May 16, 1865. ] 



JOUENAL OF HORTICULTUEE AND COTTAGE GAEDENEK. 



371 



WEEKLY CALENDAR. 



Day 



ct 



M>otb 



Week. 



MAY 16-23, 1665. 



Average Temperature 

 near London. 



Rain in 



last 

 -18 years. 



Sun 

 Rises. 



Snn 

 Sets. 



Moon 

 Rises. 



Moon 

 Sets. 



Moon's 

 Age. 



Clock 



after 

 Snn. 



Day of 

 Year. 









Day. 



Night. 



Mean. 



D.iys. 



m. h. 



m. h. 



m. h. 



m. h. 





m. 8.. 





16 



To 



.Sweet Vernal Grass flowers. 



66.1 



43,0 



54.6 



15 



8 af4 



44af7 



morn. 



12 9 



21 



3 53 



136 



17 



W 





65.5 



41.7 



63.6 



15 



7 4 



45 7 



16 1 24 10 



23 



3 51 



137 



18 



Th 



Purslane flowers. 



65.3 



42.7 



54.0 



17 



C 4 



47 7 



44 1 40 U 



(t 



3 49 



138 



19 



F 





66.2 



43.1 



54.6 



13 



4 4 



48 7 



12 1 ! after. 



24 



3 47 



139 



20 



S 



Wnodroof flowers. 



66.3 



43.3 



54.8 



18 



3 4 



60 7 



40 1 13 2 



25 



3 44 



140 



21 



SnN 





66.3 



44.5 



55.4 



16 



2 4 



51 7 



7 2 33 3 



26 , 



27 ' 



3 40 



141 



22 



M 



Sun's declination 20° 27' N. 



65.5 



43.1 



54.3 



17 



1 4 



52 7 



37 2 52 4 



3 86 



142 



From observations taken near London durins the last thirty-eight years, the averaue day temperature of the week 



is 65.9° 



and its 



night 



temperature 



43.1= The greatest heat was 89° 



on the 22nd, 1847 ; and the lowest 



cold, 30% on the 18th and 19th, 1834 ; 30th, 1863 ; and 



loth 



and 20th, 18 



56. The greatest fall of rain was 0.58 Inch. 













MISCELLANEOUS NOTES MADE IN HOLLAND 

 AND BELGIUM. 



(^Concluded froiH page 357.) 



ALEY lias maintained that every 

 defect has its compensation, and 

 certainly deafness had one on 

 the 12th of April, for there were 

 two Frenchmen in the carriage 

 with ns on that day who nerer 

 ceased chattering nonsense dur- 

 ing the two hours of travelling 

 between Brussels and Ghent. 

 And, then, what clever fellows 

 have been deaf ! — Kitto and Sir 

 Joshua Eeynolds among the 

 past, and Professor ISaudin 

 among the living. It is almost 

 worth being deaf to be represented as Reynolds was at 

 the Eoyal Academy last year with his trumpet to his ear 

 listening to the reconciliations of the dying Gainsborough. 

 Then the various uses that the hearing-trumpet can be 

 applied to! Among others, we remember, an old lady 

 who deUvered seeds into drills through its small end. 

 So even deafness may be connected with horticulture, 

 and this brought us to Ghent, for we had long desired to 

 mate notes on its two most celebrated nurseries — Van 

 Houtte's and Verschaffelt's. 



. M. Van Houtte is one of the men of mark of our 

 generation — he has led in more than one successful 

 struggle for freedom ; for twenty years has he lectured 

 gratuitously on horticulture to the young gardeners of 

 Belgium, and during those years nearly 88,000 of them 

 have been his auditors. The government wisely facili- 

 tate their resort to his lectures, for having the railways 

 under its own control the government gives a free pass 

 over them. He must be a capital lecturer, for he is full of 

 knowledge, is a man of merriment, and one of the best 

 talkers in Belgium. Besides, he is the editor of the 

 " Flore des Serres," one of the best of floricultural 

 joTimals. The illustrations of the journal are entirely 

 prepared within his garden's enclosure. We saw the 

 artist engaged on the original drawing ; the lithographers 

 and the colourists at work, and Van Houtte himself 

 supervising all, and answering the most important of the 

 letters received. This is no light task, for we saw the 

 letter register, in which between January 1st and April 

 13th were noted and epitomised 2394! letters, which, 

 deducting the S'.indays, is more than 26 per diem. These, 

 of course, for the most part enclosed orders for plants, 

 and the extent of the business may be estimated from 

 there being fourteen men and women at work in the 

 packing-house, and we counted fifty packages ready for 

 the Tan which had ■ arrived to convey them to the rail- 

 way station. 



To meet such a demand there are thirty-nine propa- 

 gating-houses, each about 100 feet long and 18 feet wide. 

 io supply these and the hardy out-door plants there are 

 No. 216.-VOL. VIII, New Seeies. 



eighty tanks distributed about the garden ; for the soil 

 is very sandy, and requires a large supply of water, and 

 this is pumped up chiefly from the Scheldt by an engine 

 working all day. This engine does other work, grinds 

 corn, cuts laths for the shades, and other wood, &c. 



The nursery includes thirty-eight acres, and, of aU 

 grades and employments, two hundred workmen have to 

 be paid every Saturday. "We estimated that there were 

 two acres of Hyacinths in bloom and five acres of pyra- 

 midal Pear trees. Beside the buildings and offices we 

 have enumerated, there is a large seed shop, potting- 

 houses, carpenter's shop, and a boiler-maker's f >rge, with 

 engineers and carpenters constantly employed ; and a 

 pot-store, with one man entirely occupied by cleaning 

 and sorting the pots. 



All the houses are heated by one boiler on Weeks's 

 system, but there are two additional boilers provided, to 

 be ready against accident, and as there is a gas-work 

 also on the premises, our readers will appreciate what a 

 microcosm it is of all that pertains to a nursery. 



It would far exceed our limits to enter into minute 

 details, but we may state one more fact to aid to an 

 estimate of the extent of the business — one house 216 feet 

 long and two other houses each 100 feet long are filled 

 with Camellias alone. 



Among the tree Ferns are some noble specimens, and 

 it may prove a useful suggestion to some of our readers 

 to notice that each Fern which had grown so tall as to 

 be ready to thrust its head through the glass roof at 

 once had the ground cut from beneath its feet — that is, 

 a well was sunk, bricked round, and the tub in which 

 the Fern was growing lowered into it. 



We have mentioned that the engine cuts the wood for 

 the shades. These are formed of half-inch square laths, 

 and these are fastened one-third of an inch apart to 

 ropes. The ropes are a foot apart, and these, of course, 

 are the whole length of the shade. It forms a kind of 

 Venetian blind, rolling up, and is far more du.rable than 

 any kind of cloth. Each shade is 7 feet wide. The 

 spaces between the laths admit a subdued light. 



We lingered for hours in the proprietor's study, and 

 could fill pages with notes of " Excursions among Van 

 Houtte's books and pictures of plants," but we must 

 only pause to remark that, as usual among the Belgian 

 lovers of botany, there was more than one memorial of 

 Dodoens ; and well does he merit their veneration, for he 

 was not only the botanist of Belgium but of the sixteenth 

 century. His portrait, " ^tat 35," is prefixed to the 

 " Herbal" " first set foorth in the Doutche or Almaigne 

 tongue by that learned D. Eembert Dodoens, Physition 

 to the Emperour ; and nowe first translated out of the 

 French into English by Henry Lyte Esquyer. At Lon- 

 don by me Gerard Desves, dneUing in Pawles Chureh- 

 yarde at the sigue of the Swanne, 1578." There is a 

 better portrait and a full memoir of Dodoens in the first 

 volume of Morren's " Belgique Horticole." Even in the 

 door of one of M. "^'erschaffelt's hothouses was a portrait 

 of Dodoens in stained glass. 



This leads to our notes on the second great nursery of 

 No. S68.— Vol. XXXIII., Old Sbbies. 



