JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
April 12, 1883. ] 
295 
best instruments for the same, and the cheapest places for purchasing. 
If there are black sheep in our flock, the white ones will willingly 
accept any advice offered that will be of substantial value.—G-. A. B., 
a Foreman . 
NICOTIANA AFFINIS. 
This attractive relative of “the fragrant weed” is fast becoming 
a great favourite with all who have learnt its character, and that 
it will still further grow in popularity cannot be doubted, as its 
qualities are not at present fully known. For beds and borders 
during the summer it is very useful, flowering most profusely, 
and yielding in the evening a most pleasant fragrance that can 
be perceived at a considerable distance. Another method, how¬ 
ever, which Messrs. H. Cannell & Sons adopt at Swanley, deserves 
special notice, as it greatly increases the utility of the plant. 
Seed is sown in September, and the young plants so obtained are 
potted singly and grown on to flower during 
March, April, and May, at which time they prove 
most useful for conservatory decoration, their 
large white sweetly scented flowers being greatly 
appreciated. Indeed, by successive sowings of 
seed probably plants could be had in flower nearly 
all the year. They are easily grown, a rich light 
compost of turfy loam, leaf soil, sand, and well- 
decayed manure suiting them, and abundance 
of water is needed, so that it is advisable to drain 
the pots carefully. 
As regards the origin of this plant there is a 
little mystery. English horticulturists are in¬ 
debted to W. Cullingford, Esq., Phillimore Gar¬ 
dens, Kensington, for its introduction ; and he, 
it is said, obtained the seed from Hyeres, and 
there the history ends, for we have no reliable 
information as to its native country or when it 
first appeared in cultivation. 
PROFITABLE POTATO-GROWING. 
I see by the letter of “Single-handed” on 
page 238 that my remarks about the Potato 
fungus have not been quite understood by him. 
I could not, of course, go much into detail on the 
form sent, but I shall be pleased to afford further 
information. A short time ago Messrs. Sutton 
published a statement of the cost of cultivating 
an acre of Potatoes, showing as a result of the 
operation a considerable profit. I do not wish 
to discourage anyone from growing Potatoes— 
quite the reverse ; but instances have come to my 
knowledge, and have been practically experienced 
by myself, where the profits have fallen short of 
those mentioned by Messrs. Sutton, and some¬ 
times the grower has experienced a loss. 
There are several things to be taken into con¬ 
sideration in Potato culture. In the first place 
the grower, if a beginner, should only have two 
or three acres, for there is generally something 
to learn in the cultivation of a new crop, and then 
there is the difficulty of marketing a large quan¬ 
tity of Potatoes. A grower who has a connection 
and knows where to place his crop has an advan¬ 
tage over one who does not, and if he lives near 
a large town and has a retail connection he is still 
better off. Then there is the disease to be con¬ 
sidered. I find that by confining my growth to 
Early Rose and Magnum Bonum I avoid the dis¬ 
ease altogether—at least, for all practical pur¬ 
poses. In my experimental ground in 1881 I had four sacks of 
Early Rose Potato and no disease whatever, and ten sacks of 
Magnum Bonum and only three diseased tubers, and last year 
the result was pretty much the same. I watch the Early Rose, 
and dig up before they are much injured, and the Magnum Bonum 
I am not afraid of. Not much manure is used, ana that I pre¬ 
fer put on in the autumn. That is the right way for garden 
cultivation, but I am in doubt about it for field cultivation. The 
land round Cirencester is not by any means rich, and would not 
grow the crop mentioned by Messrs. Sutton without help. 
I will now make a comparison of the probable result of the 
cropping of two cultivators, A and B. We will suppose that A 
spends altogether £25 an acre in rent, taxes, and cost of cultiva¬ 
tion, &c., and that his crop is 5 tons. Now if he sells his Potatoes 
at £5 a ton only he makes no profit, and supposing he by economy 
keeps down the expenses a little there is but a small margin of 
profit. I am supposing that he uses ten loads of farmyard manure. 
Now suppose B, instead of ten loads of farmyard manure, uses 
twenty and spends £2 an acre on artificials, and by that means 
produces a crop of 8 tons. He will have three more tons for sale, 
value £15, out of which deduct £4 10s. for the extra manure, and 
he will have a profit of £10 10s. an acre, which I think he ought 
in a general way to get. I am supposing that only Magnum 
Bonum and other disease-resisting kinds are grown. 
In my remarks a short time ago in the Journal I said that a 
person, like B, who grows his Potatoes with a large quantity of 
manure, ought not to plant any of them in the following year, 
because the mycelium of the fungus will be very likely to be 
largely developed in them, and tend if planted to materially 
injure the prospects of a crop in the following year. The myce¬ 
lium of the fungus is often present when the Potato apparently 
has nothing the matter with it, but such Potatoes are apt to have 
a diseased germ and throw out a diseased shoot in the following 
spring or early summer, and so spread the disease. Potatoes may 
have the mycelium of the fungus in them and yet be perfectly 
wholesome ; they are not what is called diseased, but merely have 
the seeds of disease in them. It is a common remark, “ Ob, my 
Potatoes were all right when I dug them up, but they went off 
afterwards.” This is to a certain extent a figure of speech. The 
mycelium of the fungus is present in all such cases when the 
Potatoes are dug up, and large quantities of them are consumed 
under such circumstances, but they are not injurious. Ihe culti¬ 
vator should grow the Potatoes which he intends to plant the 
following year in another field without much manure, or send 
to a nurseryman for them.— Frederick Bravender, Tlic Firs, 
Cirencester. 
Fine Cineraria Blooms.—A n idea seems to have become some¬ 
what prevalent in many localities that the finest strains of many 
Fig. 71.— NICOTIANA AFFINIS. 
