August 7, 1884. ] 
JOURNAL OF HORTICLLTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
129 
enemy is the safest ami soundest course that can be adopted ; hut after 
the attack they are just as well in the ground as out of it, and very often 
much better, bscause there the tubers are in a far greater degree isolated 
from each other by the intervening soil than when stored in heaps, which 
become actual “ hotbeds of disease.” 
The remarks of your correspondents, who evidently know what they 
are writing about, took back my thoughts to experimental days when 
sacks of too-late-taken-up early Potatoes were afterwards ruined, and 
the only sound tubers were those that had been left in the ground till 
November. Nor did the sound tubers grow again—supertuberate—that 
year ; the earliest sorts seldom do ; it is the later kinds which are seriously 
checked in growth when the tubers are about as large as Walnuts, and 
with strong baulm, that rush into a second growth under the influence of 
late summer or early autumn rains, and for this unfortunate accident 
there is no remedy, at least that is what I think on the subject. 
“I DO not like new pots for Strawberries” remarks “A Kitchen 
Gardener ” on page 88. When reading that observation my mental 
soliloquy may be embodied in the sentence—I wonder who does ? I 
wonder further, who can like them for anything—until they are soaked ? 
Numbers of plants besides Strawberries are seriously checked in growth 
every year and permanently injured by placing them in new porous 
pots without these having been immersed in water. If your correspondent 
will place his new pots in a pond for twelve hours or more, then dry 
them before use, he will find his Strawberries will not object to their 
receptacles—at least mine do not. If not thus prepared new soft flower 
pots are dangerous, and only a little removed from coffins to whatever 
plants are put in them. Avoid, therefore, the use of new unsoaked pots. 
Ip anything more were needed to show the capricious character of 
Strawberries it is the note of Mr. Muir on page 90. He prizes what 
hundreds of persons regard as the poor little Black Prince, and denounces 
what hundreds more regard as one of the most productive and useful 
Strawberries that were ever raised—Vicomtesse Hbricart de Thury, in 
some districts known as Garibaldi. I have been told by “ one who 
knows,” because he has grown scores of acres of the fruit under 
notice, that, “ taking one year with another,” none pays him better, and 
few so well, as the very prolific Garibaldi. The flavour, of which your 
correspondent speaks slightingly, numbers of persons appreciate ; and 
the colour, to which he objects, is exactly what many prefer. So much 
for fancy and the influence of soils and positions affecting varieties of 
Strawberries. The only way out of the difficulty raised by conflicting 
evidence that I know is to do as I did when “bothered by writers ” many 
years ago, and this is to at first grow a few plants of many varieties, and 
eventually many of a few, and most persons who do justice to the plants 
will then have plenty of good Strawberries. 
The article following the one above “ thought about ”—namely, that 
on watering plants, ought to be read attentively and its dictates followed 
sedulously by every young gardener in the kingdom, and not a few old 
ones, for it is to be remembered that there are numbers of sexagenarians 
who have been dabbling about with the watering pot for nearly half a 
century, who would not be allowed to water the plants of a really good 
plant-grower if they were willing to pay him a guinea a week for the 
privilege. Having had the opportunity of being drilled by the grower of 
some of the finest hardwooded plants that were ever staged at the 
London shows, I am in a position to speak plainly on this point. A man 
must indeed have a good capacity for “ thinking ” to be able to water plants 
exactly when they ought to be watered, and to give them exactly enough. 
He must be able to do more than think through the proverbial “ 9-inch 
deal,” as he must be able to drive his throughts through half a yard of 
soil and take note of its condition and the state of the innumerable root 
fibres that are penetrating it. Until he can do that he can never be a 
good waterer, and until he makes himself competent in that respect he 
cannot possibly become a good grower of plants. A thoughtful man and 
accurate judge of watering will keep plants healthy in inferior soil, but a 
person who cannot justly be regarded as otherwise than a bad waterer 
will have them unhealthy in the best of soil. I worked in gardens for 
ten years before I was able to water plants correctly, and there are 
hundreds of young men now in the same position that I was then. Let 
them think very deeply on this subject, for it is intimately connected 
with their failure or their fame. 
I PELT a little puzzled when I read the notes of Mr. Inglis on East 
Lothian Stocks on page 91, and thought I must have the wrong variety. I 
cannot understand the plants fiowering in perfection in July of the same 
year in which the seed is sown. I have had magnificent plants in the 
conservatory in December from seed sown in spring, and huge bushes in 
July from seed sown the preceding June. Perhaps if your corre¬ 
spondent were to obtain a few particulars through his friend Mr. George 
on his method of culture they might be of service ; for myself I confess 
to feeling myself “at sea” on the subject, and cannot “think” myself 
out of it. 
“ I LIKE the double-flowered Ivy-leaved Pelargoniums very much,” 
says “B.,” on page 91. So do I, and I scarcely think the merits of such 
varieties as he names are fully known to all lovers of flowers. The 
variety Gloire d’Orleans is a model plant for a free graceful specimen. 
It.is neither so loose as to make it appear “weedy,” nor so compact as 
to have a “lumpy ” appearance, but well grown is at once graceful and 
bright. It is observable that prizes are offered at most shows for bicolors 
and tricolors, but I think the beautiful Ivy-leaved forms are at least 
equally worth encouraging. 
Destroying scale by the use of Fowler’s insecticide, as recorded by Mr. 
Burton on page 95, is a useful hint. Fortunately I have no scale on my 
plants, or would try the remedy ; perhaps someone else may do so, as how¬ 
ever safe paraffin may be in the hands of some persons, I have seen it kill 
plants as well as insects. If the insecticide may be used at “ double ” 
the scale-killing strength recommended, it must, one would think, be safe 
as well as efficacious. 
I THOUGHT how Very interesting Mr. PercivaTs narrative of the history 
of the King of Daffodils was on page 93. The variety under discussion 
is in my opinion one of the most beautiful of a beautiful genus. It 
reached me under the name of Horsfeldii, and this, too, is the name given 
in Mr. Burbidge’s book on the Narcissus ; but unless Mr. Percival has 
made a mistake, which judging by the character of his remarks does not 
appear likely, Mr. Burbidge for once in his life must be wrong in his 
rendering of the name; and an error of this kind, if passed unnoticed, 
has a natural tendency to obscure the origin of a plant on which it is 
always desirable there should be no doubt whatever. At least that is my 
thought on the matter, and if it is erroneous I am open to correction. I 
shall not be wrong, however, in advising all who can do so to grow 
Narcissus bicolor Horsefieldii.—A Thinker. 
TREES AT THE CAPE. 
THE OAKS. 
(^Continued from page 104.) 
Almost as successful an introduction as the two Pines already men¬ 
tioned is the Oak (Quercus pedunculata). The Dutch brought the tree 
with them from Holland 200 years ago, and it was the early Dutch 
settlers in the south-west who planted those groves which are now such 
beautiful sights in many of the old western towns of the Colony. Various 
writers, from Anthony Trollope upwards, describing these picturesque 
Dutch villages, expatiate on the beauties of the old Oak avenues—the 
cool substantially built houses, lying embosomed in Oak foliage, and 
backed by stretches of rich vineyard. This picture is a contrast to the 
oven-like modern tenement, crowned with its hideous iron roof ! In the 
young English towns of the eastern part of the Colony the Oak has been 
planted sparingly along with other trees, and there as a foliage tree it 
seems to have out-distanced all others, though, of course, Eucalypts show 
a more rapid growth. The striking feature of South African streets is 
their extraordinary width, the reason assigned for this being the difficulty 
of manceuvring the huge waggons of the country. As a consequence, the 
impression left is somewhat that of a dreary waste of dusty macadam 
with dwarf houses in the distance. What more calculated to relieve this, 
and the glare of a nine-months summer, than a double of row of Oak 
trees ? In the Grahamstown Botanical Gardens there is a fine show Oak 
tree, its too spreading limbs held together by bands of iron against the 
strong South African wind. There is a fine avenue of old Oaks near the 
Botanical Gardens and the new Houses of Parliament at Cape Town. 
The restoration of this avenue was made over to the Forest Department, 
and the treatment applied is described at length in the last Annual 
Forest Report of the Colony. 
Fresh from India, and after ten years spent in its torrid fire-swept 
forests, I must confess that few sights have afforded me greater pleasure 
than the bursting into leaf of the Oaks in Cape Town at the end of the 
brief Cape winter. It was pleasant to renew acquaintance with our 
hoary old friend. In Italy, Switzerland, and France I had found the Oak 
leafless; in June, in Cape Town, its last leaves were rustling to the 
ground. Two months afterwards, towards the end of August, the trees 
were assuming the glory of their spring foliage. 
I cannot remember whether the bursting into leaf of the Oak in this 
mild Cape climate is more sudden and vivid than the same phenomenon 
in Europe. Certainly it was here very beautiful ! And it recalled 
memories of the old Nancy days and of friends now scattered far and 
wide. Poor Bagneris has gone to that last rest whither many a tall 
Oak has preceded him; and many of us, buried in the wearisome tropics, 
have almost forgotten the Oak and all he told us about it. I have seen 
the same old Oak fighting a losing battle in Southern India. 
The Oak at Ootacamund, at an elevation of 7500 feet, makes twice a 
year faint-hearted attempts to come into leaf after the south-west 
monsoon and at the end of the cold weather. Elsewhere in Southern 
India, 4500 feet is the lowest elevation at which I have noticed the 
common English Oak planted and growing. It is never leafless there, is 
stunted, and of poor growth, but still bears fertile acorns. In the eastern 
portion of Cape Colony, where the climate begins on the coast to show 
semi-tropical features, the Oaks do not lose all their foliage regularly, 
but the yield of acorns is abundant and regular. 
The species of Oak which has been planted in Cape Colony for 
200 years appears to be exclusively Quercus pedunculata. Count de 
Vasselot in his tours has found only this species, though he informed me 
that he had searched carefully for Quercus sessiliflora. Of the two common 
European Oaks, Quercus sessiliflora has a rather more southerly habitat 
than Quercus pedunculata. 
It is surprising that this Oak should have become so completely 
naturalised in a climate undoubtedly warmer than its European habitatr 
I In the damper, more European-like climate of the Cape Peninsula, the 
