May 15, 1890. ] 
JOURXAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
403 
I cannot think that in this case the injury has been done by the destruc¬ 
tion of hawks. Sparrows constantly hanging about houses are pretty 
well protected from birds of prey, and if hawks abounded in sufficient 
numbers to keep down sparrows we might have the Green Peas perhaps, 
but very few young ducks and chickens, I fear, to eat with them. No ; 
the balance of Nature has been interfered with in their favour by the 
artificial housing and feeding of sparrows. We provide them in our 
houses, our Ivy, and our barns, &c., with comfortable roosting and nest¬ 
ing places, and we feed them in winter by allowing them acce.ss to the 
food supplied to animals and fowls. And the fault lies, I think, 
an the apathy with which farmers, and perhaps others, view what 
aeems to them to be small matters, and to some extent in a 
sentimental feeling, excellent in itself, against destroying nests 
with old birds and eggs or young together. It seems rather 
strange that a farmer should complain and “write to the papers,” 
and employ boys with guns to scare the sparrows from his corn, 
when he has quietly allowed them to breed by scores during the 
spring and summer all over his premises, pulling about and 
spoiling his thatch before his very eyes ; but it is so. 
I was present the other day at the threshing of a Wheat stack 
where there were very few rats but hundreds, perhaps thousands, 
of mice, though white and brown owls breed within half a mile. 
Neither the farmer or his men took much heed of them, or 
seriously attempted to destroy them, though showers of chaff, 
attesting the damage done, poured from every sheaf lifted. 
They escaped by scores into the straw, though my boys killed 
some hundreds. And are there not a good many farmers who 
look upon rats as small matters, not worth the trouble of 
destroying unless they make a really great show? I was walking 
with an old gamekeeper a good many years ago by a stack and 
hedgeside where the presence of a good many rats was very 
■evident, and on my saying what a pity it was to let them do 
so much harm, he answered, “Harm, sir? Oh, no ! Dear little 
things! they don’t do any harm, bless you, not they 1 while a 
poor innocent rabbit, sir,” &c., &c. He “ spoke in bitter jest,” 
and also, of course, to a large extent in party spirit; but while 
fully recognising the great injury rabbits are capable of doing, 
I could not help thinking that he had some cause for his 
■“chsflf,” and I was, and am, surprised that farmers take so little 
trouble to utterly destroy rats. To this desirable end I believe 
there to be only one royal road, and that is, first, to employ a 
professional ratcatcher, and, secondly, to pay him on the same 
principle on which the Emperor of China is said to pay his 
physician : while the emperor is well, the physician gets a fair 
salary ; when he is ill, off comes the doctor's pay ; and when he 
•dies, off comes the doctor’s head. Pay the ratcatcher a very 
small but regular salary as long as there are no rats, and stop 
it on the first appearance of a rat till it is caught. 
In the destruction of rats and rabbits there is one individual 
that is far more desirable and difficult to catch than the others, 
and that is the last one. By the present system of paying rat¬ 
catchers the very rat you want to get is the one he wants to 
keep alive ; by the other system he would be as anxious for it 
as you are, as it would be the only one he would get anything 
for. Of course, it would be desirable, if not necessary, for 
occupiers to combine over a considerable area. One man would 
'then eventually have charge of a large district for a very 
small fee from each occupier, which would act as a kind of 
insurance against rats. 
I hope we shall not have to come to this with sparrows ; but 
at any rate every gardener may seriously lessen his own injury 
by regularly and properly looking after the nests. With a little 
care and practice the hen bird may generally be caught on the 
nest at night, and though this sounds cruel, it is surely not so 
bad as the use of poison, which would cause the young to die 
•of starvation.—W. K. Raillem. 
with darker veins, the sepals and lower petals being ivory white. 
The unfolded lobes of the lip are white beautifully spotted with 
bright rose, and this gives a peculiarly distinct and pleasing appear¬ 
ance to the flower. 
This grand hybrid was named in honour of the Barone^ 
Schroder, and in the collection at The Dell Gardens a fine speci¬ 
men is grown, which has been shown on several occasions in first- 
rate condition. 
FIG. 60.— CYPEIPEDIUM SCHR(EDEK.B. 
CyPRIPEDIUM SciIRfEDER.E. 
Severai, handsome hybrids have been obtained in what is often 
■termed the Sedeni seetion of Cypripediums, but that of which a 
flower is depicted in fig. GO—obligingly lent by Messrs. J. Veitch 
and Sons, Chelsea—is one of the best and most distinct. It resulted 
from a cross between C. caudatum and C. Sedeni. effected by 
Mr. Seden in the Chelsea nurseries, and presents an interesting 
-combination of characters, •while surp.ossing both in floral attrac¬ 
tions. The flowers are large, being folly 4 inches from the apex of 
the dorsal sepal to the base of the lip, the petals being 4 to 6 inches 
long, half an inch broad at the base, tapering and twisting to the 
points. The colour is rich rose, is strongly marked in the fine | 
rounded lip ; a similar tint but slightly lighter is seen in the petals I 
PROGRESS "WITH VEGETABLES. 
Part 1 of vol. xii. of “The Journal of the Royal Horticultural 
Society” recently issued forms a volume of 232 pages. It contains 
the papers read at the Vegetable Conference and the Chrysanthe¬ 
mum Centenary Conference last year, together with reports of the 
Society’s Committee meetings and list of plants certificated. Under 
the Chrysanthemum report the returns from eighty-seven voters have 
been tabulated by Mr. Molyneux, and lists of varieties suitable for 
different purposes are thus furnished. 
From the report of the Vegetable Conference we extract the follow¬ 
ing remarks by the Chairman, Mr. H. J. Veitch, at the opening of the 
Conference, and dealing with ths progress in vegetables. 
While decorative plants and flowers, in all their varied forma and 
