44 



JOURNAL OE HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. [ January 20, 1863. 



ctliaris, cinerea, multidora, vagans, and Mackayana, with the 

 summer and autumn-flowering Cape ones, making the hardy 

 kinds at first the male parent, for in so doing you not only have 

 a large assortment of Cape sorts to experiment upon, hut also the 

 advantage of haying them out-doors. It will, however, he very 

 requisite for those persons who take up the subject in earnest, 

 to obtain a full set of the hardy kinds and their varieties, and 

 keep them in pots, so that the plants may be at all times ready 

 in a portable form. 



The process of hybridising plants being now so generally 

 understood, it appears unnecessary to allude to it further than 

 to remind the operator that self-fertilisation must be carefully 

 guarded against, by removing the pollen-bearing parts of the 

 flower before any pollen be dispersed, and that he must labour 

 even more diligently than the industrious bee among his flowers, 

 or his hives will produce no sweet9. It may also happen that some 

 of the first attempts at crossing the hardy European Heaths 

 with the beautiful and more aristocratic varieties from the Cape, 

 may prove failures, or that but little advance may be gained 

 from the first crosses ; still, by recrossing the hybridised seed- 

 ling productions with a hardy kind, and more experience in 

 the selection of sorts for trial, such difficulties will soon be 

 overcome, and the result after the second generation prove a 

 hardy race, for many of the Cape kinds may already be con- 

 sidered as half-hardy, bearing, as they do, several degrees of 

 frost without injury. 



In sowing the seeds and raising the young plants, the treat- 

 ment should be in all respects like that of the hardy Rhodo- 

 dendron, and at no time should artificial heat be used to obtain 

 or stimulate growth. Afterwards select, when the proper time 

 shall arrive, the most promising kinds as regards hardihood for 

 recrossing, until a thoroughly hardy race is established, when, as 

 is the case with all mongrel productions, selection and cultivation 

 will do much towards attaining perfection. 



The cross-breeder, however, should at all times be guided by a 

 comparison of results obtained from experience, and from such 

 draw conclusions upon which to act, for mistakes are made, and 

 will still be made, in the endeavour after advancement ; and 

 much will depend as to the value of what may be raised after- 

 wards by attending to particular objects. In the present case, 

 everything must be sacrificed for hardiness, and the varieties will 

 afterwards be improved by selection and cultivation, like the 

 offspring of all mixed breeds. — George Gobdon, A.L.S. 



BUDDING AND GF. AFTING WITH A SELECTION 

 OF NEW AND OLD HOSES. 



Thebe was a proper answer, and a very queer answer in the 

 last Number about budding forced Roses. A gentleman down 

 at Brentwood, where the eastern counties' farming begins to 

 tell after leaving London, wrote to say he had a lot of Manetti 

 Roses, and he wanted to bud on them from some of his forced 

 Roses for two reasons — the first, to gain so much time, or say one 

 season, if he did them now or up to the end of February. The 

 second was a more valid reason — he was a good hand at bud- 

 ding, and could bud them himself; but as to grafting RoBes, he 

 had so little practice in it that he felt he was not quite well 

 enough up to the mark of doing it ; and the next best plan, of 

 course, was to apply to the fountain head of practical knowledge 

 in such matters. The answer he had was what tickled my 

 fancy, and made me write about Rosea to-day. Oh, yes ! 

 "Your plan is founded on scientific principle, and your plan 

 and theory are both correct, and must succeed ; but, after all 

 that, the practice of the whole trade is against you." Now, 

 that answer must have sprung from one of two very different 

 causes. The gentleman from Brentwood must have begun his 

 letter on the second page, and so put the Editors into their 

 best mood, because they would have no trouble with it ; or else 

 they, the Editors, intended to show cause why there should not 

 be more than two modes of proceeding. The common saying 

 is, that there can be but two ways of doing or saying a thing — 

 the^ right way and the wrong way. But here we have a dif- 

 ferent version of it. A plan and theory founded on scientific 

 principle must, indeed, succeed unless very badly managed ; hut 

 " the practice of the whole trade is against it." I always said 

 that the practice of several in the Rose trade was not alto- 

 gether good ; but to say the whole practice of a trade ie againBt 

 a plan and principle on a plain scientific foundation, is just as 

 much as to say there are two good ways of doing a thing against 



one bad way of doing the same. And, as is always the case 

 when the Editors have two strings to their bow, they make us 

 writers draw one of them with no more to say than " mind the 

 mark," and on this occasion it so happens that it is my turn to 

 pull ; otherwise the Editors, would keep Manetti and Morven 

 as far apart as the poleB of the earth so early in the season. 



The first turn is, that there are two ways of budding Roses 

 and ten ways of grafting them. The gentleman at Brentwood 

 has hold of the second way, which is the surer of the two. He 

 is about putting, or has already put, his lot of Manetti stocks 

 into the forcing-house, forwarding them to the growth they 

 would have naturally in the middle of May. The bark will soon 

 "run," and so will the gentleman, and never stop until the whole 

 are budded with the best new RoseB — such as John Hopper, 

 Beauty of Waltham, Madame de Chabrillant, Madame Eurtado, 

 and Madame Crapelet, Louis XIV., Senateur Vaisse, General 

 Washington, General Simpson, and Admiral Nelson, Victor 

 Verdier, and Madame Vidot, and such like popular aud much- 

 prized kinds out of the newer Roses, togother with a very select 

 few of the older kinds, beginning with Madame Laffay, Geant 

 des Batailles, Baronne Prevost, Duchess of Sutherland, Duchess 

 of Norfolk, and down to General Jacqueminot, which waB an 

 oldish Rose the moment Senateur Vaisse hoiBted the standard ; 

 also a very few sweet-scented Roses, which no one likes to 

 mention in these days on account of Manetti, which such 

 Roses never want to be budded upon. I mean the old Cabbage 

 Rose (the very best of them yet after all), the Crimson and 

 CreBted Moss, Boule de Nanteuil, Kean, Paul Rieaut and Paul 

 Perras, Coupe d'Hebe (Her Majesty's favourite Rose), Chenedole, 

 and " Lee's Perpetual," all sweet, sweeter, and sweetest. 



Of course, he, the gentleman aforesaid, will bud all theBe, and 

 some others, as near to the surface of the soil in the pot as he 

 can manage to turn the worsted thread in tying on the buds ; 

 worsted being the best tie in the forcing-house, as it will keep 

 moist of itself the whole time, from the moisture or vapour 

 needed in the air in all such forcing. Having full command, 

 now, over his handiwork, he will not allow one joint more to 

 grow on the Manetti parts, but force the whole action of the 

 roots into the one outlet of the new buds ; then it is one sees 

 the effect of forcing with 10° or 15° more of heat than out of 

 doors in summer — there would seem to be more huckstering 

 between the Rose stock and the bud, to see which could go first, 

 as it were. 



Now, and for two more months, the stock, even the excitable 

 Manetti, will yield to the run of the new bud, on a pressure of 

 from 55° to 60° of night heat, with that degree of moiBture. Then, 

 if March be a fine month, by the middle of April every one of 

 the buds will have made shoots from 10 to 20 inches long, 

 according to the sorts, and by that time, no doubt, the pots will 

 be taken to the greenhouse, or at least to a cold pit, and if any 

 bloom-buds come they will be instantly picked off. All this 

 time not a leaf of the Manetti stock must be touched, all, as 

 yet, consisting in merely Btopping every effort to make more 

 growth to Manetti ; for, recollect, what the Editors say about 

 scientific principle, all thiB work is baaed on that, and going at 

 railway speed, to make op one whole season in advance. 



Well, cold-frame work till all the bedding plants are out, and, 

 last of all, give the spring-budded Roses their free liberty in the 

 richest-made bed of loam and rotten dung that ever was made in 

 the eastern counties. But, yet, that scientific principle has kept 

 on the head of Manetti, and at the planting-out time the shoots 

 from the budding are to be cut back juBt one-half their length, the 

 balls entirely shaken off, and some shading will be necessary for 

 the first ten days. The first effort of new growth will be at the 

 top of the pruned shoots, and when the new growth there is 

 three or four joints long will be the time to begin to reduce the 

 head of the Manetti. Up to that moment poor Manetti has been 

 doing the necessary work of that member of the Rose peerage 

 for whom his head is to be cut off, and we shall see no more 

 of him, for in these eastern countieB they found the safety of 

 giving burial to all Manettis on the occasion of cutting off the 

 heads ; and so it is, and if there is an inch of Manetti not buried, 

 that inch will dispute for pre-eminence with all that are worked 

 on it, and both would be crippled. So there is no need to follow 

 further the fortunes of this batch. 



But, how comes it that the trade never bud their forced Roses, 

 or force the new Roses to have buds from ? They do both, 

 but they do it very differently, and make every bud produce a 

 plant after all. If the trade were to wait till the bark of the 

 stocks would " run " in order to bud, their customers would 



