59—1846.] 
THE GARDENERS' 
CHRONICLE. 
853 
turity. Thus, therefore, the Meudon plan of growing 
them, in small pits, presents other advantages which 
cannot be obtained by the common modes of culture ; 
because the whole of the plants in the pit closely ap- 
proximate the same conditions, There are none pro- 
dueing foliage only—none with fruit. half ripened, and 
fied at knowing that our labours have not been without 
their use, and we intend to pursue them as heretofore, 
mingling the useful with the sweet. If but a very 
small number of our readers are made to take as much 
pleasure in gardening as we ourselves enjoy, an ample 
reward will be ours. These healthful and elevating 
others in blossom. These 
never oceur under the management of Mr. Gabriel Pel- 
vilian ; and I apprehend that no real practitioner in 
the art will lightly value the importance of such an 
g t e particularly In the dark and cloudy 
months of winter, when fruit is expected to be pro- 
duced in all establishments where the culture of the Pine 
forms an important item in the garden expenses. 
Independently of the economy attending the arrange- 
ment of cultivating the young plants separate from those 
in a fruiting state, their removal has a tendency to throw 
them more rapidly into fruit; as they are, however, 
transplanted with the whole of their roots, the consti- 
tutional vigour of the plant is not thereby impaired ; 
on the contrary, when they begin to require greater 
support, the roots have penetrated into the fresh soil; 
hence they are shortly in a position to supply a larger 
portion of nutriment than if their removal had not taken 
place, These facts are self evident, and therefore not 
to be disputed. Any objections, however, which prac- 
tical men may urge to the Meudon system, I am willing 
to discuss, and therefore solicit such, that the publie 
may reap the advantage of practical opinions. It is a 
subject too important to be scanned over ; perfection 
has not yet been attained even at Meudon ; the arrange- 
ments there are not perfect, not indeed in the estima- 
tion of Mr. Pelvilain, as I shall hereafter shew the 
l i e has d, or about to commence, 
with a view to simplify and economise his proceedings. 
— Mirabile dictu. 
THE AMATEUR GARDENER. 
Tur Cross or THe Yran.—Amateur gardeners ! we 
wish you * A merry Christmas and a happy New 
Year." Amidst Holly and Misletoe may you enjoy all 
the luxuries of the present season. Every blooming 
plant in your greenhouse and every exotic in your 
awing-room smiles a cheerful welcome to you, and 
thanks you for your past care. Now the budding 
Hyacinths, just beginning to develope their colours, 
repay you for past exertions, and incite you to 
future labours. Lest the frost and snow without, 
prostrating all the beauties of your gardens, should 
engender a feeling of apathy, and cool down your flori- 
cultural tastes, the treasured Roses and Violets and 
Hyacinths within still link your memory to past and 
future glories, and * tell a flattering tale that spring 
will soon return.” The very odour of a flower at this 
sterile season revives a thousand dormant recollections, 
and makes you long for the time when budding Nature 
will invite to fresh exertions in her wide domain. Of 
one thing we may speak confidently, that, other things 
being equal, the gardéner, even at Christmas, will have 
many pleasures, which he must want whose tastes lie 
not this way. 
Among the dry details of gardening operations, which 
it has been our duty to present to the amateur gardener 
during the last twelve months, we have endeavoured to 
or duties must be taught to our children, 
that our pleasures may be theirs ; for sure are we that 
the best hopes of future generations must be based on 
intelleetual toil. We quite agree with the poet that the 
study of the fine arts corrects brutality and softens 
manners, and^we reckon floriculture among those arts. 
—  —— Ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes 
Emollit mores, nec sinit esse feros, 
—H. B. 
THE WORMSLEY PIPPIN. 
‘Synonym, Knight's Codlin. 
Tuts excellent Apple, either for dessert or kitchen 
use, derives its name from Wormsley Grange in Here- 
fordshire. The first account of it is to be found in the 
My i i l Society, vol. i., p. 288, 
together with cuttings 
of the Hi 
communieated by Mr. Knight, 
of the variety, in 1811. 
The flesh is white, crisp, juicy, rich, and sugary. In 
perfection in October and November. Tree vigorous, 
an abundant bearer, not subject to canker. Shoots 
dark brown, under a thin silvery cuticle and slight 
pubescence, sprinkled with roundish pale-grey dots. 
Leaves large, ovate, acuminate, cordate at the base ; 
petioles about an inch in length, pubescent, slightly 
tinged with red. Flowers middle sized; petals ob- 
tusely ovate, somewhat cordate at the base. 
Pale 
Yellowish 
Green. 
As a kitchen Apple, the Wormsley Pippin possesses 
peculiar excellence. It requires very little sugar, some 
say none ; however, with comparatively little, it far ex- 
ceeds the generality of kinds employed for culinary use. 
When the fruit is so well exposed as to acquire a 
brownish tinge next the sun, its flavour proves such as 
to rank the variety amongst first-rate dessert Apples, 
Um 3s : : 5 
intersperse snatches of thought and t appealing 
to that hidden and subjective life which perceives 
natural things in their causes, their intentions, and 
their results. e would hang a wreath upon the 
plough, and honour with a chaplet even the humble 
Spade, because these have to be employed by beings 
whose privilege and duty it is to combine intellectual 
pleasures with mere manual operations. We would 
not have the gardener forget how all that submits to 
his hand and appeals to his eye is intended to do more, 
and to enlighten his understanding and purify his heart. 
A mere gambler is he who can go to an horticultural 
show with no higher end than to secure a prize, as 
though Carnations were edged and Tulips graced with 
symmetry of form merely to help to fill his pockets. 
To such à man, flowers bear somewhat the same rela- 
tions as the beauties of an Oriental slave-market do to 
the trader in flesh and blood. He is the happy gar- 
dener who can soliloquize on a Daisy with Burns, or on 
a Crocus with Bernard Barton, and who in the shifting 
seasons and the various beauties by which they are all 
distinguished, feels himself raised to contemplate their 
great Author, and * look from Nature up to Nature's 
God,” 
God might have made the earth bring forth 
Enough for great and small, 
The Oak tree and the Cedar tree, 
Without a flower at all. 
* * 
Our outward life requires them not— 
Then wherefore had they birth ? 
To minister delight to man, 
0 beautify the earth ; 
To comfort man, to whisper hope 
Whene'er his faith is dim ; 
For whoso careth for the flowers, 
Will much more care for him! 
Mary HowrrT. 
When the first Number of the Chronicle for 1847 
comes into the hands ‘of its readers, that turn of the 
year will have taken place which immediately gives 
indications of the great resurrection of Nature. After 
every frost something will peep up from its earthy bed ; 
leaf-buds will become more plump and prominent, and 
an oceasional flower will herald in the coming festival of 
the year. To the amateur who is about to dedicate 
himself still to Flora, we hope still to be of use. 
Numerous are the subjects yet untouched, and the 
Suggestions which remain to be offered. We are grati- 
its rather obj large size. But 
doubtless when it becomes well known, objections with 
regard to size will decrease, as in the case of the cele- 
brated Newtown Pippin. hen it was first made 
known by Mr. Knight, as above-mentioned, he stated 
that many of his friends thought it the best Apple of its 
ist of its 
season; and in his own opinion, t! 
Tinged 
had more reason to complain of their not working in 
glasses, from the want of comb to entice them than of 
brood in them. Indeed, when bees are properly 
managed they seldom have brood in glasses or capes 3 
and were it not for want of space in the hive they would 
not have recourse to such a plan. Perhaps the combs 
in the glasses in question were formed in the latter part 
of the season, and were not for brood ; supposing they 
were, still there would be no certainty of brood being in 
them when used again, especially if the glasses were on 
the hives about the Ist of April or middle of May, 
according to the season. During the past season I put 
a bit of dark brood comb in a glass, which reached 
from top to bottom, the cells of which the bees them. 
selves leng d, and this ded work of theirs 
made it to outward appearance as clear and fresh as 
new comb ; so clear indeed was it, that I obtained the 
first prize at the Norwich Horticultural Society. If 
this is not enough, I ask why do practical opinions re- 
commend fixing combs in glasses, in order to entice 
bees to work in them? As regards leaving pure combs 
in under hives, there is much time saved by it; but if 
they were “cut out” would that induce the bees to 
make honey cells instead of brood ones? My decided 
opinion is, that it would not. Both sorts of combs 
would nearly correspond with those in the hive above, 
the brood ones in the centre, and perhaps some of ikem 
would contain eggs, when only about the size of au 
oyster shell. And why not? such would only show the 
prosperity of the colony.— W. 
Sirawberries. — I am extremely glad to find the 
Hautbois Strawberry taken up as a theme by one of 
your correspondents, and I sincerely 
trust that many others will contribute 
their mite to explain the mystery which 
appears to enthrone this invaluable fruit. 
The experience of * B." with regard to 
the distinction of sexes is, however, at 
variance with my own observation on the 
subject, although consonant with popular 
opinion. The talismanie change effected 
in both his beds, and with each indi- 
vidual plant, is indeed a lusus nalure, 
if it be not traceable to some mistake. 
To the latter cause only, I think, can 
the scientific enquirer refer it. It is so 
much at variance with Heaven’s first 
laws, the order and design which per 
vade creation. Surely some error must 
have occurred. In submitting the 
plan for formisg a bed, as propesed by 
the late Rev. Sidney Smith, I con- 
fess I had no serious intention of re- 
commending it, and only communicated 
it asa satirical hint. I have frequently 
examined some hundreds of blossoms of 
the Hautbois without finding one which had not the 
rudiments of both sexes, but the receptacles of many 
flowers never seem to enlarge, after a certain period 
turning brown and drying up. To what cause this is 
owing I must leave those to determine who have amore 
profound knowledge of structural botany than a practi- 
cal,man can be supposed to possess. I am of opinion 
that the plants cannot be properly selected at the period 
of blooming, and last year succeeded in getting a pro- 
ductive bed from runners traced out when the paren:s 
were in full bearing ; this I have found to be a sure 
course of proceeding. The soil for the Hautbois should 
be strong and rich, and it isprobable that the uniform 
moisture afforded by such sods greatly assists the en- 
with 
e 
pulp more nearly resembled that of the Newtown Pip- 
pin than any Apple with which he was acquainted. 
It deserves most extensive cultivation. In an account 
by Sir George S. Mackenzie, Bart., of some varieties o 
the Apple which were found to succeed in a garden in 
Ross-shire, lat. 57° 34’, published in “ Hort. Soc. 
Trans.,” vol. 7, p. 333, it is stated that “ the Wormsley 
Pippin, trained on an espalier, has proved hardy, and 
attains a very large size." Being thus hardy, and a 
good bearer, it is certainly a very suitable variety for 
cultivation in cottage gardens. It appears from Mr. 
Downing’s excellent work, the “ Fruits and Fruit. trees 
of America,” that a very different and inferior sort of 
Apple, with firm acid flesh, is cultivated in that coun- 
try under the name of the Wormsley Pippin ; perhaps 
also in this country, if in it the source of the above 
error has ever existed.— R. T. 
Home Correspondence. 
Vitality of Diseased Potatocs.—l beg to mention that 
I spread a few Potatoes, both good and bad, about 
3 inches underground, so that they should not touch, in 
the end of September, Observing sprouts, I opened 
them in about six weeks. I found that none of the 
sound ones had sprouted, but all the bad ones had. It 
appeared to me that there were also tubers forming. — 
Investigator. 
Bees Comb.—* A Bee-keeper," p. 778, notices what 
I stated, p. 760, respecting pure combs, both in glasses 
and under hives, being of much use when the bees 
begin to work afresh in them the next season. “Ido 
not question," says he, “ the use of the comb to the 
bees, but I do the advantage of letting i; remain to the 
bee-keeper." Now, what is of use to bees must, of 
course, be profitable in ths end to their master. Bees 
having pure comb to" yegin afresh with is objected to 
on these grounds, that “the next year many of the 
cells, insted of containing honey, will be filled with 
young bhrood," In my practice with bees T have always 
of the fleshy receptacle, as compared with 
lighter ones, which are more susceptible of sudden 
changes and upon which the fruit often shrivels up.— 
Henry Bailey, Nuneham.—— 1 would add that in the 
gardens here the Hautbois is extensively eultivated 
without any regard to the intermixing of the male and 
female plants, and bears most abundantly ; indeed, the 
clusters are so fine and numerous they might be mown 
down; the situation is partly shaded; soil, a sandy 
loam, highly cultivated, and the plants planted in single 
lines with a well-trodden pathway on one side. This 
last condition I find highly advantageous, particularly 
in dry adverse seasons, not ouly for this but for all 
Strawberries.—H. Bowers, Busbridge, Godalming. 
Your correspondent * B." seems unaware that there 
are varieties of the Hautbois Strawberry, some having 
the male and female organs in the same blossom; 
others the male organs in one, and the female in 
another; but I have always observed the latter bear 
the finest fruit, and the condition of the soil in which 
your correspondent’s plants were grown, being good, I 
have no doubt induced a change of the condition of the 
plant, and caused the production of both organs in the 
same blossom, as I have myself before observed. I 
believe the Hautbois prefers a rich, good soil, and lasts 
but a few years, and is very liable to degenerate ; at 
least I have found it so with mine, and I should 
be glad to obtain plants of your correspondent 
* B." to make trial of, and to pay for them, if he 
will favour me with his address. The liability to change 
in many of the newly-raised kinds is known to most 
growers. Some years ago I cultivated one of the early 
raised new varieties—the Wellington (a sort, I believe, 
not unknown), and being about to leave home, I planted 
a small bed in a secluded spot, hoping at some future 
day to find the stock. I had frequent opportunities of 
seeing them, and by neglect they all became blind. A 
few years afterwards, having settled where I now 
reside, I took up several roots, and planted a singlerow 
in a small bed, and in a soil admirably suited for Straw- 
