10 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
[ January 5, 1893. 
- Report op the Weather during December, 1892, at 
Hamels Park. —The weather during the past month has been of a very 
changeable character, commencing with hard frost and some light falls 
of snow ; then came a few days of very mild weather, to be again 
succeeded by hard frosts, which have continued up till the present time. 
On some mornings 21° of frost were registered on the ground here 
during the latter part of the month. Rain fell on eleven days during 
the past month. Maximum mean any twenty-four hours was 0 42 on the 
Ist; minimum mean any twenty-four hours, 0 01 on the 11th ; total 
during the whole month, 1'73, against 3'46 of 1891.— E. WALLIS, The 
Gardens, Hamels Park, Buntingford, Herts. 
- Preserving Whole Tomatoes.— We have had inquiries for 
a method of preserving Tomatoes without the admixture of ingredients 
that would affect their flavour. An Aldershot correspondent has sent 
the following recipe to Mr. G. A. Sala’s interesting journal. The 
method, it appears, is adopted in Malta. “A thick layer ot dry salt 
is placed in the bottom of a packing case, in which the Tomatoes are 
embedded, leaving a space of an inch or two between each fruit. Salt and 
Tomatoes are placed in alternate layers until the box is full. It is kept 
in a dry place, and the fruit keep well, turning out with a very slightly 
wrinkled skin, otherwise as bright as when plucked from the plants 
Ripe, but not overripe fruit should be selected.” The only failure was 
through overripe fruit bursting, and it is also essential that the salt 
should be dry. The recipe is worth a trial. 
- A Heavy Crop of Potatoes. —Writing recently to a local 
newspaper, Mr. G. Harris, gardener, Alnwick Castle, Northumberland • 
says:—” We had such a fine crop of several varieties of second early 
Potatoes in 1891 that I was curious to know how much per acre was 
produced. The result was over 15 tons. Again, in September, 1892, the 
crop w'as extra fine. The Potatoes were carefully weighed, and the 
result was over 19 tons per acre from several varieties, with scarcely 
any disease and very few small tubers. This was not an experiment, but 
the ordinary course of gardening. There had not been Potatoes grown 
in either of these divisions for several years previously. There is a large 
quantity of humus in the form of decayed stable manure, certainly not 
rich in itself, in the land. A quantity of wood ashes, soot, and a general 
artificial manure had been applied to the previous crop. A light dress¬ 
ing of lime was given in each case when the ground was trenched during 
the winter before planting, the soil left rough in ridges to be pulverised 
by the frost. The latter plan is not sufficiently acterl upon by allotees. 
In the spring the land was levelled down (end of March), and the Potatoes 
planted in rows, 2 feet apart by 15 inches in the row, inserted about 
4 to G inches with a dibbler. Long stalked Potatoes require more room 
than this. If we could grow 10 to 14 tons per acre more frequently over 
the country, we should be able to export instead of import.” 
- Flavour and Yellow Flesh in Fruits.— Can anyone 
who is capable of elucidating this interesting point tell us what 
affinity there is between flavour and the yellow tint found in fruits and 
vegetables ? It is true that there is very little indeed of yellow in Pears 
or Melons, but then relatively how comparatively little of flavour 
On the other hand, the richest of flavour found in fruits is perhaps in 
Pine Apples and Apricots, the yellowest of fruits, or in golden Plums, 
especially those of the Gage section. But the yellow tint in alliance 
with flavour is perhaps most marked in Apples of all fruits, for the 
simple reason that the greater portion of these fruits are white fleshed, 
whilst the yellow fleshed sorts always show the finest flavour. The 
very same thing is found in Potatoes, for whilst the bulk are of white 
flesh, the most pleasing varieties when cooked are those which have 
yellow tinted flesh. Then, if we turn to Vegetable Marrows, we find 
the same thing evidenced, and there are for flavour none so good as the 
yellow flesh Squashes, although in these, as also in the case of Turnips, 
yellow is a tabooed colour. The golden or yellow Turnips of the 
garden section are much more highly flavoured than are the common 
white ones. It is even held that yellow Tomatoes are superior to red 
ones, but in that case the colour is not so pronounced, being chiefly 
skin deep. The Golden Muscat of Alexandria Grape still ranks amongst 
the highest flavoured of that fruit, while if yellow-skin Peaches are not 
regarded as of such high flavour as red ones, we find green fleshed Melons 
usually of higher flavour than are white or scarlet fleshed sorts. 
Naturally it is not possible to lay down any hard and fast rnle in 
relation to flavour and colouration, but the many cases quoted serve to 
show that some connection between yellow flesh and flavour is apparently 
evident. Most certainly the richest and most luscious of fruits, the 
Pine Apple, is yellow throughout, and of stone fruits the yellow 
Apricot and Golden Gage Plum find no superiors.—A. D, 
- Glass Labels. — I have used, writes Max Leichtiin in the 
Garden and Forest, in the boxes where I keep my rarest plants glass- 
labels, with good results. They are made of milky glass, which is dipped 
in some acid to take off the gloss and thus produce a soft surface, which 
is very agreeable to write upon. The names traced with a hard pencil 
stand the weather well, and the labels look like porcelain and are 
perfectly clean. By rubbing with emery paper, sand, and water the 
writing can be perfectly effaced and the label used again. This form of 
label, however, has one great disadvantage, that is, a brittleness which 
makes it very liable to break. 
- Spraying Apple Trees. —The question as to the danger of 
poisoning resulting from the use of Paris green on fruit trees has been 
tested in Canada. At an experiment farm a peck of Apples was taken 
from a tree that had been sprayed twice with Paris green at the rate of 
1 lb. to 200 gallons of water. They were gathered carefully, and 
analysed without rubbing or wiping. If there had been a fatal dose— 
2^ grains of arsenic in 23,000 bushels—they could have detected it, as 
they can find l-50,000th part of a grain, but they failed to find even a 
trace of it in the peck. From this one may infer that with due care no 
injurious results are likely to accrue from its use, whilst a crop may 
often be spared if spraying is judiciously performed. 
- Messrs. Bobbie & Co.’s Social Meeting. —In the Lesser 
Public Hall on the 30th ult. there assembled a company of about ninety, 
over which Mr. Wm. Cuthbertson presided. The occasion was the 
annual social meeting of the employes of Messrs. Dobbie & Co., seeds¬ 
men, and friends. The Chairman was supported by Mr. Robt. Fyfe, 
Bailie Burness, Mr. James Dobbie (founder of the firm), Mr. Andrew 
Mitchell (manager of the firm’s seed farm at Beaulieu, Hants) ; Messrs. 
S. Jones and R. Smith, heads of departments at Rothesay, and others. 
Mr. Cuthbertson, in his opening address, said he believed the horticul¬ 
tural trade was on the eve of a very great development. There was a 
cry for fruit culture, small holdings, and allotments, and it might be 
the duty of the horticulturists.to take from the land that successful 
result which the farmer had failed to secure. He concluded with a few 
words of compliment to Mr. Dobbie and the expression of the hope and 
belief that if all the employes and the heads of the firm continued to 
do their duty there was nothing but prosperity in store for them. 
- Fertilisers and Soils.—A series of investigations on soils is 
in progress at the Maryland Agricultural Experiment Station, in 
co-operation with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Johns 
Hopkins University. So far the work has been on the physical 
structure of the soil and its relation to the circulation of soil water, and 
the physical effect of fertilisers on soils as related to crop production. 
The surface tension of various solutions was first of all determined. 
The solutions chosen included common salt, kainit, superphosphate of 
lime, soil extract, and ammonia. The soil extract was made by shaking 
up a little soil with just sufficient water to cover it. The water was 
afterwards filtered off and used for the determination. This operation 
reduced the surface tension of water considerably, but the experiments 
do not appear sufficiently complete to indicate reasons for this. 
Analyses of the soils are not given. Ammonia and urine lowered the 
surface tension of water considerably below that of the soil extract, and 
still more below that of pure water. Common salt and kainit increase 
the surface tension of water, and no doubt, says “ Nature,” this is the 
reason why the application of these substances to the soil tends to 
keep it moist, whereas the excessive use of nitrogenous manure has the 
reverse effect. 
CAMELLIA SASANQUA. 
No little interest w'as aroused at the last meeting of the Royal 
Horticultural Society by the exhibition ot the Japanese Camellia 
Sasanqua by Messrs. J. Veitch & Sons, and a first-class certificate was 
awarded to it. The plant is not of quite recent introduction, having 
been sent to the Chelsea firm by Mr. Maries some fourteen years ago, 
but in all probability it was new to the majority of the visitors to the 
Drill Hall on the occasion referred to. 
Camellia Sasanqua (vernacular name Sasank’wa) was first made 
known to science through Thunberg towards the end of the last 
century. It occurs wild in Kinsin, the southern island, and is culti¬ 
vated farther north. The wild plant is an upright shrub from 5 to 
10 feet high, flowering from December to February (Siebold). 
At Coombe Wood Messrs. Veitch & Sons find C. Sasanqua much 
hardier than the ordinary Camellias, and it also sets its flower buds 
much more freely. This is a point that is well worth bearing in mind. 
It is worthy of trial as affording variety in a collection of climbers out 
