October 19, 1893. ] 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
855 
- Death of Mr. W. Y. Draper. —We regret to hear of the 
death, on the 7th inst., at 14, Addison Crescent, Kensington, aged sixty, 
of Mr. William Yates Draper, the head of the firm of Messrs. J. W. 
Draper & Son, the well-known salesmen of Covent Garden. The funeral 
took place at Brompton Cemetery on the 11th inst, 
-WooLTOK Gardeners’ Mutual Improvement Society.— 
The concert in aid of the Library and Gardeners’ Benevolent Institu¬ 
tion which had been promoted by members of the above Society was held 
last Thursday, and was a great success artistically, and it is to be hoped 
financially. The gardeners decorated the room in a manner worthy of 
all praise. The chair was occupied by Holbrook Gaskell, Esq., J.P., 
Woolton Wood, who made a few appropriate remarks during the interval. 
- A New Solanageous Plant.—I t is stated that M. de St. 
Quentin, in the course of a voyage of exploration in Uruguay, has dis¬ 
covered upon the banks of several rivers a Solanaceous plant giving 
edible tubers in abundance, analogous to those of the Potato. Accord¬ 
ing to the Illiostration Horticole, the Horticultural Society of Marseilles 
has decided to offer a gold medal to the importer who shall introduce 
this new plant into Europe in a living state. Another gold medal will 
be decreed to him who shall obtain the first return or produce of the 
new plant in question. 
- Ripe Strawberries in October.—M r, G. Freeman, Akeley 
Wood, Buckingham, writes — “In last week’s issue (page 333) your 
correspondent Mr. Garner gives an instance of having gathered a dish 
of ripe Raspberries on the 4th inst. On going over my Strawberry plot 
on the 9th inst. I discovered several clusters of fruit, some of the berries 
showing colour ; trusses of flowers are also noticeable. The Strawberries 
were produced by plants that have already fruited in the open, and 
not by those that have been forced and planted out. It would be 
interesting to learn if other gardeners have experienced similar results.” 
- Mild October Weather,—A great rise of temperature 
was experienced over our islands on Friday last, and the following two 
days the air has been singularly mild and humid. On Saturday the 
shade temperature rose to between 60° and 65° in most parts of England, 
and in the course of that night scarcely any change took place, the 
minimum readings being in many cases as high as 58° and 59°. In 
London, where the thermometer did not sink below 58°, the night was, 
with one exception, the warmest experienced in the month of October 
for more than twenty years past. The only warmer night was in 1876, 
when the minimum on the 9th was as high as 61°. On Saturday last 
the maximum day and the minimum night temperature were identical— 
57° in Battersea Park, a circumstance that has not been previously 
observed by Mr. Coppin, the Superintendent. 
- OSTROWSKIA MAGNIFICA. —Apropos of the remarks of Mr. 
S. Arnott (page 282) regarding this plant the following, written by a 
correspondent in “Garden and Forest,” may interest readers. “Herr 
Max Leichtlin states that this plant was flowered at Baden-Baden in 
1877, where it is as hardy as a weed. It prefers a sandy, deeply worked 
soil, as it has thick brittle roots some 2 feet long. It was first dis¬ 
covered by Dr. A. Regel in Eastern Bokhara, and described in 1884. My 
plant has passed two winters safely, and has not appeared above ground 
until all dangers from spring frosts are over. It is four years old, now 
flowering for the first time. As it dies down to the roots soon after 
flowering it should have a position where it is not likely to be disturbed 
by careless digging, for though it is propagated by division of the roots 
it is not a plant which should be disturbed. My plant is in a position 
where it receives litttle moisture in late summer, but I do not know that 
this precaution is necessary.” 
- Large Soft Apples. — Having one of the best private 
collections of Apples nearly all on bush trees, at Maiden Erleigh, the 
samples cannot be excelled anywhere on trees of similar growth, 
Mr. Turton is in a good position to judge of the keeping merits of the 
diverse sorts this season, and he told me the other day when looking 
through his fruit room that all the large samples were keeping badly, 
and would soon be over. Thus it would seem that having had one of 
the finest Apple seasons of the century (Pears included) we should have 
to pay the penalty of finding all our largest fruits to be very fugitive in 
quality. This bears out what I have learnt in other directions. One 
famous Pear grower told me that he had found very fine Pitmaston 
Duchess Pears to waste 5 ozs. weight in a fortnight. Practically 
these large fruits are some 60 per cent, of water. That is what so 
rapidly wastes. Solid fleshed Apples, especially the small firm section, 
will keep very well. So also will Pears, but generally we shall see all 
varieties spoiling earlier than usual.—A. 
- Vegetables at the Drill Hall. —Hardy fruit having 
had such a good innings at the late meeting of the Royal Horticultural 
Society, we are pleased to learn that on Tuesday next vegetables are 
expected to be seen in fine form. Amongst others Messrs. Sutton and 
Sons will, we learn, exhibit a very large collection of Onions and other 
roots, and other kinds of interest. Vegetables are seen too seldom at 
these meetings, but few exhibits create more interest, or are of greater 
usefulness. 
- Belladonna Lily.—T he bed of the above Lily mentioned in 
the description of Grimston Park, Tadcaster, a short time ago (^viile 
Journal of Horticulture, July 20th) was, when I visited that place a 
little over a week since, in the height of its beauty. This bed is 35 yards 
long by 18 inches wide, faces the south, and is backed by the plant 
stoves and fernery. I counted 375 spikes, all in bloom, some with five, 
and one or two with six flowers on a spike. Only those who have seen 
such a sight can realise the grandeur of this flower, which, having no 
foliage as a background, has to rely entirely upon its own natural 
beauty to prove its claim to a place in gardens.—W. Clayton. 
- Runner Beans at Maiden Erleigh. —Calling upon Mr. 
Turton at these gardens the other day, I could but notice in walking 
round the truly wonderful crop of long handsome pods he had hanging 
upon very tall lines of Runner Beans in two diverse gardens. Asking if 
they were novelties, 1 was told that whilst one variety was Sutton’s Selected 
Scarlet Runner, certainly a splendid selection, the other was Sutton’s 
Prizewinner. Mr. Turton said, “ We have had a wonderful crop, having 
been gathering by bushels, and of either it would be difficult to find a 
handsomer, cleaner sample.” The Prizewinner had been sown at the 
usual time, middle of April, being employed to enclose an area usually 
occupied with hardwooded plants in the summer, and had gone up 
12 feet in height. The others had been sown a month later, and of the 
two were then the heavier cropped. Still on October 14th there were 
very heavy crops hanging on the row sown just six months pre¬ 
viously.—A. 
- CovENT Garden Supplies.—T he exceptional summer we 
have been getting seems to have had hardly so great an influence on 
Covent Garden supplies as might have been expected. Through the 
drought supplies of green stuff fell off enormously so far as our own 
market gardens within a short distance of London were concerned. 
The Superintendent of Covent Garden tells us (“ Daily News”) it 
frequently happened that the supplies from the grounds around London 
were fifty waggon-loads short of what they would have been with a 
normal amount of rain. But the falling-off in Fulham and Kent was 
to a large extent compensated for by an inflow from the Fens and from 
Yorkshire. The recent rains have, of course, rapidly brought on crops nearer 
home. The effect of this was manifest in last Saturday’s market, and 
prices will soon drop to a point at which it will no longer pay to send 
produce to London all the way from Yorkshire. 
- Very large consignments of Apples have come to London 
from our own orchards this autumn, and foreign supplies have been 
quite out of it. In scarce years we get large consignments of Apples from 
Germany, Belgium, Holland, and Denmark, as well as France. French 
growers send us some very fine fruit, and we can always do with some 
of their Apples ; but the other countries named grow chiefly very 
inferior fruit, and have no chance at all when our own orchards are 
fairly fruitful. We are getting some from France, but Worcestershire 
and Devonshire growers have of late years recognised the importance 
of growing only the finest kinds, and they are able to hold their own 
against all comers, and this year their consignments are very fine indeed. 
We obtain our late supplies from America ordinarily, and many 
Apples of very fine quality have been coming to us from Australia. 
Both have imported some of our best kinds, and have been successful in 
their cultivation, but English growers who have been careful and enter¬ 
prising are now holding their own against all comers. 
-The wisdom of the Bengal Peasant Cultivators finds 
expression in proverbs, of which a collection has been made by a Babu 
in the Agricultural Department of that province. His appreciation of 
the outwardly revered Brahmin betrays itself incidentally in the maxim, 
“ Rain and inundation disappear when south winds blow, like the 
Brahman as soon as he has received his fee.” Other Bengal rural 
aphorisms are : “ Have the land which receives the washings of the 
village, and the bullock which walks fast, and marry the girl whose 
mother is good.” “ He who works in the field himself with the labourers 
gets the full profit; he who, being unable to work himself, supervises 
the workings of the labourers, gets half the profit; he who orders the 
labourers from his house does not get enough to eat.” 
