471, and the instructions will be sufficient to enable 

 any person of ordinary ingenuity to construct every kind of wicker- 

 work, whether baskets or hurdles, that can be required for a garden. 



Carrying-baskets of different sizes are required in gardens for 

 carrying plants for being transplanted, seeds, sets or roots for planting, 

 vegetables or fruits from the garden to the kitchen, and for a variety 

 of other purposes. A basket for hanging before the operator when 

 pruning or nailing wall-trees, is sometimes made of wands, and occa- 

 sionally of split wood ; but a leathern wallet, to be hereafter de- 

 scribed, is greatly preferable. Larger and coarser baskets than any of 

 these are used for carrying soil, manures, tanner's bark, weeds, &c., 

 and are commonly called scuttles, creels, &c. 



Measuring-baskets are formed of particular dimensions, the largest 

 seldom containing more than a bushel, and others half-bushels, pecks, 

 and half-pecks. There are also pint baskets, punnets, pottles, and 

 thumbs, which are utensils in use in the London fruit and vegetable 

 markets for containing the more valuable vegetables, such as mush- 



