August 21, 1871. ] 



JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



139 



frnit, and they are still bearing, thongli not bo freely. The 

 fruit has been from 18 to 26 inches in length, and has not 

 exhibited a vestige of any kind of disease, I only water once 

 a-day, and that about 7 p.m. 



I leave it in abler hands than mine to find whether light soils 

 have anything to do with the disease, but I intend to grow my 

 plants in stiff soil for the future. — Leakuek. 



BRASSICA OLERACEA. 



No wonder the Romans and Greeks held the Cabbage in high 

 esteem ; it is a dainty dish, fit to please the palate of queen, 

 emperor, or peasant, and no person seems ever to tire of it. 

 This is the case with but few other garden vegetables. Reader, 

 yon may smile and say I am too lavish in my praises, but hold 

 until you have made, a voyage or two across the salt ocean. If 

 you have made such voyages it will be easy to convince you 

 that there is not a vegetable grown so fondly longed for. No 

 matter what port a vessel may cast anchor in. Cabbage is the 

 only vegetable inquired for by all on board, and by the pas- 

 senger class specially. 



Who that has ever seen the parent Brassica oleraeea could 

 imagine it would ever assume so many forms and variations ? 

 The last time I saw it was in the Isle of Sheppey. 1 had been 

 planting some trees aropnd the fortifications at Sheerness, and 

 took an evening walk by the banks of the Medway. I found 

 this Brassica growing in a corn field close to the banks of the 

 river, and I found wild Celery growing very abundantly in a 

 trench quite convenient. 



Let us now take a glance at the sorts the farmer and cottager 

 chiefly plant — viz., York and Drumhead. I would advise the 

 cottager never to plant Drumhead; it exhausts the soil so 

 much, that where a crop of it is grown, no matter how you 

 may manure, you cannot get a moderate-sized crop of Potatoes 

 off the same plot for two seasons afterwards, and as an article 

 of food I hold it to be far inferior to the York Cabbage. It 

 cannot have nearly the muscle-producing properties, nor con- 

 tain the gum, sugar, and gluten that the York does, but the 

 Drumhead contains more water, as is evident to any person 

 who has seen it cooked. It is quite a mistake for either the 

 cottager cr the gentleman's gardener to plant such a robber of 

 the soil, for you can have two crops of York to one of Drum- 

 head ; two lines to the one, and two plants to the one. 



Then look to the sprouting properties of the York. We have 

 just seen (supposing we do not allow sprouting) that we can 

 grow about one dozen heads of the York Cabbage to the one of 

 Drumhead. Theory says it exhausts the soil very much to 

 allow sprouting to take place. Huve the theorists who have 

 written so taken into consideration the amount of food and 

 nourishment one sort of Cabbage derives from the air as com- 

 pared to another ? I think they have not ; and it is a subject 

 that would be well worth testing. I hold, and many practical 

 humble gardeners like me affirm, that the Cabbage which pro- 

 duces no sprouts is the sort that robs the soil much more than 

 the sprouting kinds do, particularly the York. You will often 

 find a plot from which a crop of the York Cabbage has been 

 taken, but the stocks left sprouting ; you will find them loaded 

 with the most delicious sprouts, and when you pull up the 

 stock you will actually find it in a state of decay, without the 

 slightest particle of clay attached to any fibre. Well, let us 

 take up and examine the roots of the Drumhead or non-sprout- 

 ing kinds, and what do we see ? a large ball of earth attached 

 to the roots — enough for a man to lift. To bring the soil into 

 condition again is almost like reclaiming that of a forest of 

 Ash trees, so exhausted is it. Vegetable physiologists would 

 enlighten gardeners very much by stating the number of 

 stomates in a square inch of each of the foregoing varieties, to 

 let the gardening world see their action as regards the atmo- 

 sphere and soil ; and chemists the properties of different 

 varieties as muscle or fat-prodnoing food ; for in the midst of 

 our cordon training, our restrictive and extension systems of 

 Vine culture, and our blaze of bedding. Cabbage, the chief of 

 the vegetables, should not be neglected nor forgotten. — J. McD. 



LILITJM AURATUM. 



NoTwiTHSTASDiNG the great success we now and then hear 

 of in the flowering of this capricious plant, certain it is there 

 are many failures, and instead of the bulbs multiplying in the 

 grower's hands, they often do exactly the reverse. There is one 

 way in which I think Lilium auratum may be more safely 

 depended on for doing well, and that is when it is planted out 



of doors in suitable soil. In such a place it succeeds well, and 

 as far as my experience goes it is quite hardy. Some years 

 ago I planted some out, and one of them showed upwards of 

 twenty fully-expanded blooms at one time during the past 

 season, with some others in bud and some going off. The 

 stem, being stout and thick, did not require a stake, although 

 it was fully 6 feet high. The site was an old Rhododendron 

 bed, which must have been full of the roots of these plants, as 

 well as of those of a large Elm tree growing near, which 

 occupy the whole length of the bed ; yet the plant has shown 

 the robust health necessary to perfect the above number of 

 fully-grown flowers. I would, therefore, say to those who often 

 have to complain of losing their bulbs when kept in pots, 

 Plant a quantity out of doors ; they are less liable to mishaps 

 then, and in general bloom much more strongly. — J. Roeson. 



A BIT OF SOUTH DEVON.— No. 5. 

 " You find it very hot at Torquay," is a sentence, half query 

 half assertion, made in a letter received a few days since. I 

 replied, " Yes, it is very hot." " Ah ! you are finding it out," 

 was the rejoinder. And my sur-rejoinder was, "It is found 

 out elsewhere. A letter from Brighton tells, ' We sha'n't bear 

 it many days longer.' A letter from Chippenham says, ' We 

 are melting.' (I hope the writer will not become a large grease 

 spot and heap of bones). A letter from Scarborough says, ' It 

 is at midday like a furnace ;' and a letter from the metropolis 

 concludes my bulletins of temperature — the writer, evidently 

 in extremis, concluding his very brief note with this sentence, 

 ' London is stewing hot ; the Venetians are down, yet I sit 

 oozing at every pore.' " I adopted another course — proceeded 

 to Totness, that quaint old town, so old that the stone is shown 

 on which Brutus of Troy sat and uttered the rhyme — 



" Here I Btand and here I rest. 

 And this town shall be called Totness." 



I did not stay — probably your readers will not either — to inquire 

 as to the credibility of the legend, but I placed myself under 

 the awning of the steamer Newoomen about to thread its way 

 down the stream thus apostrophised — 



" River Dart ! oh ! river Dart ! 

 Every year thou claim'st a heart." 



The rhyme is said by some to allude to the numerous drown- 

 ings, and by others to its captivating beauty. Parts of it cer- 

 tainly are very beautiful, and it has been called "the English 

 Rhine," which in my opinion is no praise. The Wye is far 

 more beautiful, and more continuously beautiful, deserving the 

 highest praise-name of " the British Moselle." 



I should have liked to wander for hours in the woods of 

 Sharpham, which have their lowest branches dipping in the 

 Dart, and densely clothe the steep hillside. One of those trees 

 is a Wych Elm, said to be the largest in England. Mr. Pender, 

 gardener at this residence of T. Durant, Esq., says, " The tree 

 stands on an area of 400 feet in circumference; some of its 

 branches, in a horizontal line from the stock of the tree, are 

 80 feet ; circumference of the stock of the tree, 16 feet ; and 

 some of the large branches measure 9 feet in circumference. 

 Some of the branches which hang over the carriage drive through 

 the park are supported with huge props, while others on the 

 opposite side are lying on the ground." 



A Plum abounds in the fruiterers and market here, known 

 as the " Disham." I spell it as the Devonians pronounce it, 

 and might have accepted the alleged derivation of the name to 

 be "cause it's only good in the pie-dish." I was exasperated 

 by a fat old woman on the steamer who would stand between 

 me and the landscape, but forgave her so soon as she said 

 " That's Dittisham ; that's whence our pie and preserving Plum 

 comes from. All those trees you see, and in every cottage 

 garden there are some, are Plum trees." So I inquired further, 

 and find that the oldest man living remembers trees that were 

 very old when he was a boy ; and on obtaining specimens of 

 the Plum I think that it is now known as the Victoria, a name 

 which ought not to have been applied, for it has been known 

 for centuries in Sussex as the " Alderton Plum." Why with 

 Devonians is "Plum" synonymous with "soft?" "A soft 

 bed " with them is " a Plum bed." 



On we glided to our voyage's conclusion — Dartmouth, native 

 town of the inventor of the steam engine, after whom our vessel 

 is appropriately named. I had been at Dartmouth previously, 

 and in strolls noticed standard Fig trees in the gardens and 

 hedgerows, where in the first-named they ripen fruit annually, 

 and in the hedgerows occasionally. The "peculiarity is that in 



