THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
[Sept. 1, 1900. 
TRE MARTYRDOM OF GARDENING. 
Much has been written of the pleasures associited 
with the purriuit of gardenhig ; but its penalties have 
been almost entirely ignored. Nothing can damp 
the enthusiasm of its advocates ; there is no sorrow 
associated therewith that tlieir remembrance can 
recall. It was Socrates, we think, who wrote of 
double blessedness : " If you marry, you will repent 
it i and if you do not, you will repent it ;" and 
.the same advice may be given to those about to 
■.enter earnestly upon the horticultural life. It is a 
■great responsibility to have charge of a large and 
(potentially) beautiful garden, which has many 
■visitors during the season of flowers and fruit ; who, 
though they may not be too critical in your im- 
■•Tnediate presence, may yet be very emphatically so, 
when, disappointed with what they came to contem- 
plate, they have retired from yoxiv view. They came, 
perhaps, with great expectations, for whose existence 
you were partly responsible, and which, saddening 
■to relate, have not been fulfilled. But they do not 
consider that you are hardly to blame for the " washed- 
out " condition of your earthly paradise in a season 
snob as this. Nature, like that memorable creation 
of Dickens, viz., Captain Cuttle's landlady, Mrs. 
McStinger, has her great washing-days, somewhat 
trying to her constitution; and her subjects, like 
the humble captain, have to suffer the consequences. 
After a visitation such as we have recently expe- 
rienced of the annual "Liammas floods," accompanied, 
in all probability, by fierce south-easterly winds, you 
go into your garden of an eariy autumn morning, 
and you find that your Eoses, in a literal as well 
as a metaphorical sense, have "gone to the wall." 
Many of your finest climbers, suddenly succumbing 
to the pressure of the storm, and the weight and 
violence of the rain, have been blown to the ground. 
The entire blooms of your garden, Roses, Lilies, Sweet 
Peas, Violas, Irises, Delphiniums, Gladioli, and 
Carnations, have been utterly destroyed ; and nothing 
remains to their fond cultivator, whose gaze only 
yesterday was riveted by their beauty, but to remove 
them from the parent plants as speedily and 
effectively as lies within his power, liven this, as 
most of us know from experience, is a serious opera- 
tion, or at least a very tedious and irritating one; 
making immense demands upon the divine faculty 
of patience, while at the same time it makas havoc 
of the fair element of hope. But Hope, as the 
optimistic poet has sung, "springs euternal in the 
human breast ; " and though a thousand magnificent 
flowers have been swept to desolation on the wiuj^s 
of the showei-laden, remorseless blasts, as many buds, 
. full of embryonic life and potential loveliness, remain. 
Bub what of that, if these are destined by Nature 
to endure a similarly crucial experience, as soon 
■ as they have spread their silken petals to the air, 
and dedicated their beauty to the sun ? 
To preserve a garden in all its possible integrity 
and symmetry, under such atmospheric conditions 
as we have endeavoured to describe, is a perfect 
impossibility ; in many instances you feel almost 
paralysed by the sad destruction of your treasures 
which the elements have wrought. Nature, so long 
.your sympathetic friend, and gentle inspirer, is now 
your enmey ; in her amiable moments, she had 
looked like the innocent flowers she was preparing to 
destroy ; but the surpent of deceit was lurking invisibly 
there. The great Wordsworth, indeed, has asserted 
of Nature (in all probability whoa he was experienc- 
ing on a calm evening her benignant iiiflueuce during 
bis famous visit to the regions of Tintern Abbey), 
that " she never did betray the heart that loved 
her"; and there can be no question that she usually, 
though notalwajB, gives warninij before she strikes. 
But what of all Ihif, when she strikes so very hard ? 
Her fairest creations of the gardens, and of the 
fields ; the golden corn that is ruthlessly av^-ept by 
her autumnal floods, and levelled to the ground; 
her loftiest trees, which are prematurely divested of 
Jheir large aad lustrous leaves ; the fair fruits that 
are severea, unripened, from the pendulous boughs : 
the flowers that too early anticipate their decay ; 
receive for the most part no nierov fiom Nature 
when she is suddenly seized with such impetuous 
moods. 
But even Nature, with all her unconscious cruelty 
can repent; tliough often for the horticulturist her 
repentance comes too late. And then we experience 
the full significance of those Arnoldian words— 
' Sad Patienr-e, too near neighbour to Despair I " — 
Gardeners' Chronicle. 
RAISING lOMATO PLANTS. 
In an answer to a correspondent who dssire" in- 
forLa'.Uiou how to raise 100,000 tomato plants for 
a canning factory, the American Ar/ricul lariat says ■ 
■it planted in rows u feet apart and 3 feet in the 
rows, which is about the proper distance, it will re- 
quue ab iut .3,000 plants per acre. One ounce of 
tJmato seed contains from 8,000 to 11,000 seeds;, but 
of course it is not safe to count upon the growing 
of every seed, and producing a good, healthy plant 
Iruck farmers generally sow about i lb. of seed 
per acre to be planted. Foi; early fruiting it is 
necessaiy to sow the seed in hotbeds or greenhouses 
aud transplant the young plants from time to time 
as they become too crowded. But as for canning 
purposes extreme earliness is not of prime impor- 
tance, the seed may be sown in the open ground 
in a warm and sheltered border where the young 
plants may be covered with hay or some other light 
material in case of late frosts Some large growers have 
been quite successful with planting the seeds direct 
in the field, but this is only practicable on light 
and warm soil. "—Ayrimltural Gazette. 
HoRTrcuLTHBAL TEACHING IN GERMANY. —Herr L 
"Wittmack, in a paper contributed by him to the 
Official Catalogue of the German Suction of the Paris 
Exhibition, mentions the measures taken in Germany 
with regard to horticultural training. The science 
he says, is highly developed. The most advanced 
teaching emanates from three instilutions: ihe Royal 
School of Horticulture at Wildpark, near Potsdam 
established for seventy-five years, aud shortly to be 
transferred to Dahlem, near Berlin, in the vicinity 
of the new Botanic Garden ; the Royal Institute of 
Pomology at Proskau, near Oppeiu (Silesia); and the 
Royal School of Pomology aud Viticulture at Geisen- 
hemsur-le-Rhm. The kingdom of Wurtemburg has, 
since 18(30, possessed a private institution, the Pomo- 
logical Institute of Eeuthingen; and Saxony, since 
1892, has maintained a School of Advanced Horti- 
culture in Dresden. At Koestritz is an establishment 
for general instruction. Elementary schools of 
gardening are sometimes in connection with, some- 
times independent of, higher-grade schools; they are 
maintained by different confederate states, or by the 
governments of the provinces. Prussia includes 
twenty-three, Bavaria five, Saxony two, Wiirtemburs 
four, the Grand Duchy of Baden, Saxe Weimar, and 
the Grand Duchy of Hesse, each one. In all these 
estiblishments instruction is given in the culture 
and utilisation of fruits and vegetables, &a. ; moreover, 
instructors continue this course of training in different 
towns. In certain cities, such as Berlin and Leipzic, 
are schools of gardening for young men, who do 
practical work in the day ; in other cases, again, in 
Berlin for instance, there are gardeners who them- 
selves make arrangements for obtaining courses of 
instruction ; often apprentices and youths attend the 
popular courses for the adults. In some localities 
they teach gardening and the cultivation of fruit- 
trees to children in the gardens attached to their 
sziioQh.— Gardeners' Chronicle. 
