Jitnniry 8 1891. J 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
31 
thaw. Frost bites are very different from canker. Compxre ! 
wood destroyed by frost, or a bruise, with canker. The first is dry, ! 
the bark hardens, loses none of its elasticity, and comes off stringy, j 
A cankerous wound is first moist, raised or swelled, then losesits I 
and two-ninths more potash. Potash and nitrates benefit most on 
light soils. The Pear or Quince in damp heavy soils affords the 
finest fruit, from the circumstance that the Quince is a great 
consumer of phosphoric acid, and phosphoric acid is most potent on 
heavy soils ; yet the Pear succeeds on light soils on that 
stock where the Apple cankers to death. The Cherry loves 
sand—fishes iron out of subsoils ; Plums delight in iron and 
potash ; but Strawberries appropriate more iron than do any 
other fruit, and come second only to the Cherry in the 
demands for sand. Gooseberries take iron next to Straw¬ 
berries, and the last, with Apples, need the most salt. Iron 
is the most important of all the metals, and prevails abund¬ 
antly for good in the earth’s crust.—G. Abbey, 
FIG. 7.— TOM THUMB DAHLIAS. 
elasticity ; instead of stringy, it becomes granular, and a gaping 
scar appears. What has becoe of the matter that once formed the 
bark, where there is a gap clear down to the wood ? It has gone, 
but the frost-wounded, mechanically inflicted scar retains the old 
bark in strips. Its tissue was not destroyed but injured, and 
decortication sets in of a different character. There is no carbonate 
of lime on the edges of the wound as invariably accompanied the 
morbid product of canker. A tree may have wounds entirely 
innocent of canker. No wound would produce it. Cut a weakly 
tree hard and it will outgrow canker ; wound a strong growing 
barren tree and it will produce fruit abundantly, in neither does 
canker result from the cuts or the bruises. The frost doctrine will 
not bear examination, and is founded on guess work. We warit to 
implant in the Apple and Pear tree means to destroy or make latent 
the “ fungus (or microbe) which obtains its nourishment from the 
protoplasm of the cells of its host, thereby 
destroying or greatly impairing its vitality.” 
This Mr. Tonks seems to have effected with 
phosphorus and sulphur within, energising the 
protoplasm, and by lime, silica, and iron strength¬ 
ening the cell walls and external surfaces, so 
as to render the trees proof against disease. 
Lime, Mr. Fish says, destroys fungi. Mr. Tonks’ 
remedy is more than half lime. Dr. Griffiths 
says iron sulphate in small quantities destroys 
parasitical germs. Mr. Tonks uses iron sulphate 
in small quantity. Mr. Tonks uses sulphates. 
M Miintz says any sulphate increased the growth 
of crops 13‘54 per cent., and iron sulphate 30 2 
per cent., with an addition of 9 G per cent, of 
chlorophyll. Mr. Wright states that Mr. Tonks’ 
mixture and soil amelioration cured Apple trees 
of ten thousand cankered wounds. It is the 
physician’s plan—eliminate the virus or render 
it latent, for there is no disguising the fact that 
canker is a disease caused by microbe or micro¬ 
fungi. Poverty is not a disease but a misfor¬ 
tune, plethora is not a disease but an abuse. 
Disease fastens on both. Bad management 
undermines the constitution, prepares the way 
for the real enemy to seize its victim. 
Science will some day seize the destroyer—in 
fact, it has found Nectria ditissima to be asso¬ 
ciated with canker, and it is not settled whether 
it will or will not result in the production of 
canker by inoculation ; but it is perfectly clear 
that iron is always associated with successful 
Apple culture. Pears do not require so much 
iron by half as the Apple, only one-third the silica, one-sixth less 
sulphuric acid, one-seventh more phosphoric acid, nearly half as 
much more lime, a quarter less magnesia, only one-third the soda. 
! TOM THUMB DAHLIAS. 
Dahlias have received much attention from cultivators for 
a long series of years, but though so many hundreds of varieties 
have been produced, distinguished by great diversity in the form 
or colour of their blooms, but little alteration has been effected 
in their habit. It has apparently been reserved for Mr. T. W. 
Girdlestone, of Sunningdale, to secure a new race of Dahlias 
remarkable for their dwarf habit, and therefore especially adapted 
for bedding purposes. To these the appropriate name of Tom 
Thumb Dahlias has been applied in the same way that several 
other dwarf types of bedding plants have been denoted, and it 
is very probable that the group will become extremely popular, 
as their usefulness for the margins of the beds and borders in 
the flower garden cannot be over-estimated. 
The plants are from 9 to 12 inches in height, compact bushy little 
specimens, producing their single flowers freely, and twelve distinct 
colours have been already “ fixed.” Messrs. J. Cheat & Sons of the 
Lowfield Nurseries, Crawley, who have paid much attention to Dahlias 
generally, and have added many handsome novelties to the single and 
Cactus sections, have procured the stock of these Tom Thumb Dahlias 
for distribution, and the plants have been proved to test their 
characters. The engravings (for which we are indebted to Messrs. 
Cheal & Son) have been prepared from photographs. The illustra¬ 
tion (fig. 7) shows three plants, and fairly represents their chief 
features. The other illustration (fig. 8) affords a good idea of the 
true height of the plants, amongst which stands their raiser, Mr. 
Girdlestone, who is the Hon. Secretary of the National Dahlia Society, 
FIG. 8.—TOM THUMB DAHLIAS AND THEIR RAISER, MR. T. W, GIRDLESTONE. 
and a member of the Floral Committee of the Royai Horticultural 
Society. These Dahlias are unquestionably valuable additions to the 
lists of bedding plants. 
