JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
February 24, 1881. ] 
153 
in promoting superior culture, but they have also stimulated the 
production of varieties of no practical use. If a new Grape, Pear^ 
Melon, or Cucumber is not fit to eat it is not worthy of culture, 
however good the appearance may be, and the same rule we 
presume should apply to Potatoes. 
- We have received a schedule of the Manchester Na¬ 
tional Summer Exhibition, which is announced to be held 
from the 3rd to the 10th of June of the present year. Fifty-one 
classes are enumerated in two sections, thirty-two being devoted 
to amateurs and nineteen to nurserymen. Liberal prizes are 
offered for fruit, flowers, and plants, Orchids being particularly 
well provided for, as no less than eight classes are devoted to 
them, One special class is noteworthy ; Henry Shaw, Esq., of 
Buxton, offers the first two prizes, value £10 and £5, and the 
Society gives the third prize of £3 for six specimen Orchids— 
single plants—“made up ” specimens being excluded. 
- Relative to exhibiting plants at the meetings of the 
Royal Horticultural Society, South Kensington, the Rev. 
George Henslow requests us to publish the following letter that 
he has sent to many nurserymen and exhibitors :— 
“ I have noticed that certain plants—the particular merits of which may not 
be always apparent at first sight—are not unfrequently exhibited at South 
Kensington and brought before the Floral Committee, the members of which 
consequently feel some difficulty in judging of their merits for want of fuller 
information about them than can be obtained by mere inspection at the table. 
It has occurred to me that it might be an assistance to both exhibitor and the 
Committee if you would communicate to me in writing, a day or two before the 
Exhibition, such details of any particular plants as you may desire to be specially 
brought to the notice of the Floral Committee. I should be most happy, in my 
capacity as ‘ Demonstrator,’ to describe such particulars to the members as you 
might furnish me with. By adopting this plan I think the Committee would 
be better able to judge of the merits of any such plants. I also wish to say 
that if you should happen to meet with any herb, shrub, or tree which exhibits 
remarkable growths, diseases, sports, &c., or, in fact, anything whatever that 
may strike you as peculiar, I shall be extremely obliged if you would kindly 
forward the same, addressed to me as ‘ Secretary of the Scientific Committee, 
care of Mr. J. D. Dick,’ with the addition of any notes or observations which 
you may think fit to make. I shall have great pleasure in bringing the same 
before the notice of the Scientific Committee.” 
It would certainly be of great advantage if a request so reason¬ 
able were, as far as possible, complied with by all exhibitors. 
- We understand that our correspondent Mr. A. Pettigrew 
has disposed of the Priory Vineyard, Sale, Cheshire, to Messrs. 
F. W. &c H. Stansfield of Pontefract. Mr. Pettigrew intends re¬ 
siding in Scotland for a short time with the object of recruiting 
his health, and he proposes taking his bees with him. 
- Mr. Peter Henderson, writing in the “ American 
Gardener’s Monthly,” has the following remarks upon English 
Horticulturists “ It has been stated that one reason why 
vegetables sell higher in London than in New York is that rents 
are higher, and quotes £7 (35 dollars) per acre as being paid for 
gardens supplying the London market. The price paid as rent 
per acre for the gardens that grow for New York markets will, I 
think, average higher. In Hudson Co., N. J., the average is pro¬ 
bably 40 dollars per acre. Some of them nearest the city pay 
twice that, and that, too, in quite a number of cases only from 
year to year, as the grounds are held as too valuable to give a 
lease ; and yet not a few of them have made good-sized fortunes, 
even when selling in a market averaging 25 per cent, less than 
that of London, while the price paid for labour was 50 per cent, 
more. By far the most successful market gardeners in this 
vicinity are Englishmen ; but Englishmen whose necessities on 
coming here forced them to adopt common sense methods; 
Englishmen who were shrewd enough to take a better idea than 
that they had previously had from any man, whether black or 
white ; Englishmen who were far too sensible to let their conceit 
stand in the way of their interests. Englishmen, also, in the 
vicinity of New York in the flower department of horticulture 
have reason to be proud of their eminence. A majority of those 
managing the roseries at Madison, N. J., where Roses are perhaps 
better handled than in any part of this country or Europe, are 
Englishmen. The proprietors of the best collection of plants for 
commercial purposes are all Englishmen. Our largest grower of 
winter flowers is an Englishman—one who a few years ago, on his 
return from a European trip, was so impressed with the slow 
methods in use there, that he said that, had he been a younger 
man, he would want no better field for business than London 
after his ten years of American experience.” 
- Two interesting papers on the Coffee Leaf Disease 
were read at the meeting of the Linnean Society on the 3rd inst., 
the one treating of its ravages in India, the other its nature and 
spread in South America. In the first Mr. Wm. Bidie, in a letter 
to Mr. J. Cameron of Bangalore, refers to the Coorg country, 
situated in the Western Ghats, where European enterprise in 
Coffee has been wholly developed within the last twenty-five 
years, and no disease was observed till four or five years ago. 
The author mentions that the disease appears to have been im¬ 
ported from Ceylon by way of Chickmoorloor, a district of Mysore, 
sixty miles distant from Coorg. It seems worst in impoverished 
exposed fields, and least where there is shade and rich soil. A 
small red insect has been noticed feeding over leaves covered 
with the pest, but what the insect’s relation is to the disease as 
yet remains undetermined. Plants grown from Ceylon seed suffer 
most, while those trees of Coorg origin and growth are least 
affected. A system of “ renovation-pitting ” has been successfully 
tried, a pit being dug at short intervals wherein, after judicious 
pruning, all the affected leaves are buried, and this precaution 
seems to check the spread of the disease, particularly among the 
Coorg Coffee trees. In the second communication Dr. M. C. 
Cooke describes and summarises all the data extant up to the 
present time of the progress of Coffee disease in South America. 
Plantations in Venezuela, Costa Rica, Bogota, Caracas, and 
Jamaica have been affected. He discourses on the nature of the 
blight, and is of opinion that the disease is a complicated one, 
being himself as yet unprepared to affirm that either the Septoria, 
the Sphserella, or the Stilbum, three so-called different kinds of 
fungi, or all together, is the true cause of the disease. At the same 
time he thinks it possible that none of these forms of fungus are 
autonomous, and that all may be related to each other as forms 
or conditions of the same fungus, of which Sphasrella is the 
highest and most perfect manifestation.—( Nature .) 
- Mr. J. S. Woodward recommends in the New Torlt 
Tribune the following wash as a sure preventive of sheep bark¬ 
ing fruit trees. Take soap, the dirtier and stronger the better, 
and make a very strong suds ; dissolve one-fourth pound whale- 
oil soap in every six gallons, and into this stir sheep manure until 
it is as thick as good whitewash, with a brush or old stub of broom, 
and with this mixture wash the trees as high as the sheep can 
reach, and no sheep will come near enough to rub against them 
for at least two months, the time depending upon the amount of 
rain. We keep the mixture handy and repeat the application as 
often as necessary, usually not more than twice in a summer. 
Sheep running among fruit trees should have plenty of good fresh 
water ; it is thirst that first induces them to gnaw the bark, but 
after they have once got a taste they eat because they like the 
bark. The above mixture will effectually keep them away, and 
besides is a very good application for the health of the trees, keep¬ 
ing the bark smooth and fine, and killing any insects that it comes 
in contact with. 
PARAFFIN TUBS. 
As I have seen these recommended for large plants that have 
outgrown their pot room, could any of your numerous readers 
that have used such inform me what operation the tubs have gone 
through preparatory to using them ? as I apprehend that, if used 
as bought, the oil in the wood would kill the young roots of such 
plants as Tree Ferns and Palms. Would a thorough scalding with 
