HORTICULTURAL JOURNAL. 175 



THE FUCHSIA. 



When well grown, few plants are more admired than the Fuchsia; or, when 

 well selected with regard to distinctness, make a better display on our exhi- 

 bition tables; and yet, if we may judge from what are annually brought under 

 our notice, growers seem to have paid and are still paying little attention to 

 its cultivation. On all sides improvement in other things is manifest, each 

 season being an advance on the preceding one in this respect, but the poor 

 feeble and attenuated Fuchsia appears to be an exception. I well remember 

 at the exhibitions of a society held at Wanstead that for years the Messrs. 

 Fraser periodically staged collections of Fuchsias, which at that time were 

 fair examples of growth and skill ; they were short-jointed, well-furnished 

 with bold foliage, compact pyramidal, and abundantly flowered ; these are 

 the kind of plants one expects to see on a show day. I would ask, has a 

 single specimen been shown of late combining these requisites? At the Sur- 

 rey Zoological Gardens, and at the Yauxhall shows there have been at one 

 time not less than perhaps a dozen collections, numbering at least 100 plants, 

 and I may safely assert that scarcely one of that number could lay claim to 

 fine growth; large plants are not what is wanted,- if obtained at the expense 

 of all other necessary points. As a beginning, give us plants say two feet 

 high and about the same through, free, and unrestrained, well furnished with 

 branches and laterals at close and regular distances around the centre stem, 

 and these so short-jointed and clothed with foliage that a comparatively solid 

 bush is presented ; then, and then only, may we expect to find a plant pro- 

 portionately and adequately flowered. Contrast with the above a Fuchsia, 

 feeble and elongated, say in an 11-inch pot, with a stake some five feet in 

 length stuck in the centre; it is tied to this stake at intervals of every nine 

 or twelve inches; at a goodly distance above the pot a stray side oranch pro- 

 trudes, at the end of which some five or six flowers may be seen weighing it 

 down to the rim of the pot as a resting place. Other branches, of the same 

 description, may be found further up the stem, on the summit of which is a 

 drooping tuft of flowers; and this is a picture of a modern grown Fuchsia. I 

 could wish to see closer attention paid to differences of constitution in Fu- 

 chsias; this is a point more especially to be considered now, when the trade 

 is sending out new varieties. The soil, for instance, should not be all of one 

 consistence; for what will suit one sort may not answer another. Peat, loam, 

 leaf-mould, and silver sand should be the ingredients of your mixture, which 

 should be made suitable to the wants of the particular plant you are potting, 

 rather than to answer the whole collection ; for varieties, naturally robust 

 and vigorous, would starve on a diet which would surfeit less robust kinds. 

 Fuchsias may with propriety be divided into two classes — the one, dark- 

 wooded and slender in habit, with a disposition to form long joints; the other 



