October 5, 1876. ] 



JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



313 



Names of Fruits (A. H. Pearson).— 1, Alexandria Bivorfc. The Apple 

 not known. (E. K.).—l t Nonesuch; 2, Early Nonpareil; 4, Nelson's Glory; 

 5, Not Tower of Glamrms; 7, Fondaute d'Automne. (R. P. Hawlcsley). — 

 Gravenstein. (R. C. C.).— -4, 5, and 10, Court-Pendu-PIat; 7, Carol's Seedling; 

 9, Coe's Golden Drop. (J. E. Ransom). — 1, Trumpington ; 2, Borsdorffer. 

 (D. Deal).— Not known. (R. C. ft).— I, Emperor Alexander ; 2, Manks Codlin ; 

 8, Too much decayed before it could be examined. (E. M. P.). — Tom Putt is 

 the name of a popular Apple in Somersetshire, but we do not think that this 

 is that variety. It is like the Tom Putt of Herefordshire. (Connaught Sub- 

 scriber).— 1, Belgian Purple ; 2, "Was rotten before it could be examined. 

 (Knutsford).—!, English Codlin; 2, Mere de Mtnage; 3, Kotten. (F. M.).— 

 The red-striped Apple not known, the other is Birmingham Stone Pippin. 

 (X. Y. Z.).— Not known. (XV. 0. JB.).— Not known. (B.).-l, Winter Peach; 

 2, Lewis' Incomparable; S, Summer Stibbert ; 4, Evidently a local variety ; 

 5, Margil. Pear — 2, Swan's Egg. (Bob). — The Grapes were rotten before 

 they could be examined. (L. D, W.),— Blue Imperatrice. (P. C.).— Not 

 known. (Connaught Subscriber). — l,Barbe Nelia ; 2, Decayed before it could 

 be examined. (Stuart db Mein). — Not known. (E. XV. XV..). — 1, Morning 

 Pippin; 2, Pearson's Plate. (S. TV.). — 1, Hoary Morning; 2, Sweeny Non- 

 pareil; 3, Beauty of Kent; 4, Claygate Pearmain. (Thomas Laxton). — We 

 cannot identify the Apple sent. (G. B. R.).— The Apple is the Yellow Siberian 

 Crab. The Pear not known. (Ewing db Co.).— The Plum is Black Bullace; 

 Claygate Pearmain is Scarlet Nonpareil. We do not know the other. (North 

 Clays). — A good early Apple. (J. A. P.).— 2, Beurre Amande; 6, Beurre Diel ; 

 8, Doyenne Gris; 9, Christie's Pippin; 10, Lord Suffield; 12, Yorkshire 

 Greening. 



Names of Plants (TV. Musgrave). — It is Physalis alkekengi, Winte r 

 Cherry. It is hardy, may be obtained of any seedsmen or rloriBt, and treated 

 like any other border plant. (Fens).— 1, Datura iBrugmansia) sanguinea; 

 2, Pellffia rotundifolia ; 3, Achimenes? sp.; 4, We cannot name florists' 

 varieties of Begonia. (J. H.).—A young form of the Bracken (Pteris aquilina). 

 (H. S).— 1, Camptosorus rhizophyllus ; 2, Pelkea atropurpurea. (H. R.).—A 

 Solidago, probably S. lanceolata. 



POULTRY, BEE, AND PIGEON 0HE0NI0LE. 



OUR DUTY TO OUR FOUR-FOOTED AND 

 FEATHERED NEIGHBOURS.— No. 1. 



" We defy angary ; there is a special providence 

 In the fall of a sparrow." — Hamlet. 



It is my purpose in this and future papers to inquire, without 

 prejudice, and keeping mere sentiment at a distance, as well as 

 the thought of sport where sport is only selfish and useless 

 cruelty — to inquire, I say, what is our duty to our four-footed 

 and feathered neighbours. 



We speak of " wheels being within wheels," noting the reasons 

 that lie inside of reasons, sometimes pretended reasons first 

 and given; real reasons -within and concealed. But if there are 

 wheels within wheels, what a number of worlds are within this 

 world ! There is the world of being, thought, act, and inclina- 

 tion, which you and I, grown-up reader, are living in, each in 

 our own world. Go up into a nursery ; each little one there has 

 equally bis own world in which he or she is living, in which a 

 toy, or a sweetmeat, or that awful being " nurse," have force 

 and power._ Descend and go into the kitchen ; each servant is 

 living in his or her world, each human being in a world, much 

 of which no one else is cognisant, for 



" Not even the tenderest heart, and next onr own, 

 Knows half the reasons why we smile or sigh." 

 But around us there are other living beings — beasts and birds, 

 each with its own feelings, following its own pursuits, its own 

 plans, absorbed in providing for its own life, having its own 

 loves, and hates, and fears. What cares the rabbit for man's 

 feelings or sufferings ? It is absorbed in its own world, and full 

 of fear oft for its own life ; or why does it stop and lower, and 

 then move upward and around its beautiful trumpet-like ears, 

 formed specially to catch the slightest sound? Csesar may 

 dream that the world is made for him, but I think that pert 

 cock sparrow twittering on the end of a house roof may juat as 

 likely think that this world was made for him. " What's Hecuba 

 to him, or he to Hecuba?" but his little brown mate sitting on 

 her eggs close by is much to him— part, great part, of his little 

 world. 



Nest, man is the greatest power in the world, and since he 

 made for himself by his skill firearms he is all-powerful over 

 the world of beast and bird. They know this, and they dread 

 his face, save in those islands where man was a stranger. Thus 

 the dodo of the Mauritius allowed himself to be caught by man, 

 and was soon exterminated by man, thus paying the penalty of 

 his confidence. Poor trusting dodo ! many a woman has trusted 

 man just the same, and to her sorrow and to her destruction not 

 seldom. 



Man the master, the autocrat, of the world, and all other 

 living beings in the world fearing him ! This fear is beautifully 

 dwelt on by Mr. Blackmore in a grand book of his, " Lorna 

 Doone," a work in which the author has done as much for Ex- 

 moor as Charles Kingsley did for Bideford and its neighbourhood 

 by his " Westward Ho !" The hero of the book, looking back 

 upon an event in hiB childhood, thus writes:— "A long way 

 down that limpid water, chilly and bright as an iceberg, went 

 my little self that day on man's choice errand— destruction. All 

 the young fish seemed to know that I was one who had taken 



out God's certificate, and meant to have the value of it ; every 

 one of them was aware that we desolate more than replenish 

 the earth. For a cow might come and look into the water and 

 put her yellow lips down ; a kingfisher, like a blue arrow, might 

 shoot through the dark alleys over the channel, or sit on a 

 dipping withy bough with his beak sunk into his breast feathers ; 

 even an otter might float down stream, likening himself to a log 

 of wood, with his flat head flush with the water-top, and his 

 oily eyes peering quietly ; and yet no panic would seize other 

 life as it doeB when a sample of man comes " — -man the master 

 and the destroyer. 



Such is man's power. No emperor ever was so absolute over 

 men's limbs and lives as is every man over the world of beast 

 and bird around him, and no vassals or slaves ever fled from 

 his pursuer as does every beast and bird. What, then, is our 

 duty to our four-footed and feathered neighbours ? The Maker 

 equally of the poor brute and of ourselves has spoken on this 

 subject. He said, " Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth 

 out the corn," meaning that the poor labouring brute Bhould be 

 able to eat of the straw around him. Such the Great Father's 

 kindness to the four-footed. But the bird has not been forgotten : 

 — " If a bird's nest chance to be before thee in the way in any 

 tree, or on the ground, whether there be young ones or eggs, 

 and the dam sitting upon the young or upon the eggs, thou 

 shalt not take the dam with the young, but thou shalt in any- 

 wise let the dam go and take the young to thee ; that it may 

 be well with thee, and that thou mayest prolong thy days." 

 There is to be no extermination of birds, as they do good, not 

 harm, if preserved in suitable numbers. Then there is the 

 couplet of J. Montgomery founded on a well-known verse : — 



" Man : The gun is levelled, quit that wall. 



"Spaekow : Without the will of Heaven I may not fall." 



He who says "He feeds the ravens," and " whose are the cattle 

 on a thousand hills," and He equally " preserveth man and 

 beast." It is not, then, for us to be murderers, to take life for no 

 cause or a bad oause. We have our duty to fulfil to the world of 

 beast and bird. There is the sentimental view as expressed in 

 the lines — 



" No flocks that range the valley free, 

 To slaughter I condemn; 

 Taught by that Power who pitieB me, 



I leam to pity them ; 

 But from the mountain's grassy side 



A guiltless feaBt I bring— 

 A scrip with herb and fruits supplied, 

 And water from the spring." 



This is mere sentiment. A feast from fat oxen is as guiltless as 

 of watercresses. The animals were given us for food ; and not 

 only ub, but all the carnivora have teeth and stomachB on pur- 

 pose for the mastication and digestion of animal food. We are 

 to kill, but we ought to kill humanely. 



In England during the past thousand years many animals and 

 birds have been exterminated, and many more destroyed in too 

 great numbers. 



In regard to birds in England a thousand years since, specially 

 in the fens of Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire, I subjoin an 

 eloquent allusion to their numbers from as good a naturalist as 

 novelist — Charles Kingsley, who in his " Hereward The Wake," 

 who lived in the time of William the Conqueror, thus writes 

 in a description of a journey by water from Bourn to Crow- 

 land Abbey : — " And they rowed away for Crowland, by many 

 a mere and many an eddy; through narrow reaches of clear 

 brown glassy water; between the dark green alders; between 

 the pale green reeds ; where the coot clanked, and the bittern 

 boomed, and the sedge bird, not content with its own sweet 

 Bong, mocked the notes of all the birds around ; and then out 

 into the broad lagoons, where hung ^motionless, high over- 

 head, hawk beyond hawk, buzzard beyond buzzard, kite beyond 

 kite, as far as eye could see. Into the air, as they rowed on, 

 whirred up great skeins of wild fowl innumerable, with a cry as 

 of all the bells of Crowland, or all the hounds of the Brunes- 

 wold; while clear above all their noise sounded the wild whistle 

 of the curlews and the trumpet note of the great white swan. 

 Out of the reeda, like an arrow, shot the peregrine, singled 

 one luckless mallard from the flock, caught him, struck him 

 stone dead with one blow of his terrible heel, and swept with 

 his prey into the reeds again." 



Now, of all the birds mentioned in this beautiful piece of 

 word painting how few remain, at least in the fens. No bittern 

 now booms there, no buzzard and kite sail in the air, no curlews, 

 no great white swans ; and as to the peregrine, he has retired to 

 the Highlands of Scotland, and from thence higher up to Ice- 

 land, from whence he flies for a meal back to Scotland. — Wilt- 

 shire Bectob. 



MICHAELMAS TIDE. 



The brown and golden leaves are beginning to strew the runs 

 which are shaded by limes and cheBtnuts. Feathers abound 

 everywhere, and flit through the wire netting of the yards 

 and come to a standstill in flower beds and garden paths. The 



