General Notices. 371 



many gaudier beauties; neither would the tulip — that bright queen of the 

 garden — look well amid the sober tints of autumn. Nature intends that her 

 beauties shall be dispersed over the whole circle of the year, and the florist 

 assists in this arrangement, and for this assistance claims for himself the 

 privilege that she shall be, to a limited extent, subservient to him in some 

 instances, while he encroaches upon her seasonal laws. The British florist 

 has a peculiar claim to this privilege, because he has taken under his care 

 the floral beauties of every clime in both hemispheres — afllarding to each, as 

 near as can be, its natural temperature, its natural soil, and its natural rank 

 and station among others. If, then, he should occasionally interfere with 

 nature's laws in bringing forth flowers out of the season, he is not only ex- 

 cusable as their cultivator, but it is creditable to him as their guardian. To 

 have them always in beauty, would diminish rather than advance them in 

 our estimation ; but the recurrence of a flower when not expected — and es- 

 pecially if obtained without any derangement or mutilation of the plant op- 

 erated upon — would be a delectable rarity, and really a desirable incident in 

 the flower garden. Every one knows that transplanting rose-trees late, or 

 pruning them late in the spring, procures a late bloom — three weeks or a 

 month later than the usual time of flowering. I am speaking of the com- 

 mon Provence rose, though this treatment of rose-trees is less necessary 

 now than it was before the introduction of so many French and Chinese va- 

 rieties, some of which are always in flower during the summer and autumn 

 months. The laburnum is a highly ornamental plant from the latter end 

 of May to. the middle of June ; if the flowering shoots be cut back, and the 

 tree divested of its racemes of pods, it will again bloom nicely later in the 

 summer ; indeed the whole of the Cytisuses may be made to flower twice 

 in the summer, by careful cutting back after the first flowers fade. The rose, 

 acacia, and several others of its congeners, will flower a second time ; and so 

 will the Althea frutex, presenting its second flowers as late as October, 

 when flowers of any kind are much wanted. Checking the growth of her- 

 baceous border flowers, by transplanting, or by divesting them of a few of 

 their stems, to delay the flowering, or only allow it to be developed gradu- 

 ally, is an old expedient ; and with attention paid to this management of 

 perennials and biennials, and to the difl^erent times at which annual flowers 

 may be sown, a continued display of flowers maybe kept through the grow- 

 ing season. — {Gard. Journal, 1849, p. 387.) 



Liquid Manure. — All gardeners may read with great advantage a lead- 

 ing article in the Chronicle of last week, on the proposed employment of 

 the sewage of London for agricultural purposes. The immense benefits de- 

 rived by growing crops from a discreet application of liquid manure, are 

 there placed in a clear light, and we hope our amateur friends will act upon 

 the principle stated in the sentence, " what is true of a grass field is 

 equally true of a cabbage garden, of celery, peas, lettuces, asparagus, and 

 all kinds of garden stuff " The inhabitants of large towns, having no gar- 

 dens, are obliged to let the sewage made on their premises run away. But 

 those who have any land to cultivate, should employ all the refuse of this 

 kind at once, so as at the same time to benefit their crops, and prevent the 

 existence of a nuisance. 



