Genial Notices. 135 



the former could only be propagated by layers, Avhile of tlie latter every 

 cutting grew. I gradually increased my stock of the latter, and now prop- 

 agate from 40,000 to 50,000 annually. As with all new articles in garden- 

 ing, I had to buy some experience, for I found if I grew them in a rich soil 

 and budded them at the usual period, the buds rotted ; they appeared to be 

 drowned in the superabundance of sap. At last Isaw it was necessary to plant 

 them in poor soils and bud them in September. — [Gard. C7^ro7^., 1849, p. 742.) 

 Calla CEthiopica, as an Aquatic Plant. — Here, in our fragery (a 

 ditch so called), tliis plant thrives amazingly under the most prknitive mode 

 of culture. Indeed the only secret connected with its most satisfactory 

 growth, seems confined to the protection of its root from frost. The water 

 in which it grows may be sheeted over for any ordinary length of time, witli 

 ice of any reasonable thickness, so tliat it does not actually reach the root ; 

 moreover, it seems equally indifferent about the quality of the water, or de- 

 scription of sou in which it is located. Some twenty years ago, I had four 

 roots planted amongst some other aquatics in the above-named ditch, with 

 about eighteen inches of water, supplied from an artesian bore,* in one end 

 of which the mud was at least a foot deep ; in this, two of the roots were 

 planted. The other end was bare gravel, so much so that we had to put 

 stones upon the two other plants, by way of anchor, to keep them from 

 drifting, till they made a few roots to hold themselves to the bottom. Three 

 of them are now large masses (the fourth was killed the first severe winter 

 after planting, the water not being deep enough, about eight inches, to keep 

 the frost from the root), and grow and flower equally free on the gravel and 

 in the mud ; and a splendid appearance they have, from five to six weeks 

 every May and June, having from sixteen to twenty flowers on each plant. 

 Since first planted, they have been two or three times cut down to the surface 

 of the water (foliage as well as flowers), at the end of April or beginning of 

 May, by frost, but without receiving a permanent injury. By the end of 

 July they had completely covered their elegant leaves ; and although the 

 second crop of flowers was neither so large nor so plentiful as those cut off, 

 still they made a very tolerable show in the August and September follow- 

 ing, and contrasted finely with the very different habit of some yellow and 

 white Water-LUies, their neighbors ; indeed, I think it might be worth while 

 to cut one of the plants down every spring, for the sake of the autmnn flower. 

 There are at present growing, in a small pond in the kitchen garden at Cas- 

 tle hill, two plants of the ^Ethiopian Calla, which have been in their present 

 situation for at least seven years. They were fonnerly standing in pots in 

 the greenhouse, and were removed to their present situation in the same 

 pots, merely sinking them to the bottom of the pond. I may observe, that 

 since they were removed to tlieir present station tliey have increased to a 

 large size, and at present stand at least 2^ feet above the water. They are 



*This water coats every thing with rust in an incredibly short time, and many plants 

 we have occasionally watered with it have died. Indeed, one very dry summer, we 

 thought to have our lawn greener than other people's, and used this water very freely ; 

 the consequence was, that the grass died out in large patches, and yet these aquatics 

 grow like willows in it. By the way, some weeping willows planted by it csmkcr off in 

 large branches. 



