Retrospective Criticism. 487 



Keen's, at Isle worth, you will pay \Os. Cobbett selling at 2s. 6d. per hun- 

 dred is doing, I think, a great service to us Cockneys. 



I intend, if you will give them room, to send you my experiments on 

 growing strawberries in small gardens. I have produced thirty-six pottles 

 (weight 28 lbs.) on seven square yards of ground, of the Bostock or Wel- 

 lington, in ten months after planting, and though the dry summers have 

 hindered my continuing it, my soil being a hot gravelly one, I do not doubt 

 I shall be able to do it again, — Superficial. Brixton Villa, January. 



Double Yellow Rose. — I have heard that this flower cannot be blown 

 near London ; is it true ? — Id. 



The Grub of the Cockchafer (p. 295. 334.) in French is called mante, and 

 is very destructive to coss lettuces when first transplanted. A neighbour 

 of mine, whose gardener had manured a border with dung fidl of the grubs, 

 which he carelessly did not pick out, had this year three transplanted crops 

 of lettuces destroyed. When a lettuce flags, by digging the root out with 

 a trowel, the insect I call mante will be found : it is an ugly grub, about 

 the size of the two top joints of the little finger, of a dirty white, with 

 brown legs, and is always in a bent state. When I break up my little 

 melon bed every autumn, I generally find a great many in the dung, about 

 6 in. from the top, exactly under the place where the woodwork of the 

 frame stood. Knowing what mischief they do, I carefully turn the dung 

 over two or three times before 1 use it. Being no entomologist, I turned 

 to Samouelle's work, to make out what insect the Anomalia horte'nsis was, 

 and am no wiser. Is it the green gold beetle, usually called the May bug, 

 that is very fond of roses and lilies, and also often found in cucumber frames ? 

 [We believe so ; if we are wrong, Mr. Swainson will correct us.] The 

 sparrows are great enemies to the chaffer, but they are much destroyed, 

 for the mischief they do to early peas, &c. If hops, after brewing, are 

 strewed between the rows, I have found it preserve peas much ; the spar- 

 rows prefer the hop-seed to any thing. I myself think sparrows of great 

 service in the close gardens in the vicinity of London. I recollect stopping 

 a putlog hole where a pair used to breed, and I never had a fair bloom on 

 a large maiden's blush rose afterwards j before, I had watched them for 

 hours opening the leaves, and carrying off" the green caterpillars, which 

 infests this rose more than any other near London. The cockchaffer can 

 be caught in great numbers by shaking the trees they frequent when the 

 sun is out ; they will fall to the ground, and can there be picked up and 

 destroyed. — Id. 



Knowledge for the Poor. (p. 342.) — Though I have had very little prac- 

 tice in French for some years, I should prefer, and I think understand, the 

 book of Baron Dupin better than the English works by the Society for the 

 Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. The French have the tact of writing home 

 to the ignorant, so that one who reads French can understand them ; but 

 our works in general require not only two or three languages, but a com- 

 plete mathematical knowledge, or a better education than in general falls 

 to the lot of those who wish to read them. — Id. 



Scraping of the old. Bark of Fruit Trees, by Mr. Thomson (p. 309.), is 

 not a new discovery. (See Lyon on Fruit Trees. Edin. 1816.) — Id. 



The Pomological Magazine is certainly not a cheap work, compared with 

 either the old Botanical Magazine or the Botanical Register. Though the 

 colouring is good, I do not think, from the description of the fruits, that 

 the drawings are correct ; e. g. the Royal Apricot is described as a less fruit 

 than the Moorpark ! Look at the fruit ! I do not pretend to say that 

 there never was such a sized fruit, but I only know that if I were to de- 

 scribe the natives of the sister island, I should not figure the Irish giant as 

 a specimen. The apple, Sugar-loaf Pippin, seems put to a branch that did 



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