February 10,1881. ] JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
any price to get his cask emptied, or else take his wares home 
again. 
The poorer classes as a rule, except the Irish who buy Cabbage, 
do not eat vegetables, but it is not scarcity or the price either that 
deters them ; if they have threepence in their pocket they will 
purchase a pint of ale with it rather than buy wholesome vege¬ 
tables with the money. The better clas3 of working men can, 
and do, have a sufficient supply of fresh vegetables and fruit in 
their season at the lowest price at which it can be grown. There¬ 
fore in the face of these facts, and glutted markets already ex¬ 
isting, I would advise those farmers who are thinking of turning 
their attention and probably some of their best land to vegetable 
growing, to think before it is too late, for the supply already 
far exceeds the demand, and the strong foreign and south 
country competition is every year increasing. When those growers 
already in the field have their land in the highest state of cultiva¬ 
tion, with all their experience, knowledge of markets, &c., have 
to sell their produce for prices that barely, and in many cases do 
not, repay expenses, and when there are scores ©f acres of Savoys 
and other vegetables decaying on the ground for want of a 
demand, where is the farmer going to find his customers ? In con¬ 
clusion I beg most emphatically to say, and I think my fellow 
market gardeners will agree with me, that the supply of vege¬ 
tables is already in excess of the demand, and that is not because 
they cannot get them at a fair price or at their own street corner 
that the poorer classes do not eat them. You may take a horse 
to the water, but you cannot make him drink.—A Market 
Gardener, Cheshire . _ 
As a subscriber to your Journal, and a market grower in the 
vicinity of Liverpool, permit me to add my warning against the 
too sanguine views of the results of growing vegetables for market. 
To the town of Liverpool growers take their produce in their own 
carts into large markets and sell direct to the shopkeepers, and 
are thus on favourable terms compared with some other towns. 
In spite of this, and also being within reach of many other large 
towns, I can scarcely name more than one or more vegetables 
that this year have paid the grower. 
Cabbages, Cauliflowers, Peas, Beans, Celery, Brussels Sprouts, 
Potatoes, Turnips, have all been sold at prices that do not pay, 
or barely pay, the cost of production. Besides this, to an ordinary 
farmer a severe winter is no harm, to a large grower of vege¬ 
tables it is invariably more or less damaging ; in the last three 
winters, including the present, my loss is not less than £700. 
The last frost in this district was disastrous. Savoys and 
Brussels Sprouts are nearly all killed, and besides Celery will be 
a serious loss.—A Market Gardener, Liverpool. 
THE GREAT FROST. 
“Black Tuesday,” says the Times (January 18th, 1881), will 
long be remembered by Londoners. I do not think we here, in 
the valley of the Mole, shall soon forget the last half of the pre¬ 
sent month. Old inhabitants tell me they remember nothing like 
it since Murphy’s frost. I can answer for no such weather here 
for nearly twenty-two years. We have, I believe, in this part of 
Surrey the unenviable notoriety of having recorded (through 
Mr. Steward of the Strand) greater cold than any other part of 
the south-east. It may be interesting to others to hear of our 
misfortunes. As a Latin poet has said, “ Suave mart magnoT &c. 
“ Sweet to see tossings on the sea, 
While we on land all safe may be ; 
Not to delight in others’ pain, 
But since escape is so much gain.” 
The happy inhabitants of warmer regions will endorse this when they 
read of 30°, 32°, and 33^° below freezing which I registered on the 
mornings of January 17th, 22nd, and 25th. We are about 200feet 
above the sea, and my thermometer is a maximum and minimum 
of Mr. Steward’s on a sheltered stand 4 feet above the grass. My 
readings are borne out by those of a neighbour on the opposite 
bank of the Mole. It is difficult to account for such extremes of 
cold, but low readings appear to follow the course of this river. 
Mr. Mawleyof Croydon, a high authority in such matters, suggests 
“the cold air rolling down at night from the hills (the North 
Downs just above us) into the valley ” later in the spring. I may 
have something to say if space is afforded me as to how the Roses 
have stood it, standards having had no protection. At present 
there is a little varied prospect of blacked branches, and plants 
apparently dead down to the snow line.—A. C. 
Gishurstine. —You did me the favour to publish (page 65) 
the report of a very high professional gardening authority of his 
experiments with Gishurstine to keep boots dry. I have just 
107 
received an excellent opinion from an amateur—the well-known 
authoress, Miss Frances Power Cobbe—and shall be much obliged 
if you will give it space. Miss Cobbe writes : “ To-day I sallied 
forth over swamps and morasses in Wisley Common for hours ; 
and here I testify that though my boots were already rather worn, 
and last week decidedly let in damp, I have returned this evening 
with my feet warm and dry, as if I had never stepped but upon a 
wooden floor. Gishurstine is admirable.”— The Inventor of 
Gishurst Compound. 
COMPARETTIAS. 
There are now numbers of beautiful winter-flowering Orchids 
in cultivation, and with a moderately extensive collection little 
difficulty is experienced in maintaining a bright and satisfactory 
bearing small but brightly coloured flowers that are produced in 
the latter months of the year, or from January to March. The 
plants are all epiphytal in habit, succeeding well on small blocks 
of wood suspended from the roof of a moderately warm house, 
but not where they are too fully exposed to the sun. In other 
respects the treatment they require is similar to that of most 
tropical epiphytal Orchids. 
Comparettia falcata, the species represented in fig. 23, is one of 
the best known, and is seen in most metropolitan nurseries and 
in the chief collections of Orchids in the country. It produces a 
rather loose raceme of deep rose or crimson-coloured flowers from 
the base of the pseudobulbs, the scape usually being much longer 
than is shown in the cut, the flowers being borne near the 
