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JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
[ August 3, 1893. 
(or “ elegans ”), martagon, longiflorum, and speciosum ; of the last 
mentioned I have several exquisite varieties, such as album, roseum, 
rubrum, and Kroetzeri. Of all the speciosums I am persuaded that 
Kroetzeri is by far the most valuable ; its colour is the purest white, it 
is very prolific, remarkable for durability, and easily grown. 
The Lily is now, even as it was in the days of William Cowper, the 
rival of the Rose. If the latter is the queen the former is assuredly the 
empress of flowers. I admit that the Rose for brilliancy of colour and 
perfect sweetness of fragrance is not surpassed; but for stateliness, 
imperial majesty, and imposing splendour of aspect there can be no 
rivalry with the Lilium auratum. No flowers are more impressive in 
their perfect purity and beauty than Lilium candidum and Lilium 
longiflorum. How deeply we regret the absence of these when their 
season, always too transitory, has passed ; when, like the last Rose of 
summer, they are “faded and gone.” During their short-lived reign 
they seem to make the very atmosphere of our gardens more exquisitely 
pure. No picture can delineate the full expressiveness of their beauty ; 
they have a charm of sweetness most sacred in its meaning which no 
pen can describe, because they are the work of a mystic ineffable art 
our utmost efforts fail to find.— David R. Williamson. 
POCKET-BOOK NOTES. 
These jottings will not be of much account, they can be private if 
you like, but I thought I would write them just to say that this week’s 
Joxornal of Horticulture is more than usually interesting. Some 
numbers are so, at least they are so to readers, if not to editors and 
compilers. 
To begin. I enjoyed “An Anglo-American Day ” thoroughly, and 
in imagination formed one of the very pleasant company who had such 
“ a good day ” in such an unique round of visits. “ Orchids ” I do not 
indulge in, I am a spade and wheelbarrow man, and “ Spraying ” 
has not yet become one of my round of duties. 
The Rose correspondence I enjoyed immensely. It carried me back 
to the days of nearly forty years ago, when I showed my first Roses, 
large, full blown, and to me glorious, but which the Judges refused to 
look at, to my disgust and inward wrath. Fortunately for me a good 
rosarian, one of the best the midlands has produced, though only a 
working man, came across me in that state of indignation, and he most 
kindly but faithfully, very faithfully, as I felt at the time, showed me 
where I was wrong, and that Roses should be cut and staged in all their 
maiden loveliness ; or, as Mr. Charles J. Grahame says, page 73, quoting 
from the N.R.S. definitions of a good Rose, “ in the most perfeet phase 
of their possible beauty.” The lesson I never forgot. I trust Mr. 
David R. Williamson may be as benefited by the plain speaking of his 
brother rosarians as I was. Through a long life I have found that 
these friendly rebukes, though at the time somewhat hard to bear, 
are the best things that could come to us. 
“ Parsley for Winter and Spring ” is a timely little note. I always 
sow a frame, or part of it, of nine lights in which I grow my earliest 
Potatoes, with Parsley about midsummer, and the other part with 
Lettuces, &c., for winter a little later. This gives me an unlimited supply 
of Parsley all through the winter and spring. A friend and neigh¬ 
bour of mine always throws a pinch or two of Parsley seed about August 
on the soil of his orchard house, and thus gets over the difficulty of a 
scarcity of it in a hard winter. _ 
“Notes and Gleanings” I usually read first, and this week one of 
them gave me a shoek, for, though a near neighbour, I had not heard of 
the illness of Mr. Pithers of Chilwell, and the news of his death startled 
me. I can emphasise all you say of him and more, for he was one of 
the pleasantest of companions, not only in a gardening tour round his 
beloved Chrysanthemums, but also in a friendly professional confab 
with a few gardening cronies. Amongst these he could let himself out 
and give and take with the keenest enjoyment. 
_ “ Scarlet Runner Beans Not Setting.” This fact is rather prominent 
this season, and I think we must look to the absence of bees to account 
for it. I have amongst my gardening scraps notes of a paper by 
Professor Henslow given some years ago, in which he demonstrates quite 
plainly that this family of Beans must be pollenised by insect agency in 
this country, or they will be inevitably barren ; the construction of the 
flower making it so. This was only the case with respect to the Runner 
Bean, the form of the flower of the Dwarf Bean being quite different 
and self-fertilising. The subject is worth discussing. 
In 1855, in Sir Joseph Paxton’s days, I made the same journey from 
Sheffield to Baslow and Chatsworth which “W. P. W.” did, and I 
enjoyed going over the old route with him, in his visit to Chatsworth, 
our “ Palace of the Peak.” I have never forgotten that visit and never 
shall, and, though “W. P, W.” has seen, and will see, many other 
gardens, I do not think he will see another Chatsworth. By this, he 
and you will see that one person enjoyed reading pages 80 and 81. 
I must not go on, though the reports of the shows are deeply 
interesting, that of Trentham very much so. Reports of shows have a 
tendency to become monotonous and wearisome, but those of the Journa 
of Horticulture are exceptions, inasmuch as that the Editor allows the 
personality of each reporter to appear more fully and pronouncedly than 
do the Editors of other gardening papers. The blue pencil does not 
dash out all original expressions of opinion, thus leaving the report as 
if done by a machine, and therefore there is in their reports a freshness 
and brightness'often absent in others.—P. H. N. 
PECULIARITIES OF APHIS LIFE—EAST WINDS. 
I BEG to thank “ Entomologist ” for his note on this subject, on 
page 505 of the last volume. He is quite right in presuming I spoke of 
A. Pruni as the Plum aphis, although there was some difference of 
opinion as to the species when I introduced them at a meeting of fruit 
growers at Evesham, in February, 1890, from Prune Damson trees grow¬ 
ing in an exposed orchard. A gentleman who had a copy of Mr. 
Bnekton’s excellent work wrote me afterwards confirming my opinion. 
It cannot be too deeply impressed on the minds of fruit growers that 
these mothers of millions in future generations are exposed on the 
unopen buds at the base or neck, taking their nourishment at the only 
vulnerable point of attack, and that applications of strong insecticides 
will not injure the buds at that time. I have tried experiments on some 
trees, leaving others untouched, and as the seasons advanced the contrast 
was most marked. I do not, of course, deny that aphides take flight 
when at maturity, and spread themselves to “ fresh fields and pastures 
new ; ” but the general or popular delusion that they come from some 
mysterious place in the “ east winds” is exploded, so far as I am con¬ 
cerned. Many I have seen on flight on a warm still day, and the wind 
south-east; but the source is not far to seek on examining the back of 
the foliage of Plum trees. 
As an illustration as to the popular idea respecting this kind of 
blight, perhaps I may mention one case which came under observation 
about a month ago. A man who has a few acres of orcharding called 
on me. I asked him about fruit prospects, and his reply was to this 
effeet, if not in exact words, “ Oh, the Plum trees are all ‘ shrimed ’ up 
with blight, and the bloom all fell off. I wish you would come and see 
them, and tell me what I am to do.” I said it was too late to do much 
good, as the aphides were then inside the curled foliage. If he had 
attended the lectures in the village in February and March and seen the 
mothers on the buds and specimens under the microscopes as others did, 
and took action, he could easily have counteracted the attack to a great 
extent, if not entirely. As usual in such cases he commenced blaming 
the “ east winds ” in spring, yet, as everybody knows, we had less east 
wind and so-called “blight clouds” and more blight than usual, on 
account of the warmth and dry weather. I then pointed out Plum 
trees on walls east, west, north, and south all free from blight, or nearly 
so, saying at the same time if east winds were the cause surely it would 
have caught some of them. I next called his attention to the streaks of 
lime, soap, and petroleum below the branches, the residuum from the 
spring dressing, as the preventive to the “ east wind ” notion and where 
blights come from. I then took him into the house and showed him the 
viviparous mothers and their families of young wingless aphides in all 
stages of growth, remarking at the same time they could not have com« 
in east winds, as they had no wings to fly with from the mysterious 
unknown source. As this was his first acquaintance with a microscope 
he was much interested in the matter. At my leisure I gave him a 
call (three miles away), and found his orchard and garden trees in a sad 
plight from aphides and caterpillars of the winter moth. He called my 
particular attention to a Hawthorn hedge, which was blighted and brown 
as if scorched with fire for a distance of about 20 yards, he asking how 
I could account for that. I took off a few shoots with the curled 
foliage, and showed him the eaterpillars in the rolled leaves as they 
came tumbling out on being stirred. I again referred him to the east 
wind notion and blight, pointing out that almost to a foot the hedge was 
protected from the east winds by buildings where it looked so bad, and 
that the moths when laying their eggs must have been very careful not 
to expose themselves and their future progeny to its influence, and that 
the surrounding hedges exposed to east winds were free from blight. 
There is another popular idea respecting aphis attack that I do not 
agree with, over which I have had many contentions in a friendly way 
with some of the best gardeners—viz., their preference for unhealthy 
trees and plants. My experience is that they “ go for ” the best and 
most succulent, and that by degrees they bring the plants into the bad 
condition by sucking the sap to sueh an extent as to bring them into a 
decrepit state before they are noticed, or before steps have been taken 
to save the plants or trees. The worst attack I have met with from 
Aphis pruni I can safely say is at the Toddington fruit plantations, and I 
sineerely hope experiments will be made early next spring with Messrs. 
Stott’s killmright at the right time before the bloom is open, dressing 
alternate trees or definite lines, leaving others, and I have no doubt as to 
results in the following summer.—J. Hiam, Astwood Banli. 
NOTES FROM IRELAND. 
The Royal Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin, two miles north-east of the 
city of Dublin, are of easy access by tram which passes the gates, before 
reaching which. Prospect Cemetery, bounding the gardens on the south 
is passed. A conspicuous landmark is the lofty monumental tower mark¬ 
ing the last resting-place of O’Connell. In the Botanic Gardens many 
fine and rare trees and shrubs stand as memories of the late curator 
