December 1, 1870. ] 



JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



431 



regard these cases as the result of an easy and accidental 

 union of several points ; but in this case there is no increase 

 in bulk — nothing but clear assumption to warrant any such a 

 theory. On the contrary, every appearance suggests, not that 

 the union of branoheB is the accident, but that that is the 

 normal ooDdition ; and that it is the division into the fasciated 

 branchlets whioh is the departure from the rule. 



I do not, however, wish to ask for this suggestion anything 

 more than it may be worth. Others more able than I can 

 interpret the circumstances. The main object I have had in 

 this paper, is to show that all the circumstanoes whioh accom- 

 pany fasciation are those connected with a low stage of vitality. 

 On this I think there can be no mistake. — Thomas Meehan. 



[At the conclusion of the reading, Mr. Meehan said that as 

 he had already observed in the paper, he had not been able to 

 find fasciated bunches with flowers, except in Rubus, so as to 

 draw many facts from sex as to the causes of fasciation. Bat 

 while with the excursion of the Society to Albany the day 

 before, he had found a plant of Atriplex rosea with a fasciated 

 branch. He exhibited this specimen, and showed that it had 

 eight branchlets from the fascicle and all had male flowers only, 

 while each of the other branches of the plant bore male and 

 female flowers, separate, and according to the law he had 

 already pointed out in his paper on sex — namely, with the 

 male flowers on the weakest axes, and the female on the 

 stronger ones.] — (American Gardener's Monthly.) 



[We lately were shown a very remarkable example of a 

 fasciated stem of the Tropieolum majus. It was about a yard 

 long, fasciated throughout, and sprinkled over with diminutive 

 leaves. It grew in the garden of Capt. Hall, Notting Hill, 

 Kensington Park. — Eds.] 



KEEPING ICE. 



I think there are many disappointed in the keeping of ioe 

 as well as " G. Y. M.," for I have the supplying of a large 

 establishment through the summer, autumn, and winter. I 

 think the way I manage my ice houses may be of interest to 

 some of the readers of this Journal, for I met with many dis- 

 appointments till I hit on the present way of managing it. 



I have two houses in the shrubbery close to the lake, where 

 the sunshine never intrudes. It is completely enclosed with 

 large trees. My largest house is 20 feet deep by 15 wide at the 

 top, gradually narrowing to the bottom. My other house is 

 not quite so large ; it is 15 feet by 9. This smaller house does 

 not keep the ice nearly so long as the larger one — the larger 

 the stack the longer it keeps. In filling the houses I make a 

 large stack in the ^hade olose by, which lasts till July. Gene- 

 rally when the ice is an inch thick I set to work, have it well 

 broken on the bank, then put it in the houses, and have it very 

 heavily malleted inside, using large mallets of about a stone 

 weight each, thus forcing it very firmly together. Then I pour 

 some boiling water on it, which makes it unite very well into 

 a mass. I pour on the boiling water about ten times during 

 the filling of one house. I find straw a very bad cover for ice. 

 I have also tried sawdust, but I prefer clean dry leaves. Of 

 course too much of leaves must not be put on, so as to cause 

 heating. I put on about 3 inches thick all over the stack, then 

 I add a little more in the summer to keep it cool. If it be 

 freezing after filling the houses, I leave the doors open, and put 

 nothing over the ice till the frost is gone. 



By thus managing I have still plenty of ice in the larger 

 house. I never cover up the doorway, but by shutting it closely 

 there is just room left for the foul air to pass away. I used to 

 have it latched, and then when I opened it there was a steam 

 or vapour in the house, whioh caused the ice to melt very fast. 

 By this management I am able to supply two barrowloads daily, 

 and have enough to last till next February. The ioe always 

 melts from the sides a little, but it is in suoh a hard block that 

 it requires a crowbar to loosen it. By making a large stack 

 outside it prevents the need of opening the houses, except to 

 see how they are going on, till July. — E. E. 

 . [We consider these results of practice very seasonable, as 

 frost and ice may be expected ere long. Beginners may com- 

 pare them with the note at page 415. Too much stress cannot 

 be laid on having ice houses and ice heaps of a good size. One 

 thing we do not understand — using boiling water to consolidate 

 the ice. When the ice is very hard and thick in severe frost, 

 and therefore difficult to pound, watering with ordinary water 

 wonld be an advantage. Lately our ioe was too slushy to need 

 watering. It may be the most scientific mode to use boiling 



water, though we do not see why and how. We gave np 

 using salt for consolidating ice, because we saw it proved of 

 little or no benefit, though to this day the general reasons 

 assigned are rather more puzzling to us than the use of boiling 

 water.] 



MUSHROOM-HOUSE MANAGEMENT. 



We have had recently to depend on our open shed, and 

 have gone on very fairly. We have thrown some stable dung 

 into a heap, watering when necessary, and wili turn it several 

 times to have it rather sweet, to form the first piece of a bed 

 in our Mushroom house. As the house is getting out of order, 

 we are putting in fresh-sparred wooden platforms. Where 

 platforms are used, brick, stone, and slate are better than 

 board, but oak and even li-ineh deal last a long time. With 

 all the attendant steam we think our last beds lasted about 

 fifteen years, and a good many of the uprights and bearers 

 were sound even then. In a low house, wide enough to have a 

 bed 4 or 5 feet in breadth on each side, it is the most economical 

 mode to have no platforms. In the winter months, however, if 

 anythiog, our platform-beds generally succeed best. Of course, 

 if there is a bed coming on below, the bed above it has the 

 benefit of the heat, and nothing suits the Mushroom better 

 than the moist heat from decomposing rather sweet dung, and 

 without the dung in some shape we can do little with the 

 Mushroom. 



There are two drawbacks to the free use of this moist heat 

 in a Mushroom house. If the roof is not very smooth and air- 

 tight, the moisture will act upon it, and cause it to decay pre- 

 maturely. Then, again, the moisture condensed on the roof — 

 and that moisture, if from dung, not always clear and sweet — is 

 apt to drop on the Mushrooms and rather injure their colour. 

 This could to a great extent be remedied by having ventilators 

 placed at the highest point in lantern fashion ; but then what- 

 ever the Mushroom may delight-in in the open pasture, it 

 does not like keen draughts under cultivation. The chief 

 antidote for both these evils is to have a smooth-plastered 

 ceiling, and then to paint that ceiling when dry with boiled oil, 

 or oil with some anti-corrosion paint, not enough to make the 

 ceiling at all rough. The moisture that condenses against the 

 ceiling will have no chance to penetrate the plaster, and the 

 drops, instead of falling on the beds, will run down the smooth 

 ceiling to the side wall. 



In our practice and observation we have met with a good 

 many instances in which roofs of Mushrooms nicely plastered 

 have fallen piece by piece over the beds, because damp had 

 acted on the plaster, and thence extended to and rotted the 

 laths and rafters. It is sixteen or eighteen years since the 

 ceiling of the roof of our lean-to house wa3 brushed over with 

 oil, and though it has looked rather dingy ever since, we believe 

 that the roof is perfectly sound. 



As stated above, our house is just a close lean-to shed be- 

 hind a vinery, with a oommon 9-inch wall, a small brick venti- 

 lator at each end at the apex, and ventilation also in the out- 

 side wall. We have often had good Mushrooms in that house 

 all the year round, but frequently in very hot weather in sum- 

 mer they would be thin, and would be soon attacked by maggots 

 in spite of everything we could do, and very likely just when 

 we wanted them to be particularly good. This led us years ago 

 chiefly to depend for a summer supply on small beds in a Bhady 

 shed, open on one side to the west. Here they gave good re- 

 turns, and with little trouble. All sorts of places are used 

 successfully for growing Mushrooms. For doing so all the year 

 round, no place is better than a deep cool cellar, a cavern, or 

 any place under ground, where a rather equable mild tempera- 

 ture is maintained all through the season. There is hardly 

 any great advantage, however, which haB not its counter- 

 vailing disadvantage, as in the cellar, the cavern, Sea., there is 

 some trouble in taking the dung down and back again — more 

 trouble than when a barrow can do all that is wanted. A corre- 

 spondent wants a neat Mushroom house, that must be bnilt in 

 rather an exposed place, but so that company may go into it 

 summer and winter. We would rather like some shade, and 

 have a prejudice for a lean-to roof facing the north ; yet we 

 would not greatly object to an open position and a span-roof 

 facing east and west, or even south and north, if deemed mora 

 suitable, provided we were allowed to have double walls, a 

 double roof, and a confined body of air between such walls and 

 roofs, so that even the ventilation should have no access to 

 that confined air. Then, by painting or otherwise rendering 

 the outside walls and roof as white as possible, we should have 



