January 5, 1S71. ] 



JOUKNAL OP HOBTICULTDKB AND COTTAGE GAEDENEK. 



first time liberal prizes for cage birds and rabbits, and thus 

 (mark the 'thus') secured the attendance of a very large body 

 of visitors." The war in France has brought two things before 

 us which it would be well to remember. First, ne in Ecglaud, 

 depending so much upon France for eggs, may soon be suii'ering 

 by still greater dearnesg of eggs. We ought to be able to supply 

 eggs for our home consumption. Every cottager living by a road- 

 t,ide could cheaply keep fowls ; landlords should be less je.alons 

 of their doing so, and neighbours less tifiy. Small farmers 

 could add largely to their income by keeping more fowls ; but 

 for idleness and ignorance poultry would be kept in thousands 

 where now only tens and hundreds are seen. Then the French 

 war has taught all readers of newspapers the value of Carrier 

 pigeons. If I ventured in general company to speak of the 

 wonderful homing properties of the Antwerp I was smiled at, 

 and heard the words " electric telegraph." Now it is all dif- 

 ferent. As in the siege of Constantinople a.d. 139, so in the 

 siege of Paris a.d. 1S70, the Carrier is the only safe telegraph. 

 The electric wires in war are at once destroyed ; if laid under- 

 gronud, as near Paris, they are found and dug up, or, worse for 

 the besieged, " tapped," and their secrets known and revealed. 

 Had the Parisians and French generally been as keen pigeon- 

 fanciers as their neighbours in Belgium and Holland, there 

 would not have been, as now, a scarcity in Paris of good and 

 safe birds. Safe, for what hawk could catch a well-fed, well- 

 trained Antwerp ? I look, then, for poultry to be kept more 

 generally, and homing Pigeons to be much more widely known. 

 By the way, I would remark upon the great improvement in 

 appearance of Antwerps as exhibition birds at the Crystal Palace 

 Show. The three winning pens "of six working Antwerps in 

 each," were beautiful in feather and matched well. If beauty 

 and usefulness be combined I am sure they will be kept very 

 generally. 



I notice sometimes that odd questions are sent to our Editors. 

 Now, to anticipate one and save them trouble. If any Pigeon- 

 fancier is plagued with cats who make sad depredations on his 

 birds, I will by all means recommend him for a sure and cer- 

 tain cure to get a dog of the following kind, that is if he 



can. Mr. Pepys, in his Diary, saith, September 11th, IGCl. 

 " To Dr. Williams, who did carry me into his garden where 

 he hath abundance of Grapes ; and he did show me how a dog 

 that he hath do kill all the cats that come thither to kill his 

 pigeons and do afterwards bury them, and do it with so much 

 care that they shall be quite covered ; that if the tip of the tail 

 hangs out, he will take up the cat again and dig the hole deeper, 

 which is very strange ; and he tells me that he do believe he 

 bath killed above a hundred cats." That is the breed of dog 

 for us Pigeon-fanciers to keep. 



Bat 'tis time I should conclude. To some this is the only 

 weekly periodical where there is a large family and careful 

 parents, and " our Journal " forms, therefore, the chief even- 

 ing reading. I know that a kindly article lights up into cheeri- 

 neas many a quiet group, in a neat cottage, in a garden. A 

 worthy Gloucestershire gardener, who being a Welshman, and 

 whose name not being Jones — he bore of course one of the 

 other two Welsh names — told me, warmly grasping my hand, 

 he read all aloud to his wife. A good wife that, taking thorough 

 interest in her hus'oaud's calling, as wives should. 



My New Year's hopes are that this may be a happy new year. 

 I hope the present war will cease and no other begin, and that 

 the peaceful Eden-like labours of the garden will prosper. I 

 hope there will be peace and plenty. I hope men will grow 

 wiser, better, kinder, more loving, more brotherly and brother- 

 like. Cultivate kindness — kind words, looks, and a kind 

 present do wonders ; it need be but a little one and of trifling 

 value, but it warms the heart. One more word, and that a 

 serious one. I have spoken of flowers being gathered from 

 far-distant and different lands into our gardens ; but there is 

 another process of selection going on — the gathering of men 

 into a better garden. May all who read these words be among 

 those so selected, so gathered.— Wiltshiee Eectok, Hilltop 

 Bectory, Wilts, Neio Yem-'s-cve, 1870. > 



POTATO PLANTING. 

 On looking over the papers Mr. Lewis has written on this 

 subject, I see he has not mentioned the way in which the 

 Potato is planted in some parts (iu Devonshire, for instance), 

 as I suppose he wrote principally for amateurs and cottagers. 

 I venture to add this plan, thinking it far supersedes those he 

 noticed, although very similar to the one he mentioned for 

 field planting. Should he not have said. The horses ought not 



to be worked abreast, or they will trample the Potatoes that 

 are in the furrow, but that they should be worked one before 

 the other ? What an immense saving there is in this way to 

 that of drilling out the ground first, and then carting the ma- 

 nure between the drills afterwards. One plough puts iu one 

 acre per day, and one man and a lad put iu their quarter of an 

 acre per day, and leave off at five o'clock. As, I believe this 

 is not generally attended to, I will detail the simple way in 

 which they do it. 



Each allotment is half an acre, and we will suppose that the 

 quarter of an acre of ground has been turned-up during the 

 winter. The cottagers on the estates of the Earl of Devon, 

 and I hope on all other estates, are allowed to keep their pig — 

 the very life of an allotment — so that with a few bundles of 

 ferns, long grass from hedges and ditches, and the straw from 

 the quarter of an acre of Barley, which each cottager is bound 

 to grow every year as per agreement, he thereby, with all his 

 gleanings, manages to prepare from four to six good loads of 

 manure. The ground is planted alternately with Barley and 

 Potatoes. The manure is thrown in heaps in the middle of 

 his Potato ground a day or two before planting ; he has been 

 busy for a night or two preparing the seed by cutting and 

 making each sort ready for the eventful day ; and whether he 

 puts them in himself or hires, the work is begun early the 

 next morning. There is one thing he will surely not forget — 

 the few coppers, or maybe a bit of silver, he has hoarded up 

 in some snug corner " vor a drap o' cider vor tatty planting." 

 The dung is spread evenly over the ground first, the Potatoes 

 are placed in convenient lots, and now the work begins in 

 earnest. 



The line is stretched across at the lower end of the ground ; 

 the man with his mattock digs out the furrow, the lad with 

 his basket of seed Potatoes drops them about 10 inches apart ; 

 the line is then shifted 22 inches off. The iad, with a good- 

 sized iron-toothed rake, next rakes in the dung on the Potatoes, 

 the man follows him, making another furrow to cover it, and 

 the end being gained, he wheels round and makes another 

 furrow for the next row; the boy following, drops the seed as 

 before. The row finished, and the line shifted, the boy rakes 

 in the dung, the man following covers it with the next furrow, 

 and so on to tho end. 



Thus it will be seen the man is always in his work, not 

 having to walk a foot without tending to diminish his day's 

 work, and this, too, without leaving a footmark behind him, 

 and the soil is laid on the Potatoes in the lightest possible 

 manner. The Potatoes all in, the paths are shovelled up, and 

 all is left until the Potatoes are beginning to make their ap- 

 pearance, when a rough rake is run over the whole to knock 

 down clods and to kill all seedling weeds. All hoeing and 

 earthing-up is done during the mornings and evenings by the 

 cottager and his family, the allotment being within a few 

 minutes' walk of the village. 



It often happens that the cottager is short of garden room at 

 home, and then he will drop a few Broad Beans in every three 

 or four rows at planting-time, or scatter a pinch of Turnip 

 seed after they are earthed-up, which seems not to interfere 

 with the Potatoes. It is a pleasing sight to walk through these 

 allotments on a fine evening, and see the many little happy 

 groups at work with an earnestness that ought to shame the 

 man spending his last farthing iu the tap-room, or the land- 

 owner who says, " I could not think of taking away a field from 

 my farmers to lay out in allotments." The noble landlord 

 and his late worthily-esteemed lady, whom I have named, have 

 given prizes every year for the cleanest and best-kept allotment, 

 and for the best piece of Barley, Potatoes, and Mangold Wurfzel, 

 &c. The competition is very spirited, and produces the best 

 results. — J. Tatlok, Maesgwynne, South Wales. 



DWARF POINSETTIA PULCHEEEIMA. 

 Mk. Fish in his " Doings of the Last Week," December 22nd, 

 says — " The Poinsettia can never look compact so as to have a 

 fine head of crimson floral leaves." As I read those lines I 

 had a plant on the table before me, which I m.easured ; it 

 stood 5J inches high from the pot, a -l-inch one, and the floral 

 bract measured exactly 8 inches across. I then measured 

 another in the conservatory, in a 6-inch pot, which had two 

 floral bracts, one was 4 inches high and 7 inches across, the 

 other 5 inches high and about 8i inches across. These were 

 taken ofi the old plants and struck after July 1st, though I do 

 not exactly remember the date, and were merely joints with 

 eyes, as I cut the long shoots I took ofi' the old plants into 



