HORTICULTURAL NOTES. 
575 
Earthing tip Potatoes. — On this subject, 
Mr. G-. "VV. Johnson says : — " I have long 
had doubts relative to earthing up Potatoes 
being a beneficial practice, and now I am 
convinced that it is detrimental. The variety- 
employed in my experiments is the Pink 
Kidney; all the sets were planted at the same 
time, (the first week of April,) in rows two 
feet apart and eighteen inches in the rows, 
and taken up this day (September 24) and 
weighed. The average of all my experiments 
gives exactly an increase of one-fourth in 
favour of not earthing up ; but some of the 
plots gave still more, viz. as 42 lbs. is to 
31|lbs. The experiment has been made on 
the sixteenth of an acre of good deep loam, 
with a-cool, moist subsoil." 
Charring Vegetable Refuse. — The 
great advantage of employing refuse which 
has been submitted to this process, in the cul- 
tivation of plants, is now pretty well known. 
A simple way of charring the vegetable refuse 
of a garden, is this : — Take a few dry faggots, 
mixed with dry straw, and set up for a centre ; 
around these, build up the rubbish, placing 
the chippings of wood, &c. next the faggots, 
and the greener parts, together with tree 
prunings, near the outside. Around this, 
build with sawdust, or green turf, leaving an 
avenue for lighting the fire. When properly 
lighted, the hole at the top is closed by de- 
grees, and holes are made lower down the 
heap, which are in their turn closed up, as 
the fire draws down, and this is continued to 
the bottom of the heap. When all is charred, 
the holes may be all stopped, and additional 
covering laid on, to prevent entirely the access 
of air. In a few days the heap may be opened, 
and the material will be ready for use ; the 
larger parts for draining flower-pots ; the 
smaller for applying on the ground. 
The Tea Plant in Ceylon. — Our Ceylon 
friends are rejoicing in the cultivation of the 
Tea plant, which has been imported by the 
house of Messrs. Worms into that island, and 
is said to be in a thriving condition, many 
young plants having been raised from the seeds 
of those originally introduced ; and they anti- 
cipate that, ere long, Tea may become another 
important branch of their colonial trade. We 
wish them all the success they hope for ; 
but as they do not seem to have tested the 
quality of the leaf, we would advise them not 
to be too sanguine in their expectations. 
Ceylon lies too far within the tropics to offer 
a climate like Assam, which lies without 
them ; the plants may thrive to appearance, 
but that is not a demonstration of their 
quality : we have seen them six feet in height 
at Penang, and in as healthy a state as could 
be desired, but the leaf had no flavour, and 
although- thousands of Chinese husbandmen 
and gardeners cultivate spices and other 
tropical productions on the island, yet not one 
thinks it worth while to extend the cultivation 
of the Tea plant ; those we saw were in the 
Company's garden, then rented to Chinese, 
but they laughed at the idea of converting the 
leaf into a beverage. The Ceylon planters 
should put the leaf to the proof before specu- 
lating on a large scale. — Madras Crescent. 
The Glandular Almond Tree. (Amyg- 
dalus glandulosa, Siebold.) — M. Paillet, who, 
without doubt, possesses the most beautiful 
collection of plants from Japan of any 
Parisian gardener, cultivates a charming 
little shrub from Japan, under the name 
of Amygdalus glandulosa, covered in April 
with pretty single rose-coloured flowers, 
which have numerous stamens. Its shoots 
are slender, and its leaves straight, lanceolate, 
and sharp pointed. I do not find the name in 
the work of Siebold and Zuccarini. I think, 
from the habit of this shrub, that it is a Plum 
having much affinity to Prunus chinensis, 
which nurserymen call the double dwarf 
almond ; indeed, it may be no other than the 
single-flowered type of that species. It is hardy, 
and bears the winter in the open air without 
protection. — Pepin, in the Revue Horticole. 
New Striped Petunia. — The greatest ad- 
vance made in the Petunia during the present 
year, consists in the realization of striped 
flowers. One which we have seen, and which 
we believe is in the hands of Miller, of Rams- 
gate, is of a pretty slate-blue ground colour, 
and this is varied by numerous feathered 
pencillings of white, giving the flower the ap- 
pearance of being covered with open net-work; 
the eye is dark. The character of this style 
of marking is at once novel and pleasing. The 
flower is rather above the medium size, and by 
no means badly formed; so that it may be 
looked on both as an acquisition, and as the 
harbinger of a new race of this popular and 
ornamental plant. While on this subject, let 
us add one word for the old Petunia integri- 
folia, the original purple Petunia, with flowers 
much smaller than those seen at the present 
day : not one of all the new varieties can vie 
with that old neglected (probably lost) species 
in the brilliancy and prolusion of its blossoms, 
when planted out in a favourable situation in 
the summer season. As a specimen on a lawn, 
enclosed by a neat wire trellis about three feet 
high, and a foot broad, we Iv've seen it un- 
rivalled ; its branches projecting on all sides 
beyond the wire-work, which was hidden by 
countless thousands of its lovely flowers. — 31. 
The Potato Rot. — It appears, from 
recent extensive inquiries, that the disease 
about which so much has been written, differs 
in no respect from the rot which has been ex- 
perienced in former wet and cloudy seasons ; 
