84 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
[ Jannary iO, 189Ii 
In Memoriam.—Jean Sisley op Lyons. 
At the ripe age of eighty-seven there has just passed away one who, 
though residing in France, was well known in England, and who 
indeed was more than half an Englishman, the acute horticulturist 
whose name heads this brief notice. 1 have used the expression more 
than half an Englishman advisedly, for in a correspondence I had with 
him some years ago he informed me that his family had once resided in 
the neighbourhood of Sutton Valence in this county (Kent), and that 
he himself was once in business in England ; the name still survives in 
the extreme west of the county. 
Living as he did amongst the many raisers of Roses, he was able to 
go about amongst them, observe their operations, judge of their results, 
and he often communicated these to your contemporaries. I never had 
the pleasure of seeing him, but from all I have heard he was an energetic 
vigorous man, holding strong views, and having no fear of letting them 
be known. The correspondence arose from his having written about 
what he called the dishonesty of Englishmen buying the stock of a Rose 
raised in France, and then sending it out in England with an English 
name, and writing themselves the raisers. Another point on which he 
felt and wrote strongly was the manner in which some names of Roses 
were anglicised when they came over here. What right, he wrote, had 
any English Rose grower to change Due de Wellington into Duke of 
Wellington ? He was also much interested in Carnations and Pelar¬ 
goniums, and his love for flowers led him on to cultivate many classes of 
plants.—D., Deal. 
Stray Note?. 
There really seems to be some excuse for “ talking about the 
weather” this winter. I suppose we ought to be proud of breaking the 
record of a hundred years or so in the way of frost if we have done it, 
but not being a regular scientific observer I should be content for those 
who remember 1813-11, or whatever it is, to continue to crow if they 
wish it, if we could only get a regular thaw. Mark Twain tells us of a 
river pilot who “ couldn’t ever seem to tell the truth in any kind of 
weather.” I feel now that if he were confined to stoiies of extreme and 
long-continued cold, he would have “ to strain himself ” lo get beyond 
the limits of my credulity. It is the continuance, rather than the 
severity, which has been extraordinary. The frames containing my 
Violets have only been opened twice, for about six hours at a time, for 
more than eight weeks, and they do not appear much the worse for 
their seclusion, and the lowest reading of my thermometer on a shel¬ 
tered wall was 5° Fahr. on the morning of January 10th. This was 
7° lower than that of any other night this winter ; on every other dan¬ 
gerous night clouds or fog have come over before the morning and 
saved us from zero. Exactly the same low point (.5°) was reached the 
winter before last here—viz., on the morning of February 13th, 1889, 
when all my established Mar^chal Niels, though well protected with 
bracken, and covered, moreover, with 10 inches of snow, were absolutely 
killed. But we had had warm weather in the early part of February, 
and the plants had not been so well ripened in the autumn before as 
they have been now._ 
Dean Hole tells us, I think, in his “ Book of Roses,” that the 
enthusiastic workingmen florists of the Nottingham district will take 
the coverings from their own beds on a cold night to cover up the “ bit 
of glass,” and keep their favourites from the frost. I am very fond of 
my Tea Roses, and have done what I could for their beds, but they 
would have a poor time of it if I was killed by the cold, and lately it 
has “ got in,” so that it has been as much as I could do to keep the 
frost out of my own bed. I have found the earthing up of the beds 
(the Teas, not my own) to be after all not altogether satisfactory. If 
you do it with a hoe from the beds themselves you are apt to tear or 
expose the shallow and most valuable roots, and extraneous soil is a 
trouble to get there in a hurry and to take away nicely. I have tried 
this year and last dead leaves. They blow about but very little (for 
whatever the N.R.S. catalogue may say. Tea Roses have thorns), are light 
and easily put on, and fairly easily removed, and seem to be more like 
what Nature herself suggests in the way of a winter covering. Whether 
any serious damage has been done hitherto I am not able to say, it is 
difficult to as.sess the amount of injury done by frost till some wmrmer 
weather has supervened. Mine may be all killed or very little hurt, but 
anyhow I am looking forward to paying a visit or two in the spring to 
certain good folks not far from me, who have been telling us during 
last summer and autumn that we are quite mistaken in supposing that 
Tea Roses are not as hardy as H. P.’s, and that there is really no necessity 
for coddling or covering them up. 
But what a hindrance there has been to all sorts of garden work. 
I had all the most important part of my Rose planting done, and some 
three or four dozens of Apple tree were planted with desperate energy, 
but yet I hope with care, as if the enemy was hammering at the gates, 
as indeed he was. But alas for summer plans of restoration, renovation, 
and alteration of Rose beds —most of these must, I fear, now he put off 
to a less arctic winter. I was going to try, for the first time, the thorough 
dressing with well-decayed farmyard manure of one of my Rose beds. It 
does not sound much of an experiment, but none of my Roses, or at 
least none of my H.P.'s and but few of my Teas, have ever had any dug 
into the soil. I think it often does more harm than good unless 
thoroughly decayed, when most of the virtue is gone, but I may be wrong. 
My Roses have nothing but liquid manure, with sometimes some 
artificial. On my soil, which is at all events light on the top and is 
easily washed about with much water, the time when the liquid manure 
goes in best is when just the crust is frozen ; the dash of the water 
cannot then close the pores, and it disappears as quickly as if poured on 
a grating. _ 
Readers of Dean Hole’s book will remember an incident connected 
with a fire-shovel, used under what turned out to be unfortunate cir¬ 
cumstances, to convey certain manure to his Roses. Early last spring, 
in a light frost, as I passed by the field gate of my rosery, I observed 
something which one of my cows had left there, apparently as an 
offering, and which, being just frozen, seemed particularly tempting to 
the spade I carried in my hand. Accordingly it was lifted and de¬ 
posited just as it was upon the nearest Rose bed. A week or two 
afterwards I saw that it had been burrowed into by one of the large 
dung-beetles. I left it alone to see what would happen, and, to make 
a long story short, very nearly the whole of what was put there was 
actually buried underground before the time for the first hoeing of the 
bed had arrived. This is evidently a patent way of getting manure into 
one’s Rose beds without disturbing the roots ; but I am afraid the supply 
of workers is not equal to carrying it out on a large scale. 
It has been well pointed out lately that for a good Rose season the 
weather at the actual time of flowering, or at least from mid-June to 
mid-July, is by far the most important, but no one S3ems to have noted 
in reviews of the past season any great change as having taken place 
with little apparent alteration in the weather in last July. That 
climatic and atmospheric changes at that time have very great and 
sometimes mysterious influence on the blooms is commonly recognised. 
We constantly hear during the season that such and such a Rose is 
“not coming good now,” and that another is “ coming much better.” 
AU Rose growers know that these changes do occur, but I am doubtful 
if the causes are thoroughly understood. We all know that some 
uncertain Roses, such as Pierre Netting especially, will sometimes 
suddenly begin to “ come good ” for no especial reason that we can 
define ; and sometimes there is a wholesale change for the worse or the 
better with very little alteration in the weather that we can perceive. 
Now, the wholesale change for the better that occurred here during 
the last three or four days of July was plainly due to the weather, which 
was hot, dull, and dry—perfect Rose weather; but earlier, somewhere 
about July 12th, there was a notable change for the worse in my rosery, 
though apparently not elsewhere, which did not seem to correspond to 
any particular alteration in the weather. Up to July 12th, in pouring 
rain, my H.P.’s had been very good. To take a special instance, I had 
the medal for best H.P. on two successive days, July 9th and 10th, with 
Le Havre. I had a good many even stronger buds of this variety 
coming on, but they turned out comparatively worthless, and I had not 
another good bloom of the sort throughout the season. The same change, 
in a less degree perhaps, passed over all my Roses about that date.. 
After it they were certainly a point worse throughout than they had 
been. Even on strong shoots they were flabby, shapeless even at 
first coming out compared with the earlier blooms. At the period of 
this change there was rather less rain than there had been, and th& 
temperature fell and rose rather rapidly, but the weather had been very- 
changeable before, and it was difficult indeed to account for the marked, 
deterioration which took place.—W. R. Raillem. 
BISMARCK APPLE. 
In your issue October 31st, 1889, I gave a few particulars concerning 
this grand new Apple, eliciting in consequence two letters from New 
Zealand with further interesting particulars, whic’a I will give extracts 
from. Mr. W. J. Palmer of Auckland says ;—“ I look upon myself as 
the first to introduce it to New Zealand and also to England. In 1876i 
I saw in the catalogue of Mr. J. C. Coles, Richmond Nurseries, Mel¬ 
bourne, a description of a new seedling Apple of great promise, which 
I procured from him. I cut the plants hard in and grafted th« scions 
in October, and in the March following took first prize for best cooking 
Apples at the Horticultural Show in Auckland. From these plants not 
six months old, beini: pleased with their appearance, I sent twenty-four, 
plants to Messrs. J. Laing & Sons, Forest Hill, together with a woodcut. 
I have grown it here to 28 ozs. in weight. This is the origin of the 
Forest Hill stock ; but two years after, Mr. Meindoe (brother of the 
well-known gardener at Hutton Hall) sent home by post to Hutton Hall 
grafts, which through this source originated Messrs. J. Veitch & Sons’ 
plants.” Mr. Palmer then goes on to state that it was raised at a place 
called Riddels Creek, in Victoria (Australia). The other letter is from 
Mr. John C. Blackmore of Onchunga, New Zealand, which confirms the. 
previous fact of origin at Riddels Creek by Messrs. John Smith & Sons,, 
who sent Mr. Blackmore trees as a present, and the latter claims to have 
been the first to grow it in Auckland. Both state the fact that it is a. 
cross (?) between Stone’s Pippin and Alexander. I think Alexander 
may be one of its parents, but Stone’s Pippin may be Loddington (takea 
out by some Kentish emigrant, several of whom have liv^ near the 
