January 27,1887. ] 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
75 
“ Pleasures of a Garden ” in the first number of the year, and you can 
almost taste the Strawberries and hear the singing of the birds ; and 
read Mr. Horner’s “ Word Painting ” in the last issue, and you can see 
the colour flashes of the Tulips under the rays of the morning sun. Yet 
as a “Young Gardener’’ wrote a short time ago, there is no attempt at 
fine ” writing in these articles. Their beauty consists in the easy freedom, 
naturalness, and elegant combination of simple words. Whoever our 
“ Young Gardener ” may be, I think he carries an oldish head ; and 
whoever Mr. Edmunds may be, we shall look out for those other premised 
pleasures—“ Observations on Art in the Garden ; Science in the Garden ; 
and ever so much more.” As to Mr. Horner, there is a line at the bottom 
of his article on page 40, that all must be glad to see—“To be continued.” 
Of all florists’ flowers I think Tulips the grandest, and I live in the hope 
of some day having the privilege of seeing Mr. Horner’s brilliant group. 
“ A Scot,” on page 29, refers to the great loss of heat from pipes in 
mains, and asks for a remedy. The loss of heat, and consequently needless 
consumption of fuel, is very great in many gardens, through pipes being 
conducted in channels to the structures that have to be heated. The 
remedy is the more general use of fire-proof non-conducting coverings. 
Felt is used by some gardeners ; but asbestos and such heat-proof cover¬ 
ings as are employed by engineers for boilers and steam pipes are more 
effectual, and though I have seen these coverings used in gardens satisfac¬ 
torily in preventing the escape of heat from boilers and pipes I do not 
know how far the heat thereby economised justifies the cost of preventing 
its escape. Can anyone enlighten on this subject ? 
The subject of joints for hot-water pipes has been under discussion, 
and the relative superiority of iron filings and indiarubber rings alleged 
and denied. Perhaps they both have their advantages under certain 
circumstances. An instance of the advantage of rings may be recorded. 
The pipes in a glass structure were connected with them. Tbis structure 
was not heated duriDg the late severe weather, nor was the water drawn 
from the pipes, as it should have been, but was converted into ice. The 
pipes must inevitably have burst had the joints been of an unyielding 
nature ; but instead of that, the rings were simply pushed out of the 
sockets and the pipes remain sound. The pressure must have been 
immense, as the pipes had been fixed for many years. The displacement 
of the rings proves also the fallacy of the notion that lingers in the minds 
of some persons, that the swelling of the water which ruptures pipes 
occurs in consequence of the slight increase in temperature that melts 
the ice. They think it is the expansion of the water through the ice 
thawing that causes the evil; but it is not. It is the expansion that 
occurs in freezing, and the forced-out indiarubber rings may possibly 
impress the fact on the minds of those few readers who are still in doubt 
on the subject. The rings saved the pipes, and there was no leakage for 
a fortnight after they were driven out. 
But I must not forget Mr. Bardney. I am obliged to your corre¬ 
spondent for telling us he said what he did not mean in a sentence to 
which I referred on a former occasion. It is clear an explanation was 
needed. He now, on page 46, informs us what he intended to convey. 
Mr. Bardney evidently believes, if he has any belief at all on the subject, 
that if water is of any benefit in ashpits cold is better than warm water 
there. I am doubtful on the point, even in the case of solid bars; while 
if the bars contain water, and thus form part of the boiler, I fail to fee 
the advantage of “ cooling ” them if we want heat. There is no doubt, 
in my opinion, as to the value of such bars, and I am inclined to suspect 
that they add immensely to the heating power of a boiler. In the case 
of a saddle boiler it is conceivable they may increase its power by a 
fourth, and consequently save a corresponding quantity of fuel. 
But apari from such water-way foundation for the fire ^to 
rest on, I am not quite able to follow your correspondent 
in his bar-cooliog theory. I think I see what he means, but do not 
recognise the advantages of a stream of cold water passing beneath 
the fire. I suspect economy will be found in having the water warm, 
because the oxygen and hydrogen conveyed in the vapour renders less air 
necessary for feeding the flame. I think we want all the heat we can get 
in a furnace from the least expenditure in fuel, not a prevention of hiat 
for “ cooling ” the bars. It is not to this cooling, I think, that the 
beneficial results of wider spaces between the bars in Mr. S. Castle’s case 
is due, but to the more direct action of oxygen on the fire, which the 
closer bars impeded. 
Now to the problem. Mr. Bardney asks me if I can explain why a 
fire burns brighter on a cold clear frosty night than in dull mild weather. 
I think I know the cause, but am not sure it can be made intelligible in a 
few words, and if it can it will not, I think, strengthen our friend very 
much in the somewhat shadowy views he appears to entertain, for he 
would have found out long ago if he had tried the plan, that warm water 
under the furnace does not prevent that in ense glow on cold nights. 
When the weather is clear and frosty the barometrical pressure increases, 
more oxygen being comprised as it were into a given volume of 
air, and this causes the intenser glow of fires. Again, in the 
question of heat Nature is ever seeking an equilibrium, and if the air 
is heated in one place it becomes rarified, rises upwards, and the sur¬ 
rounding air rushes in to occupy its place, and the colder this is the 
greater is the rush. This it is that on a small scale causes the glow of a 
fire under those conditions, and on a larger, the land and sea breezes in 
the tropics and the equinoctial gales. Perhaps your correspondent would 
like a homely illustration. Had he been near a recent conflagration in 
Liverpool, and the night calm, he might have noticed that where the heat 
was most intense the wind blew from every quarter to the fire; if there 
were streets converging to it from every point of the compass, the cold 
air would rush down them all to fill the vacuum caused by the upward 
rush ©f the heated air, and it would not be checked in its course by the 
steam engines playing on the fire, nor will the vapour rising from water 
in ashpits prevent the glow of the fire above it on cold clear nights. 
I think most persons will be glad to see the unanimous election of 
Mr. D’Ombrain to the office of Chairman of the National Auricula, 
Primula, Carnation, and Picotee Societies, as the successor of the late 
Mr. Thomas Moore. Only a very experienced and ardent florist could 
fittingly follow so good a man, and Mr. D'Ombrain’s experience is perhaps 
unique, and his fidelity to the cause of flirists’ flowers has stood the test 
of many long years. I trust we will soon have the pleasure of seeing the 
debt of the Carnation Society wiped off. I am thinking of giving 5s. 
for that purpose, and trying to collect a few more in this way. “ The 
smallest donations thankfully received” by—A Thinkek (care of the 
Editor, 171, Fleet Street, London ). 
CAMPANULA ROTUNDIFOLIA FLORE-PLENO AND 
OTHER DOUBLE FLOWERS. 
On page 49 of the present volume of the Journal of Horticulture 
I read with some surprise that the double variety of the Scotch Blue¬ 
bell is considered a rare plant in gardens. I have had it in cultivation 
for about ten years, and as it produces seed abundantly, and a fair 
proportion of the seedlings produce double flowers, I have had such 
a surfeit of it as to neglect it, and perhaps now it hardly survives 
here. At one time I collected, not only in Britain but from several 
parts of Europe, all the varieties I could get of that remarkably 
variable species, C. rotundifolia; but I found the seedlings so 
insinuating and so difficult to eradicate amongst the stones of the 
rockeries that now I cn'y allow a few varieties to grow in privileged 
corners. The double variety, of which the commonest form, as in 
several other species of Campanula, has two corollas, one fitted inside 
the other, is often sold as C. soldanellee flora ; but from the same lot 
of seed plants are produced in which the corolla is repeated so as 
quite to fill the bell, though the doubling varies according to soil and 
cultivation. A curious form is often produced from the seed of the 
double flowers, in which the corolla is cleft quite to the base of the 
calyx, and consists of fine very narrow linear petals. This form is 
known to botanists. I have never seen a double of the white- 
flowered variety, though I have heard of it. 
Mr. Thomson is quite right in thinking the double form rare as a 
wild plant. I never heard of it being found wild before. The 
British plants which produce double flowers as wild plants are few ; 
I know only of three or four, but perhaps some of the readers of 
this Journal can add to the number. The plant which does so most 
commonly is Cardamine pratensis, which 1 have found growing 
double perfectly wild in two or three different counties. One spot is 
near Edge, in Cheshire, and the double plant ranges over a space of 
about half a mile square. The single form grows with it, and varies 
in shades of lilac, but the double flowers are all of one shade, making 
it probable that they are all the increase of one accidental sport. 
They increase freely by shedding the lobes of the leaves at a certain 
stage of maturity, which root and become plants. They do not ripen 
seed. 
Another plant is Saponaria officinalis, which I have occasionally 
found double on the banks of the Dee and the Clwyd in North 
Wales, where the single form abounds. A third is Ranunculus repens, 
which my friend, Mr. Brockbank, found growing in a meadow not 
far from Manchester. There were only a few double flowers, and he 
judged it to be a sport rather than a seedling, but it has continued 
true in cultivation ever since. The last I have to mention is the 
Daffodil (Narcissus pseudo-Narcissus), the dwarf wild form of which 
occasionally produces double flowers in seven or eight English and 
Welsh counties. 
The question of Daffodils doubling under certain conditions of 
soil and climate has frequently been discussed, as well as that of the 
large double garden Daffodil with the small wild Daffodil. 1 am not 
wishing to reopen the discussion here, but merely say that after 
paying great attention to the subject 1 find it impossible to draw a 
line between the double of the wild Daffodil and what is generally 
called the large garden Daffodil.—C. Wolley Dod, Edge Hall, 
Halpas. 
NAMES OF AURICULAS AND THEIR RAISERS. 
Auricula Campbell’s Green Edge. —The variety grown under 
this name was not raised by Mr. Peter Campbell of Falkirk. Having 
omitted to make careful inquiry—the first duty of a historian—your 
correspondent, on page 679 last vol., establishes the correctness of my 
conjecture as to this being Cunningham's unnamed flower. The " true 
