396 JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. [ November 3 , issi 
nearly night and day to supply hot water for the house, I have 
seen the deposit taken off 3 and 4 inches thick, and that every 
year when the family were at home the whole year. That deposit 
was a warning to me not to use the water in the garden boilers. 
Of course, there were doors on the boiler used at the house which 
could be taken out, but even then it was serious work for the men, 
but certainly nothing in comparison with Mr. Ollerhead’s. 
The water Mr. Ollerhead uses in his boiler must be very hard 
indeed that he obtains such a quantity of deposit as 5cwt. in nine 
years, or his pipes must be leaking. Does he use the water in his 
pipes for warming the cold water in his cistern for watering plants 
as I have seen some do 1 The small quantity of water evaporated 
from any boiler, if all is otherwise right, cannot account to my 
mind for the quantity of deposit taken out, even with all the length 
of piping he has. That is one of the difficulties we have to deter¬ 
mine—to know the quantity held in solution in the water, and the 
quantity of soda, &c., necessary to neutralise its bad effects. How¬ 
ever, it is best to err on the safe side, and the soda in any form will 
do no harm. —Alex. Shearer, 4, Marohmont Street, Edinburgh. 
ROSE CATALOGUES. 
Again come the Rose catalogues; they descend in a shower ! 
I have had the honour of receiving at least a dozen, and that by 
no means includes all the important firms that now cater for the 
public. How extensive the trade must be ! How pleasant it 
would be also to send an order for fifty plants from each, and 
how glad the respective authors must be that the lists are out. 
All are once more at liberty to read, compare, and be thankful ; 
for certainly a lazy public has thus furnished to it, if only thus to be 
used, some very pleasant and profitable Rose reading, while there 
has been hard and good work in the way of writing. 
Looking at once to the future I notice a “ white Baroness ” 
announced by Mr. G. Paul, which he promises shall have more 
substance than the otherwise charming Mabel Morrison. Cran¬ 
ston’s Company put forward Mary Pochin. raised in a Leicester¬ 
shire vicarage garden, and having already received two first-class 
certificates. 
“ Bonum nomen, 
Bonum omen.” 
All will hail such a welcome addition to our catalogues. Then 
Mr. Cant speaks in his prize list of a General Sir Evelyn Wood, 
with which he gained a new Rose prize in 1830 at the Alexandra 
Palace ; but he does not appear to be sending it as yet into com¬ 
merce. In the Cranston catalogue—which is largest of all, as 
becomes a company—there is an engraving of H. P. Mary Pochin, 
also of Mrs. Jowitt, and even of dear old Devoniensis. They 
publish a grand list of their last year’s victories. Both Mr. Cant, 
Mr. Prince, and Mr. Walters have some pleasant additional read¬ 
ing—the record of visits during last year to their Rose gardens ; 
while Mr. Piper gives a useful list of show Roses of 1879 and 1880. 
Mr. Turner does not offer a new English Rose this year, but has 
an evidently carefully drawn up list of the new French Roses. 
Collating this with Mr. G. Paul’s list and that of the Cranston 
Company I gather that H.P.’s Comtesse de Camondo, George 
Moreau, and Madame Montel or Montet(?) are the most generally 
approved ; also, all concur in praising Tea Reine Maria Pia, which 
seems to be very much the same as Reine Marie Henriette, a real 
vigorous good climbing red Gloire de Dijon; only, luckily for 
exhibitors, the authorities do not relegate the former to the shut¬ 
out H.T. list, which is the hard fate of the latter. Speaking of 
H.T.’s, I see one grower now offers the Bennett Roses at Is. each, 
or 7s. Gd. for the lot. “ The world is his who knows how to wait 
for it” will be feelingly acknowledged by those of us who paid 
10s. Gd. for single plants ! But even “ D., Deal," himself must 
admit this a bargain, and I do not yet despair of seeing some of 
them some day in honourable places.—A. C. 
PEARS FOR WALLS. 
“ John Bull” (page 327) is evidently not a gardener, and is, 
indeed, not very practically minded, and is rather given to cast 
“longing lingering looks behind” him. Some fond memories 
haunt his dreams, and he would fain live the past over again. 
He remembers, or has heard of—it is not quite certain which— 
walls covered with “splendid and splendidly trained” specimens 
of trees on walls, which “bore an abundance of fruit for use and 
a surplus for friends or the market.” Did they? And if we go 
back to the old system, will they ? If they did, why did those 
“gentlemen and gardeners who have passed the meridian of life” 
referred to, grub out the trees ? “John Bull” thinks it would 
be advisable to plant trees for “future generations,” forgetting 
that there is always the possibility of future generations being so 
much ahead of us in every branch of pomology as to consider our 
w T ork of no importance. We are pretty sure that a generation 
hence our finer dessert Pears, Plums, and maybe even Apples, will 
not be grown either according to our system or the system of fifty 
years ago, and we are certain that the system after which “John 
Bull” hankers will not then find a place. 
One reason why gardeners now-a-days, more especially those 
gardeners whose recollections run back a generation, do not plant 
trees, the branches of which are ultimately to stretch 30 or 40 
feet, is that such trees, however handsome and ornamental, seldom 
bore anything worth naming for the space occupied and the work 
entailed. It is not to the point to talk of the bushels of fruit 
borne by such big trees and compare them with the dozens borne 
by the smaller trees of to-day. The question is, “ Which system 
produces the best fruit and the greatest quantity from a given 
space ? and also, How long are we to wait for a mere question of 
sentimentality ? ” Another is the enormous expense necessary to 
produce such trees and to maintain them in fruitful condition. 
It is a comparatively easy task to fill walls with handsome trees. 
Scores of garden walls are so covered which produce very little 
fruit, and every practical gardener knows that. Those who suc¬ 
ceeded with the old system made their borders very much in the 
way that Vine borders are made ; others essaying to succeed, but 
not going to the necessary expense, succeeded in covering the 
walls with barrenness. The formation of—if need be—concreted 
borders at least 30 feet wide and 3 feet deep of good heavy loam, 
in order to secure the success which assures “ an abundance of 
fruit for use and a surplus for friends ” for any reasonable length 
of time, is an absolute necessity in ninety-nine cases out of every 
hundred. The idea that mere planting and training is all is a 
great mistake. 
Fifty years ago labour and material were employed in the 
making of such borders for Pear trees ; now the labour and 
material is spent on Yine and Peach tree borders, which return 
for the expense an amount of fruit undreamed of fifty years ago. 
This is another reason why Pear trees are not so expensively 
treated now. Another is that labour in “fine” gardens was 
much cheaper and very much more plentiful than now. It is a 
hard struggle now with far too many of us to make even vinery 
borders as they should be made, and we are driven to adopt a 
system of Pear tree culture that enables us to produce fine fruit 
plentifully with not a hundredth part of the work necessary 
under the old system. Then first-class results were secured by 
keeping the roots into the borders, by concreting borders, &c. 
Even then things went wrong. Digging and manuring and crop¬ 
ping the borders sooner or later produced overluxuriance and 
sterility. Now, if our trees are smaller and less perfect we grow 
them in much smaller quantities of material. Instead of concrete 
bottoms we now keep our roots where they should be by lifting, 
and, when it is likely to do good, root-piuning. That both pro¬ 
cesses are sometimes abused is not the fault of the. system, but of 
the operator. In olden times when spring frosts killed the blossom 
the trees “ went in for basket wood ” and sterility. Should that 
happen now we can easily check the tendency, and at least secure 
flow r er buds. The consequence is, that now greater quantities of 
fruit is produced from a given amount of wall than was in the 
“good old days,” concerning which some people are apt to be too 
enthusiastic and forgetful. Should an abundant crop come we 
know exactly where the roots are, and we can give them just the 
support they need, hence we produce much finer fruit now-a-days. 
If in the olden time inferior sorts w r ere displaced by better kinds, 
what a loss of wall and time there was till a blank was filled ! 
Instead of two or three years, it took a great part of a man’s life. 
Now we can make room for testing a new kind with little loss, 
and necessary blanks are speedily filled. 
Your correspondent advises gentlemen and gardeners who have 
new and lofty walls to consider the advisability of returning to 
the old system. Everyone to his liking, but we ask them to 
“seriously consider” the conditions necessary to secure success 
under that system, and to think whether they should incur it. 
In the present transitional stage—and it certainly is a transitory 
one—of pomology, and everything else, w r e think that our motto 
should be “ Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” We 
cannot think that now the world has begun to move all around 
that pomology is going to stand. Assuredly it will advance. 
Where, then, is the wisdom of planting trees that will take a 
generation to perfect, and that at an unjustifiable expense, when 
a generation hence both the modern and the ancient may be dis¬ 
placed by a system superior to either. We certainly advise a 
short cut to plenty of fruit, and not to concern about the affairs 
of our great grandchildren. 
But why new lofty walls to cover at all ? Your correspondent 
says that although the seasons may have altered, and although 
