JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
414 
[ November 4, 1880. 
and make the soil as loose and as friable as possible. This is 
the only care or trouble necessary, except to cover or mulch 
round the roots with cocoa-nut fibre, coal ashes, or fine cinders ; 
or what I consider better is dry peat soil made into a conical 
little mound. The centre of this remains dry a long time thus 
built, and while dry no frost will penetrate it. If any of those 
substances cannot be readily procured fine hay, bracken, &c., may 
serve as the best substitute. Compare this with the ordinary 
custom of wintering under the stages, where space can often be 
but badly spared ; where the plants are often, too, if in a cold 
house, as badly frozen almost as outside ; where drip from the roof 
or from the watering destroys the majority of the best plants ; or 
what is even worse, where the heat is maintained and the plants 
are prematurely forced into leaf and flower. The flowers produced 
by plants established in the open ground have been much superior 
to those produced by plants in pots.—W. J. M., Clonmel. 
LAWN MOWERS. 
Messes. James Caetee & Co. do not seem quite satisfied that 
I did not, in my few remarks on this subject on page 374, give 
more striking proof of the advantage of leaving the grass uncol¬ 
lected. Our use of the box is limited to one round of the machine 
next the flower beds and by the side of walks ; and if Messrs. 
Carter & Co. have ever used a mowing machine at the rate of four 
miles an hour they would observe that the machine does not 
deposit the grass on the exact spot it was cut from, nor in the 
exact wake of the machine ; so that I may say that our grass is 
virtually all mown without the box as far as the distribution of 
the grass is concerned. 
My idea of a well-kept lawn is that it should never appear to 
need mowing. It should always be done before it needs it; and 
if I were to see a man mowing without a box where the grass is 
so rank that he has to sweep it up afterwards I should not have 
a high opinion of that man’s intelligence. 
I advocate having the grass uncollected on the score of economy 
as well as for the benefit of the lawn. With a 20-inch machine it 
takes us five hours each time to mow without the box, but if we 
use the box it takes us an hour and a half or two hours more ; so 
that it amounts to this, that we can very nearly mow three times 
without the box during the time we would be doing the work 
twice with it. The grass is thus always in order instead of being 
out of order two days a week ; the work is much easier, and 
there is no necessity for applying lawn manure in the spring. 
—R. INGLIS. 
STILL MORE ABOUT POTATOES. 
Although I am not at present engaged in Potato cultivation I 
shall not say anything in these notes that has not been gathered 
from the most authentic sources in this district—the fertile tract 
of land near the seacoast, and stretching from the Tyne to the 
Wear, anciently known as Werewickshire. The soil here is 
admirably adapted for Potato-growing; overlying as it does the 
magnesian limestone, it seldom becomes waterlogged where any 
attempt at drainage has been made. The great breadths of 
Potatoes in this neighbourhood are all grown by farmers, market 
gardeners do not grow them extensively. Last year Champion 
was the only variety that paid well and that withstood the 
attacks of the disease. This year, as might have been expected, 
Champions were largely planted ; what the results will be yet 
remains to be seen. Champions in this district ai'e supposed not 
to be fit to lift till the latter end of October. Regents and 
Victorias are perhaps next in demand here, nearly everybody 
having his own strain of each variety. One of my immediate 
neighbours sold a breadth of Dalmahoys in the latter part of 
August, and they were lifted in the early days of September. The 
tubers were very slightly touched with disease, although the 
plague had been plainly visible in the haulm for several weeks. 
The dealer who bought them informed the writer that the yield 
was 8 tons an acre, which is considered a heavy crop here. If 
people would give the absolute yield of Potatoes, instead of “ at 
the rate of,” it would be more satisfactory—of course I am alluding 
to large growers ; a small grower can only give relative values. 
The price, I had almost omitted to say, was £19 per acre, the 
grower ploughing the crop out, and the purchaser doing the rest 
of the work, such as sorting, weighing, carting, &c. 
The same farmer has a breadth of Champions, for which he 
wants the same price per acre, but for which his highest offer is 
only £15. The writer had the pleasure of going over the field 
with the grower and trying the Potatoes, which certainly did not 
appear to be either such a heavy crop, such large tubers, or such 
good quality as the Dalmahoys, but they were almost free from 
disease both in haulm and tuber. The disparity of the price 
received for one crop and that offered for the other fully bears 
out Mr. Beachey’s assertion that other varieties sell for more than 
Champions, but I cannot admit that they sell for £5 or £6 
per ton. One farmer here is selling his crop by weight at the 
low price of £2 10s. per ton; another is receiving £3, both for 
Regents. On the farm above mentioned, where the Dalmahoys 
were grown, Magnum Bonum has been tried as an experiment. 
The number of tubers per root is very great, but they are not large 
enough for market purposes, and are not, at least now, of good 
quality, but are free from disease. They will be tried again next 
year at 4 feet apart, this year they were rather crowded. A neigh¬ 
bouring grower, who this year planted largely, is lifting to-day 
(19th October) his Regents. I am afraid they can scarcely be called 
a crop, as all told they will not weigh 5 tons an acre, and quite one- 
half of them are diseased. They are being disposed of at £3 
per ton. 
Mr. Beachey says that “disease is (practically) nil” in Devon¬ 
shire. In Werewickshire it appeared with the sultry humid weather 
in the latter part of August; the days were still and quiet, not ex¬ 
traordinarily hot, and the nights were warm and foggy. Disease 
under these conditions made rapid progress in the haulm, but did 
not affect the tubers till the deluge of September seemed literally 
to wash it down to the roots. After the second week in September 
the fall of rain was discontinued, in fact has been ever since 
with the exception of light showers now and again, and we 
had bright, warm, breezy weather, which partially checked the 
disease. It would be difficult to over-estimate the value of a 
breeze of wind moving the haulm of a crop of Potatoes all the 
season. I have not been able to discover much progress that the 
disease makes under such conditions, its most rapid strides are 
made in still weather. The farmers may, perhaps, be blamed for 
not lifting their Potatoes at the first sign of an attack of the 
enemy, but farmers are like other folk—they know their own 
affairs best, and the changeable weather came upon us just in the 
middle of the harvest, and no doubt they did everything to the 
best of their judgment to secure first their com, which was no 
easy matter, and then the rest of their crops.— Petek Fekguson, 
Mere Knolls , Monlt Wearmouth. 
ANEMONES.—No. 1. 
This is a somewhat extensive genus, mostly confined to the 
temperate regions of the globe, some species being found at con¬ 
siderable elevations. The popular name, Windflower, is derived 
from the old superstition that they only opened their flowers 
when the wind blew ; but as they are found in exposed situations 
it would be difficult to find open flowers when the wind does not 
blow, especially as the majority bloom during the early spring 
months. They may be briefly described as dwarf-growing plants 
with tuberous roots, which in some species are little more than 
thickened rootstalks, but in others become spread out into large, 
irregular, flattened masses. The leaves are twice cleft; the scape 
erect, simple, or branching ; involucre composed of three leaves. 
When the stem is unbranched the flowers are all within a common 
involucre, but when it is branched each flower is furnished with 
one. In the case of single flowers the petals are entirely wanting; 
the absence, however, is well substituted by the large highly 
coloured sepals. Under cultivation Anemones readily become 
double-flowered when the petals are numerous, being developed 
at the expense of the stamens. The genus has been divided into 
three groups or subdivisions—viz., 1, Anemone ; 2, Hepatica ; and 
3, Pulsatilla. Anemone stellata, the Star Anemone, and A. coro- 
naria, the Poppy Anemone, are largely cultivated as florists’ 
flowers both in the single and double state, the last named 
especially having received great attention at the hands of the 
French and Dutch growers. They are all plants of easy culture, 
thriving best in a rich light loam, but seldom fail in any ordinary 
garden soil. They may be increased by divisions of the root or 
by seeds. 
A. alba .—A rare species at present in English gardens. It is a 
dwarf plant, seldom exceeding 6 inches in height, with divided 
leaves, flowers large and pure white. It flowers in June, and is 
well represented in the accompanying engraving. Native of 
Siberia. 
A. alpina .—This is a bold-growing species in a cultivated 
state, and one of the most plentiful plants in its native habitats, 
being distributed from the base almost to the summit of the 
mountain ranges of Europe. It is found to vary from a few 
inches to about 1 ^ foot in height, the latter being its usual pro¬ 
portions under cultivation ; hence it forms a beautiful clump in 
the border, where I prefer it to the rockery. Leaves with deeply 
cut segments ; flowers large, white inside, tinged with light blue 
