170 



JOUENAL OF HOBTICULTUEE AND COTTAGE GAEDENEE. 



[ August 29, 1872. 



bouquets ; the decorations of the table d'hote were of the 

 poorest ; and while in a French town of this size you would be 

 sure to meet with some horticultural establishment worth 

 visiting, I could hear of nothing of the kind. Well, I thought, 

 we are going on to the capital, and assuredly there I shall 

 find something worth seeing ; and yet I was doomed again to 

 disappointment. Hepworth Dixon speaks highly of the in- 

 tellectual status of Zurich, proclaiming it to be the true 

 capital, in all that pertains to mind, of Switzerland. I had no 

 opportunity of visiting it, and so cannot say aught of its de- 

 votion to botanical or horticultural science ; but I can say of 

 Berne that I never saw anything more unworthy of science 

 than its botanic gardens — poor miserable houses, in which 

 dirty insect-infested and dusty plants struggled on through a 

 feeble existence. Out of doors there were quarters of fruit 

 trees, Boses, &c, that a fourth-rate nurseryman in England 

 would have been ashamed to own. I asked whether they had 

 any collection of Alpine plants. " Oh, yes." But such a col- 

 lection ! Even the Saxifrages and Sedums, so easily grown, 

 were represented by miserable specimens, and I in vain searched 

 for anything either new or rare. The same slovenliness per- 

 tains to other things at Berne. For example, what a miserable 

 parody is the bear-pit ! Surely if the Bernese are fond of 

 their bears, and they seem to be as much so as the Baron of 

 Bradwardine himself, they might be expected to have some 

 worthy specimens of the hairy brute rather than the thin 

 mangy animals they now keep. It was the same with some 

 deer kept in one of the fosses. Boor brutes ! one could only 

 wish that they had one of the paddocks of our own Zoological 

 Gardens, instead of being neglected and half starved, as they 

 were here. We were detained here for some days, one of our 

 party having, unfortunately, neglected to follow the advice of 

 " taking their ices warm," and so we saw a good deal of the 

 environs, went up to the Garten, and through their public park ; 

 but there were no wild flowers worthy of notice in the former, 

 and certainly nothing in the latter in the way of horticulture. 



The most charmingly-situated hotel I have ever stayed in is 

 the Beau Eivage, at Ouchy ; it stands on high ground, over- 

 looking " the beautiful shores of Lake Lemang," as I have 

 heard some one call it, and the grounds are charmingly laid 

 out a VAnglaise ; but here, as elsewhere on the Continent, the 

 difficulty is the watering. All the beds are mulched, and this 

 does not give an air of neatness to them, especially when 

 blackbirds and other birds will persist in hunting through 

 them. And the beds are ingeniously watered : A pipe is placed 

 half round the bed — this is pierced with small holes, from each 

 of which a jet of water issues, and thus it is left for a time to 

 do its own work ; when that has been done it is shifted to the 

 other side, and so the bed is well watered without any watering- 

 can being used. The beds were laid out much in our style of 

 bedding-out, and on the lawn were some nice specimens of 

 Wellingtonias, Deodars, Catalpas, and other ornamental trees. 

 Lausanne seemed to be well supplied with both vegetables and 

 fruit, at least Cherries were both abundant and very fine, the 

 Bigarreau especially good, and to be had for about 'id. a-pound. 

 It seems, however, that the same causes which have so di- 

 minished our- fruit crops this year in England have been at 

 work on the Continent ; neither in those parts of Germany 

 and Switzerland through which I passed, nor in France, did I 

 see anything like the quantity of fruit that I have seen in 

 former years. Walnuts, which are generally so abundant in 

 Switzerland, were a very scanty crop, and Apples in France 

 equally so, so that we cannot expect that the deficiency of our 

 crop can be made up from these sources. 



Leaving Ouchy for Martigny one gets out of the way of 

 horticulture, and comes on the verge of Nature's gardening, 

 and as we ascend from Martigny to the Alpine passes new 

 beauties meet us at every step. At first we meet with the 

 flowers familiar to us at home, but by-and-by new beauties 

 greet our eyes. What is that brilliant blue in the pasture near 

 Forclang ? Surely it must be a Gentian ; it cannot be verna, 

 for it is too high up and too late for that. To jump off the 

 mule and rush into the meadow is the work of a moment, and 

 truly the whole field was brilliant with what I believe to be 

 Gentiana nivalis ; entangled with it was the lilac-coloured 

 Gentiana germanica. As we ascended still higher the veritable 

 Alpine plants surrounded us on all sides. What is it that 

 gives that beautiful pink colour to the sides of the mountains ? 

 Surely it must be the " Eose des Alpes," Ehododendron ferru- 

 gineum. Yes, here are whole acres of real bedding-out of 

 Nature's own doing, and how lovely it is — the deep crimson 

 of the unexpanded buds, and the rosy pink of the opened 



flowers ! while the glades in the forests are filled with Ferns. 

 And now we emerge from the forests and reach the summit of 

 the Col de Balme, who can describe the glories of that view? 

 The summit of the Alps surrounded by all his attendant 

 aiguilles, and the valley of Chamonix lying nestled at his feet ; 

 and yet I was in doubt whether to look upwards at his glories, 

 or at the beauties that lay under our feet, for this mossy 

 Alpine pasture was literally studded with lovely masses of the 

 beauteous Gentiana brachyphylla, the Alpine representative 

 of Gentiana verna, and with still larger masses of what I 

 had never seen in flower in its native habitat before, Silene 

 acaulis. Those who have botanised in July in our own 

 mountain ranges have, of course, seen it in abundance. Mr. 

 Backhouse tells me that he has just seen it on the Helvelyn 

 range, covering the mountains for four miles ; but to me it 

 was all new, and lovely indeed it seemed. On crossing the 

 mer de glace, and in passing through the forest that leads to 

 it, I came upon fine clumps of AUosorus crispus, of Athyrium 

 Filix-foemina, Polypodium Dryopteris, and other Fems. Here 

 was a gully down which the winter torrent had swept, now dry, 

 but clothed with a garment of Ferns ; here was a deep hole 

 where water had lodged, and it, too, was covered on aU sides 

 with the same. Saxifrages, of course, there were of many 

 kinds in the crevices of the rocks. Coming down from the 

 Mauvais Pas, the quaint little Sernpervivurn arachnoideurn 

 was to be seen in all directions. But it were needless to detail 

 the beauties ope saw on every side, and I again felt that 

 although there was enough, and more than enough, to satisfy 

 anyone in the glorious majesty of the mountain scenery around, 

 yet it did add to one's enjoyment to have an eye for those 

 equally wondrous works of our Father which lay around one 

 on every side. — D., Deal. 



LONG GUN CUCUMBER. 

 Having both read and heard a great deal about this Cucum- 

 ber, I had an inclination to endeavour to cultivate it on a 

 small scale. I employed a lean-to flue-heated pit, which is 

 16 feet long and 4 feet wide. I purchased from Mr. Pearson, 

 of Chilwell, four plants, which were very minute, having only 

 seed leaves to be seen, and planted them June 7th. I be- 

 gan to cut Cucumbers July 12th, and have done so up to the 

 present time, taking on an average ten Cucumbers per week from 

 each plant, varying from 18 to 36 inches long, and some longer. 

 Now I can count fifty, all ready to cut, quite "as large as any I 

 have had. Until my trial I had been given to understand 

 this superior sort of Cucumber was very difficult to grow in 

 houses, and almost useless in frames ; but from this result I 

 may safely recommend it for house or frame -culture — i.e., if 

 you can keep up a bottom heat in the latter. — J. W., juk. 



THE DEW OF OUB GARDENS. 

 Bt Cuthbeet W. Johnson, F.E.S. 



We are all aware of the value of the moisture which bedews 

 our plants and soils. We act upon the limited knowledge we 

 possess with regard to its origin, but we find many mysteries 

 relating to this beautiful phenomenon which we should like to 

 unravel. Thus we remark that dew is not deposited on all 

 plants alike, or even upon the various soils on which they grow. 

 I have long observed this in the case of some Oak and Wych 

 Elm Trees growing by the side of my lawn at Croydon. 

 Under the Oak trees the dew on the grass is generally copious, 

 but there is rarely any on that beneath the Wych Elms. In 

 some districts of England the farmers are wont to plant Oak 

 trees around their sheep ponds : has this any connection with 

 the fall of dew under these trees ? The amount of water annu- 

 ally deposited by dew is equal to about 5 inches. Indeed, as 

 Mr. Josiah Parkes long since observed (Jour. Roy. Ag. Soc., 

 vol. v., p. 132), ever}' observant gardener must have remarked 

 that the amount of dew precipitated during the same night 

 varies greatly on different soils in fallow, and still more on the 

 leaves of different plants. Well-pulverised soils attract much 

 more dew than those which are close and compact. The culti- 

 vator, therefore, is wont to keep the surface of the soils on 

 which his crops are growing pulverised even in the driest 

 weather. 



The richest soils absorb more of the insensible moisture than 

 the inferior. Davy determined this.expenmentally. He found 

 that when a given quantity of a rich soil, dried in a temperature 

 of 212°, absorbed eighteen grains when exposed for an horn- to 

 the air, the same amount of the soil of Bagshot Heath absorbed 



