3Q 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 152. 



their blooms remain fresh so long that some people even 

 grumble at them on that account. Now, when all the usual 

 winter Mowers are either destroyed or damaged by bad 

 weather, the Statices are conspicuous for the bright blue, purple 

 and white of their flowers. I fancy these plants have gone out 

 of fashion ; at any rate, one sees and hears little about them; 

 and yet they are first-class greenhouse plants, which with a lit- 

 tle management may be had in bloom not only in December, 

 but almost the whole year through. 



The Weather. — The effect of the dark, foggy, cold weather 

 of the last three weeks has caused the destruction of many 

 herbaceous in-door plants, of almost all flowers, and much 



work by gas-light all the day through. It appears as though 

 gardening in winter will soon be practically impossible in the 

 vicinity of London. 



Apples. — The scarcity of English apples this Christmas has 

 enabled dealers in American apples to "make hay." Thou- 

 sands of barrels of American kinds found ready and remu- 

 nerative sale in London last week; for instance, Newtown 

 Pippins sold readily at forty-two shillings a barrel, while the 

 poorest samples fetched twenty-four shillings a barrel whole- 

 sale. 



Onions. — The finest samples of English onions that I have 

 seen were exhibited lately at a meeting of the Royal Horticul- 



Fig. 8. — Viburnum molle. — See page 29. 



harm to even sturdy-leaved, hard-wooded plants. I have 

 never seen anything so disheartening as the winter-flowering 

 Begonias, Acanthads, Bouvardias, Salvias, Poinsettias, Rein- 

 wardtias, Camellias and Azaleas are in London gardens now. 

 Some of these plants have lost every leaf, and the flowers have 

 withered before opening ; others are blotched and disfigured 

 as though they had been frozen. Orchid-flowers have faded 

 almost as soon as they opened, while some have dropped 

 when the buds were quite small. At Kew we have suffered 

 very much, but in the nurseries at Chelsea and other places 

 nearer the city the damage is even greater than here. Plants 

 which have hitherto resisted the poison of the fogs have been 

 terribly damaged by the continued absence of anything ap- 

 proaching sunlight. Day after day we have been compelled to 



tural Society by Mr. Deverill, of Banbury, in Oxfordshire, the 

 raiser of some first-rate sorts. " Deverill's Pedigree Onions," 

 as he calls them, are remarkable for their size, firmness and 

 flavor. Bulbs weighing two pounds each are easily grown 

 from Deverill's seeds on good rich loam. One variety, called 

 " Ailsa Craig," is the largest, heaviest and handsomest onion 

 ever raised in England. The flesh is white, very mild in 

 flavor ; the bulb comes quickly to maturity, is a good keeper 

 and weighs from two to three pounds. Mr. Deverill exhibited 

 a bushel or so of this variety, and the bulbs, of a pale straw 

 color, looked like large turnips. The cultural directions for ob- 

 taining these fine results are given by Mr. Deverill as follows: 



"The soil is a heavy blackish loam, resting on red clay, and 

 it receives a tremendous dressing- of stable manure in the 



