532 
THE COCKSCOMB, ITS PROPERTIES AND CULTIVATION. 
Cow-dung at the rate of half a peck, well 
decomposed, to eighteen gallons of water ; 
guano at the rate of half an ounce, pure, to a 
gallon of water, — in each case to be com- 
pletely dissolved, and the liquor used, — will be 
found, as we have seen by experiment, so 
equally effective, that in selecting the finest 
plants, we have had to take from those 
treated all three ways, (that is, moistened with 
all three washes,) and from those which had 
nothing but plain soft rain water. Some 
plants will hear shifting up to pots size twelve, 
which are eleven or twelve inches across and 
ten inches deep, and yet keep all proportions 
with the pot — though it must be owned that 
we have never yet produced a flower quite half 
a globe ; they are always elongated, though 
some have been monstrous and wide. 
WATERING. 
We have said very little about watering ; 
the truth is, that so long as they are not 
allowed to droop, the less water they have all 
the while they are in their small pots, and 
even in the forty-eight-sized pots, in which they 
have poor clean loam and sand only, the better ; 
because the object here is to stunt the plant, to 
check its growth, and so long as it be kept 
growing and prevented from flagging, it is 
enough ; but when the flower shows, and 
they are shifted into larger pots and richer 
soil, they cannot have too much nourishment, 
nor too much care, nor be too near the glass, 
so they do not touch, nor can they have too 
much light and air, so the heat be kept up to 
not less than 80°, and no matter if it be 90° 
or 100° in the heat of the day. The plants 
ought also to be occasionally sprinkled all 
over the head with water, the temperature of 
the hot-bed. The proper time to shift is in 
the heat of the day, when the removal from 
the bed does not cause so great a check as 
the cooler air of morning or evening ; and 
besides this, a fine day should be chosen. 
After shifting, of course the plants should be 
well watered, and the frame immediately 
closed when they are again plunged. 
DIFFERENCE OF THE MODES OF CULTURE. 
Mr. Knight once sent a monster cocks- 
comb to the Horticultural Society, but it was 
an ugly monster. There was nothing re- 
markable in it, but it is recorded in the 
HorticulturalTmnsaciions as a wonder. The 
great object Mr. Knight had in view, was 
exactly the opposite of the culture we have 
recommended : he desired to retard the pro- 
trusion of the flower stalk ; so he grew it in 
the most stimulating compost he could use, 
from the very first. It consisted of unfer- 
ineuted horse-dung (droppings), burnt turf, 
and decajed leaves, one part each, and two 
parts of green turf, in lumps an inch in diame- 
ter. They were sown late in the spring, potted 
in four inch pots, (forty-eights,) and from that 
shifted to one foot pots, (twelves,) placed within 
a few inches of the glass; heat, from 70" to 
100°, and watered with pigeon's-dung water. 
All the record we have of the size is, that 
the flower was eighteen inches wide, and 
seven inches high from the top of the stalk. 
" It was thick and full, and of a most intense 
purplish-red." Now we cannot quite com- 
prehend the admeasurement. If by the width 
of the flower, he meant the width of the 
spread, which is the favourite way of measur- 
ing, why Covent Garden Market, in the 
season, will furnish any number to order ; 
but if it meant across the flower from side to 
side, it would be a fair specimen ; but then 
he would have given us the largest measure- 
ment also. We conclude then, that Mr. 
Knight would get a very poor flower on a 
very large plant ; for we defy anybody to 
produce a dwarf handsome plant, if they 
stimulate much before the flower shows itself. 
We have mentioned this, because Mr. 
Knight, though a great horticulturist, was 
no florist ; and we can hardly conceive a 
more certain mode of failure in the cultiva- 
tion of a handsome comb, than to follow 
Mr. Knight's method, which Mr. Loudon 
repeats in his Encyclopedia of Gardening, 
without any hint — perhaps without any idea 
— that it is wrong altogether. One flower in 
a hundred may be found on a shorter plant 
than they usually come ; but to grow them 
the only way Mr. Knight has instructed us, 
and from the only lesson that Mr. Loudon has 
given us in his Encyclopedia, is to secure 
disappointment, and perhaps accounts for the 
very few who will attempt to grow combs for 
exhibition. Mr. McEvoy has produced them, 
he says, thirty-one inches and a half, that is, 
two feet seven inches and a half along the 
crest, fourteen inches and a half across the 
crest, only one foot high from the pot, with 
foliage almost enveloping the rim of the pot ; 
and he further says, that the smallest plant 
in his frame (three lights) was two feet two 
inches along the crest. Moreover, the largest 
that we have mentioned, was also the tallest, 
although only twelve inches high. 
MR. M c EVOY'S DWARFING SYSTEM BY 
CUTTINGS. 
We confess that, although we have suc- 
ceeded in producing very extraordinary plants 
by cuttings, we took the idea from Mr. 
McEvoy, and therefore, instead of directing 
it to be done as if it were our own, we give 
it in his own words, or as nearly so as a little 
abridgement, for the sake of space, admits. 
He mentions it rather as a curiosity than as 
