Orange and Camellia House. 25 



to be able to carry their fine heads after getting them. Yet 

 I could turn them out into a draught, in a cold windy place, and 

 allow it to cut their fine heads all to pieces, and then say it 

 was not my fault, for I could not help the wind; but I should 

 have too much regard for the poor plants to punish them that 

 way. 



Now, as you particularly wished me to give you a little 

 idea of my System of potting Camellias, I will do so: it will no 

 doubt be thought a rough method by some. Do you imagine 

 that they have the mould sifted, and all the stones picked out 

 of the soil in their native country ? I always fancied they had 

 not, and for this reason, I never saw any man in the woods or 

 hedge-rows in this country sifting the soil for our native trees 

 to grow in ; nor do I believe those noble trees in Bicton Park 

 (of which I have promised you a description some day) would 

 ever have attained the wonderful size they have done, if men had 

 been employed all their lives sifting the soil about them and 

 picking out the stones. I get loam and heath soil in equal quan- 

 tities, stones, and river sand, one barrow of rotten dung to eight 

 of the above mixture, well mixed up together as roughly as 

 possible. 



Now, as I wish to be better understood than a certain author 

 was when he recommended nitrate of soda as a manure for 

 the Pinus, and was told afterwards, by those who had tried it, 

 that they had killed all their plants, although they had done 

 exactly as the author alluded to had prescribed, I shall try to 

 explain my system clearly ; but I do not ask any body else to 

 follow it. In the first place all the soil should be sweet ; the 

 dung must be rotten and sweet (some persons would call dung 

 rotten that came from a pigsty; I do not). No one should 

 attempt this kind of work, who did not know something about 

 it. The right season for potting camellias is when they re- 

 quire it ; not because you observed your neighbour doing so 

 yesterday, nor because you read in some man's noted calen- 

 dar last evening when to pot those plants. You must judge by 

 the constitution of what is under your care; and, till you know 

 something about it, you will be apt to burn your fingers. Now, 

 I give my camellias a good soaking of manured water, two or 

 three times in the season, which would frighten many growers of 

 them ; therefore I only recommend it to those who understand 

 both the properties of the soil they have already used, and of 

 the liquid they intend using, or it will affect the plants in the 

 same way as a pot of porter would a weak sickly person, if 

 taken of a morning before breakfast. 



I will now give you, as you wished, the names, &c., of some of 

 the plants in this house. 



