Ootober 27, 1870. ] 



JOURNAL OP HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



329 



of the waiters, I survived the dish. I will not say, as Swift 

 would have done — 



" They'd rather have that I should die, 

 Than their predictions prove a lie." 



Bat though I recommend my readers to eat Agaricus pro- 

 cerus when they are lucky enough to get hold of it, yet I do 

 not recommend them to do so at an inn, for, on second thoughts, 

 I did wrong in having the fungus cooked there. It might have 

 happened that I was taken ill from some cause quite uncon- 

 nected with the banquet, but the landlord would certainly have 

 been accused by the public of having served up poisonous 

 Mushrooms to a guest. Scandalous rumours find ready belief. 



This autumn I have eaten with much pleasure Agaricus 

 comatus in its young state, while the gills were still white 

 — G. S. 



FRUIT TREE NAMING. 

 In the first notice to correspondents, page 251, the Editors 

 prefer a well-grounded complaint. They had received, for the 

 purpose of giving names, no less than three baskets of Apples, 

 respectively containing twenty-nine, twenty-three, and seven- 

 teen sorts. Imagine a person sending twenty-nine Apples at 

 one time ! Who is to blame for such a proceeding ? I most 

 unhesitatingly affirm provincial nurserymen and gardeners. 

 And why ? many of them will be apt to exclaim. The follow- 

 ing, I hope, will serve to show. 



First, as to gardeners. When fruit trees are received from a 

 nursery the tallies attached to them are of the slimmest descrip- 

 tion, being made of a narrow strip of wood tied to a stem or a 

 branch by a small piece of string. The wood decays, the string 

 rots, the tally disappears ; it has dropped to the ground, and 

 been either dug into the soil or raked off with the leaves and 

 weeds to the rubbish heap : or, if by good fortune it may have 

 been refastened, it has only been to escape its ultimate fate by 

 a season, or to hang on the tree till it becomes undecipherable. 

 Nurserymen's tallies ought to be regarded as merely temporary, 

 to be replaced by a durable article at the earliest convenience. 

 An excellent material is zinc, possessing lightness, cheapness, 

 and durability. Let the name be written with indelible ink (say 

 Yeats's), by a quill, and the label suspended from the tree by 

 copper or lead wire, and it will last fir generations. At the 

 pruning or fruit-gathering seasons, a glance will show whether 

 the wire is cutting the bark or not ; then a minute or two, 

 owing to the pliability of the wire, will suffice to rectify the 

 matter ; or, as recommended by Mr. Rivers, the names, in the 

 case of wall trees, could be nailed to the walls, either above or 

 beside the trees. I know one garden where this is practised ; 

 the names being on a level with the eye, and painted in letters 

 sufficiently large that one passing along the walk can read at a 

 glance. 



Another method is occasionally adopted by some gardeners, 

 but to it there are grave objections. The names of the trees 

 are written in a book in the same order as they are planted, 

 but the book is looked upon as private property, and the gar- 

 dener when leaving the place takes the book with him. How, 

 then, is his successor to learn the names of his Apples or 

 Pears ? for remember, pomological knowledge is not so very ex- 

 tensively disseminated that the general run of gardeners know 

 a great variety of fruits. Either he must be obliged to his 

 neighbours and thus betray his ignorance, or not wishing to 

 remain in ignorance, and yet willing that his neighbours should 

 consider him well posted in fruit lore, he sends a basket of 

 sorts to the Editors of the " Journal." 



One advantage of suspending the tallies is, that both head 

 and under gardeners soon almost unconsciously acquire a 

 knowledge of the sorts grown about the plaoe. When nailing 

 and pruning in winter and spring, they cannot but notice the 

 differences among tlie sorts in habit of growth, sturdiness, 

 weakness, short-jointedness, or otherwise of branch, &c. ; also 

 in summer, when weeding and raking the ground beside the 

 trees, and pinching the shoots, they will have excellent oppor- 

 tunities for comparing the leaves and young shoots, and above 

 all, the fruit will be an absorbing source of interest as it gradu- 

 ally approaches maturity. Now for a case in point. I called on 

 a gardener of my acquaintance about three weeks ago to see a 

 number of pyramidal Apple trees on the Paradise stock — a 

 method of growing trees in which so many people are now be- 

 coming interested. Before seeing the trees he took me into his 

 fruit room to show me thoir produce, which had been gathered 

 a few days previously. Two sorts in particular struck my 

 fancy, and, on asking the names, judge of my surprise when he 



confessed he did not know them. This was the more repre- 

 hensible, as the trees were planted about three yearB ago, if not 

 by his own hands, at least under his immediate superintend- 

 ence. Had the names been suspended permanently from the 

 trees, would I have gone without the desired information? I 

 believe not. I am unable consequently to add trees of the 

 same kind to my collection. 



Now I come to the second part of the indictment, involving a 

 certain class of nurserymen. The practice some of them adopt 

 to obtain grafts of fruit trees is far from conducive to correct 

 naming. The foreman, or even one of the under hands, as he 

 can often be better spared, is dispatched to some gardening 

 friend for a quantity of grafts. Whatever name is given is of 

 course affixed to the young trees without much inquiry as to its 

 correctness, nor is it difficult to understand that, in many in- 

 stances, the name is only supposed to be correot, though in 

 reality not so. Such trees when sold contribute to extend the 

 evil oomplained of. Very few such nurserymen plant out a tree 

 of each sort specially for fruiting, with an eye to prove the 

 correctness of the nomenclature ; and such sorts as do set fruit 

 in the nursery quarters have the fruit taken off at an early 

 stage, because, as say the nurserymen, " we require to grow 

 wood, not fruit." 



I was supplied early last spring with about twenty young 

 Apple trees on the Paradise stock by a local nurseryman. Four 

 of them fruited, of these one has proved to be wrong. If the 

 same proportion of the others turn out incorrectly named, I 

 will probably be under the necessity of troubling the Editors of 

 the " Journal " to name some day a batch of five Apples. The 

 above does not apply to the greater nurserymen, who, as a class, 

 I am proud to say, would rather burn their trees than dispose 

 of a Bingle one which they are not certain to be correct to 

 name. — A. R. 



DALKEITH PALACE GARDENS. 



Edinburgh, like London, has its suburban residences, not 

 modern ones only, but also those of more ancient date, origin- 

 ally built for and occupied by the nobles, whose duty or interest 

 called them to the metropolis ; and the situations of many such 

 residences are so judiciously chosen as to prove that good taste 

 was by no means disregarded, but other considerations often 

 determined the Bite. The turbulence of the times rendered it 

 necessary to make every home of any pretensions a sort of 

 fortress ; and then inaccessible rocks, or sites by the coast 

 or by the side of some stream that could be turned to good 

 account to keep out an enemy, too often tempted the builder 

 to disregard the position we now call beautiful, or what those 

 of the last century would call useful ; nevertheless, in some 

 instances good sense did exercise its rights, and spots lovely in 

 themselves, and commanding views of others equally so, were 

 chosen as the sites of mansions or castles. In these cases the 

 occupier at the present peaceful time has the advantage of 

 inhabiting an historical place without the inconveniences such 

 a residence often entails. 



Dalkeith Palace, the noble seat of the Duke of Buccleuch, 

 occupies a position near enough the northern metropolis to be 

 of easy access before the days of McAdam, not to speak of his 

 still more rapid-travelling successor George Stephenson, and is 

 one of those massive piles of masonry which strike the beholder 

 with respect more by their magnitude than by any especial 

 merit in the style of architecture, although in this instance the 

 latter iB not without its claims to notice. Perhaps, however, 

 the most remarkable feature is the fine site which the mansion 

 occupies — sufficiently high to command a good view of the 

 country without being so high as to be bleak. Higher ground 

 is to be found in the rear, and the luxuriant trees around 

 it give sufficient shelter ; whilst perhaps the finest of the 

 adjuncts is. the river Esk, which flows past it, and is almost 

 within a stone's throw of one of its fronts. The river, which I 

 believe higher up is applied to some of the purposes of industry 

 for which the town of Dalkeith is noted, flows through a park 

 of great beauty and variety ; and near the mansion its banks, 

 especially those on the opposite side of the Palace, are suffi- 

 ciently steep and picturesque, but they are richly clothed with 

 foliage ; and the general character of the district is smiling, 

 and exhibits none of those rugged outlines which, however 

 beautiful in a bright summer's day, convey but dreary notions 

 of comfort in midwinter. The Esk at this particular place 

 passes through a fine undulating country, and in its course 

 through the park adds materially to the general effect. A 

 bridge over the river at a short distance from the Palace looks 



