COMMONPLACE NOTES. 
433 
stock, nor are they any less vigorous than other varieties of similar 
habit. In company with ' Cox's Orange/ ' D'Arcy Spice,' ' Allen's 
Everlasting,' ' Duke of Devonshire,' and a few others, it still merits a 
place among the most highly flavoured of dessert apples where the soil 
is properly drained and attention is given to cultivation, and proper, 
not excessive, pruning. 
The tree itself may fail to supply the needs of its numerous buds ; 
the roots may exhaust the soil or find the water supply deficient, or 
the stem may cease to give free passage to the constant streams of food 
and water for which it is the channel, and so the tree grows old and dies ; 
but less and less will that tempting theory, that a variety loses vigour 
and grows old and dies in the same way, find support as the causes 
of death and low- vitality are studied. Grafted on a fresh stock or 
propagated in some other suitable way, the variety renews its youth 
and flourishes, to the confusion of the pundits who have prophesied 
its death. 
A Remarkable Cattleya. 
The figure on page 352 represents a remarkable plant of Cattleya 
Skinneri alba growing in Berkeley, California, where it has been tended 
with loving care since it was a small plant. When the photograph, 
which was kindly sent to us by Mr. J.N. Cox of H.M. Consulate, Costa 
Rica, was made, the plant measured almost a yard across, and had 
forty spikes of flowers, some with 10 to 12 flowers apiece. 
Viburnum plicatum tomentosum. 
Among the six best flowering shrubs for English gardens Viburnum 
plicatum tomentosum must always be included. It has been illus- 
trated before in our Journal, but we are glad to be able to figure the 
fine plant near the top of the hill in the wild garden at Wisley, through 
the kindness of Mr. Frederick J. Hanbury, F.L.S., who took the photo- 
graph from which Fig. 107 is made. 
Dutch Brown Beans. 
These beans are grown in Holland in enormous quantities by all 
classes of the people who use the seeds for winter food. Mrs. Labouchere 
most kindly sent the Society samples in 191 5, and they were grown 
in private gardens, and a large number also at Wisley in 1916. 
They were sown at the end of April exactly as if they were ordinary 
French Beans. As soon as they turned brown, about the end of 
September, they were pulled up and tied together in small bundles by 
their roots and hung up in a dry open shed. When quite dry they 
were shelled and yielded a very large crop of seed, which, on being 
soaked twelve hours and boiled one and a half hours, were found to 
be a decided advance on the ordinary white Haricots. 
VOL. XLII. 2 F 
