MAY. 



61 



hygrometer and tlitrniometer. Things are put together which ought not to be 

 in the same degree of heat and moistuie. I have seen Orchids and forced 

 Strawberries in the same house. The Orchids seemed to do well ; but the 

 Strawberries, fruit and leaves, were covered with mildew and perspiration. 

 How many noble crops of Grapes are estopped or spoilt every year by in- 

 attention to the atmosphere within the house. Glass-fruit-culture, with 

 heating apparatus, ought seldom or never to fail ; and, when there is failure, 

 I always suspect that the fault lies with the cultivator. A deficiency of dry 

 air is, I believe, one of the chief causes of failure. Be not, then, prejudiced 

 against glass, or artificial heat, or orchard-house pot-culture, with or without 

 heat. Go where these things are properly managed, and you will see success 

 beyond your expectation ; and further, recollect that when you hear of failures, 

 they are generally the effect of mismanagement. Out of doors we are obliged 

 to submit to- climate and the seasons ; but people who have heated glass 

 houses, or even unheated orchard-houses, ought to be able to make a season 

 of their own. 



Finally, do not condemn all the gardeners of England because some are 

 obstinate, ignorant, and prejudiced. I believe that no nation has better 

 gardeners. I doubt if any nation — I speak of a whole nation — gardens so 

 tidily as the English nation. As education progresses, prejudice and ignorance 

 will recede. 



Rushton. W. F. Kadclyffe. 



METHOD OF ASSISTING SEEDLING FRUITS INTO EARLY 



BEARING. 



Some valuable and interesting additions have of late years been made to 

 the family of Pomona; and, although not quite so prolific as her sister 

 Flora, or attracting numerically so large a class of admirers and manipulators 

 in the art, has nevertheless some of her productions of a higher standard, and 

 of more real intrinsic worth. These will doubtless be rising into fame in a 

 further generation, when the productions of her gay sister have been either 

 superseded bv her own offspring, or fail by change of fashion and circum- 

 stances to interest and gratify. Orchard-houses have already done much by 

 way of promoting and extending fruit-cultivation. By them also a new field 

 and wider scope are opened up for amateurs, who may, in addition to the culti- 

 vation of choice well-known sorts, raise seedlings and prove their value in a 

 shorter space of time than when planted in the open air. Those who are not 

 in possession of one of these structures will find early fruitbearing enhanced by 

 budding on and near the extreme points of the branches of well-established 

 trees of the same genera, and their value tested in a much smaller space than 

 could otherwise have been done by growing on their own roots. 



The plan I adopt here is to get them budded the first year, when the plants 

 are in the seed-leaf; they are potted singly into small pots and grown in heat 

 until they stop their growth. At this stage they are removed to a cooler place 

 for about a month, which gives them a sort of rest, and enables them to be 

 easier excited into growth. When again put into heat, this, with the assist- 

 ance of a good-sized shift into rich loamy soil, and a brisk heat, soon starts 

 them into a second growth. 



As soon as the buds rise freely from the wood, they are taken off and 

 inserted on healthy and strong-growing shoots of the current year: this opera- 

 tion has commonly been performed about the end of August. I have had by 

 the above method buds inserted upon the trees the seed was taken from in less 



