257 
CULTURE OF ERICA CERINTHOIDES. 
Within the last few years, the treatment of Heaths has been so improved, in 
imany leading gardens, that a taste for their cultivation may be said to have quite 
revived, and to have spread itself considerably. Still, estimating the strong claims 
they have to public regard, they by no means yet occupy that position which they 
may be expected to attain, and which the diffusion of enlightenment respecting 
their culture will assuredly one day give them. 
It would be absurd to attempt to specify their varied beauties. Every one at 
all acquainted with exotics must be familiar with Heaths ; which, in some of their 
very numerous species, find their way into almost all the greenhouses of the 
country ; but which, singularly enough, are scarcely ever seen in a cottage or even 
a drawing-room window. This latter fact would not be easy to account for, 
particularly in those districts where excellent moor-soil is so abundant, and 
constitutes, indeed, nearly the sole natural earth ; were it not that a prejudice has 
gone abroad relative to the arduousness of growing them well, and the more 
humble cultivator is therefore fearful of attempting such mysteries. 
If we except the peculiar soil they demand, and which, as we have hinted, is so 
readily obtained in many parts, some of the Heaths are far from being so difficult 
to manage in a sitting-room, with exposure to the open air during summer, as 
other plants that are yet dauntlessly endeavoured to be grown. Camellias are an 
example of this. It is really an exceedingly doubtful undertaking to try to 
flower these well in a room. But there are some of the hardier Heaths, which 
are extremely beautiful, and which every cottager who can grow Myrtles, and 
such like plants, might bring to great perfection ; the main things to attend to 
being, to let the heath-mould in which they are potted, be of a pale colour, and 
very full of fibre, and not to pull it to pieces too much in preparing it, mixing a 
small quantity of broken stone with it when it is used, and putting some of the 
rougher pieces over the drainage in the bottom of the pot. The error of most 
amateurs is, that they reduce their soil to too fine a state, thinking thereby to 
benefit their plants. Quite the reverse of this should be their procedure. The 
soil should be left almost as rough as possible, provided it is free from green or soft 
vegetable matter, and large stones. 
Potted in an earth like that just recommended, and placed, throughout the 
summer, in a slightly shady position, and not in one where the full rays of the sun 
can beat upon them, and dry up the soil in the pots too rapidly, many Heaths will 
thrive very well beneath cottagers 1 treatment. Only, they should be freely watered 
in summer, and not left to be parched up by drought. 
But there is a tribe of Heaths which, as all acknowledge, require unusual skill 
in their management, to render them constantly beautiful objects, and keep them in 
that healthy state from which they are so liable to depart. It is a common 
vol. x. — cxix. L L 
