2 3 8 



FLORA AND SYLVA. 



east of France, good cooker, mid-season ; Car- 

 pentin, common in the Rhine Provinces, sweet 

 and fragrant, mid and late season ; De Chataign- 

 er, widely grown, late in growth, pretty fruits, 

 striped red, not juicy but sweet and excellent 

 for preserving ; De Flandre, a late sort much 

 grown ; De Figne,\a.rge grower, fruit small and 

 pleasantly acid ; Des Vendues PEveque, a late 

 kind from Aube ; Double bonne Ente or Double 

 bon Pommier, fine coloured fruits much in de- 

 mand, mid or late season ; Doux-blanc, from 

 Normandy, sweet and very fertile ; Francatu, 

 sweetly acid, good for all uses ; Gelber 'Jacobs 

 apfel, from Thurgovia, good for kitchen and 

 press ; G/A^-ro/zg-f of Brittany, late, sweetly acid, 

 very good cooked ; Golden Pippin, well known 

 in England ; Gros Locard, widely grown, vigo- 

 rous and fertile, mid and late season, good for 

 all uses ; Luiken, from Wurtemburg, late in 

 growth, sweet, mid-season ; Luxemburger Rei- 

 nette,\&te, excellent for kitchen and press ; Nez- 

 de-C hat, heavy cropper, good quality, late sea- 

 son ; Pomme Bouteille, very vigorous, fruit ob- 

 long, sweet, mid-season and late ; Reinette de 

 Champagne, widely grown, sweetly acid and fra- 

 grant, late ; Rouge tardive de la Vall'ee, very late ; 

 Schumacherapfc I , common in Switzerland, mid- 

 season, striped red, and sweet ; Verene, another 

 Swiss kind, mid-season ; Verollot, a very late 

 sort both in growth and ripening, sweetly acid. 

 Pears : Catillac,de Livre, large and good when 

 cooked ; De Cure, or Belle de Berry, growth 

 very vigorous and fertile, fruit somewhat in- 

 ferior, mid season. 



Kinds Good for Table and Cider too. — 

 The following kinds may be used for a light 

 Cider which is agreeable but does not keep ; 

 they are better in mixture with bitter sorts. 

 Fruits of poor quality for the table may thus 

 be sorted and turned to account provided they 

 are sound. The list is arranged in order of ma- 

 turity. Gravenstein, Transparente de Croncels, 

 C a hi lie deDantzick, Roy al le d" Angleterre, Queen 

 of Reinette s, Cox's Orange Pippin, Ministre Viger, 

 Doux d A rgent, R ibston Pippin, CanadianReinette, 

 Parker s Grey ' Pippin, Adams' Pearmain,Reinette 

 de Cuzy, Boston Russet, Reinette de Caux. 



Ernest Baltet. 



Troyes. 



Flowers in masses are mighty strong colour, and if 

 not used with a great deal of caution are very destruc- 

 tive to pleasure in gardening. On the whole, I think 



the best and safest plan is to mix up your flowers, and 

 rather eschew great masses of colour — in combina- 

 tion, I mean. But there are some flowers — inventions 

 of men,i.e. florists — which are bad colour altogether, 

 and not to be used at all. Scarlet Geraniums, for in- 

 stance, or the yellow Calceolaria, which, indeed, are 

 not uncommonly grown together profusely, in order, 

 I suppose, to show that even flowers can be thoroughly 

 ugly. — William Morris. 



The Water-Hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes). — 

 This is one of the prettiest of water-plants outside 

 the ranks of our Water Lilies; it is not often seen in 

 gardens, being supposed tender, but even in so cool 

 a season as the present it is well seen at Gunnersbury 

 House, where a mass of hundreds of these floating 

 plants is now in full beauty in the open air, showing 

 healthy leaves and many flower spikes. The leaves 

 are handsome, round, fleshy, and glistening as though 

 varnished light green, with their stems very thick and 

 swollen, and so crowded with air-vessels thattheplant 

 floats easily on the water, from which the roots draw 

 food, no soil being needed. The blossoms, borne in 

 close-flowered spikes, are a pale violet, shaded either 

 with pink or blue. The plantwill not pass thewinter 

 in the open, but a small reserve, kept in a warm tank, 

 spreads so fast in spring that by a careful division a 

 stock is easily secured. It is a good house plant also, 

 flowering freely in a bowl of water placed in a good 

 light, and is then a pretty table plant. It is this plant 

 which has become such aserious hindrance to shipping 

 on the South American rivers. 



Books of Garden Chatter. — "We are beginning 

 to wonder how the woman who writes existed be- 

 fore the invention of the gardening book. To a cer- 

 tain extent she could vent herself in letters to her 

 friends. But to the general public she was practically 

 inarticulate. With the gardening book, in which the 

 trivial round, the common task, served as pegs on 

 which to hang spontaneous remarks about things in 

 general, she became voluble ; and now we are won- 

 dering if she will ever stop." Thus the Pall Mall 

 Gazette, and with reason ; but, we ask, is it not the 

 fault of editors and publishers that we have such a 

 flood of this printed twaddle ? We think we have 

 seen in the P.M.G. and other journals parts of these 

 before they appeared in book form. A woman goes 

 out into her backyard and talks to her ducks and re- 

 ports the conversation as part of a book on garden- 

 ing. A man sits down to write a book on the same 

 theme and tells us that a wild goose has been seen 

 to fly over his garden, but never known to alight 

 therein, and so on. In other days some experience 

 of the work, and knowledge, were thought neces- 

 sary in a writer ; but that is all past, and people write 

 now without anything to say or anything to teach, 

 and the result is bookmaking in its worst form. 



