154 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. [December 5. 
Coals (2j- chaldrons a year, @ 48s.), and wood, 
£ 
K. 
D. 
2d. per week, average. 
0 
2 
3 
Candles, on an average all the year round, per 
week. 
0 
0 
4.1 
Soap (\ If) per week on an average, @ 6d.), starch, 
and blue . 
0 
0 
5 
Sundries, for cleaning, scouring, &o . 
0 
0 
5 
Total of household expenses .. 
1 
0 
n 
For clothes, &c... 
0 
0 
A 
0 
4 
0 
Schooling, and incidental expenses. 
0 
1 
9 
Total expense. 
1 
13 
Saving (more than l-12th) .... 
0 
5 
Amount of income 
. 
1 
19 
0 
By maintaining the same quantities and prices for the 
] articles of butter, tea, sugar, and candles, which have been 
allowed by my calculation in the previous Estimates, and 
I which are, as I have before stated, less in each item than in 
the original, the difference in saving between my Estimate 
and that from which I transcribe it is 2s. 4§d. This is a 
material saving in one week; and the proportion has been 
very much the same in those already given. But as incomes 
enlarge we are readily disposed to think our expenditure may 
enlarge in the same ratio; and by this means we seldom 
find the benefit we might do from easier circumstances. 
With £100 per annum, if we practised in non-essentials 
the same self-denial that we did with £70, we should find 
ourselves in pocket at the end of the year; and the increase 
of income is yet so little, that it does not justify our indulg¬ 
ing in any material point, beyond that which was allowable 
in the earlier Estimates. If any increase may be considered 
justifiable, it is in meat and firing, because warmth and a fair 
supply of animal food, if they can be lawfully enjoyed, are 
beneficial to health ; but we should very narrowly and. keenly 
examine our circumstances and ourselves before we relax 
any of our rules. I do not mean to inculcate parsimony and 
illiberality—nothing is further from my thoughts, but with 
small means it is our bounden duty to expend them well; 
and nothing that savours of self-indulgence can be termed 
doing well. The future, and indeed the present, wants of 
children should be most carefully provided for; education is 
always a heavy expense for boys, and it is also one of ex¬ 
treme importance. Daughters may be brought up and trained 
by their mother’s side ; but it is very rarely that a father can 
conduct the education of his sons; and a good general 
education for the sons of the poor, among the upper classes, 
prepares them well for whatever situation may offer, when 
their age permits. It is far better to lay by any overpins for 
such a purpose as this, than to spend it upon present 
gratification, however lawful it may appear. 
There is one item which I have always inserted with 
extreme reluctance, because it appears to me to be wholly 
unnecessary, as well as very expensive—I mean beer. At 
the lowest computation Is. 2d. per week is allowed for beer; 
and in a weekly income of only one guinea, what a serious 
sum is this ! and what a considerable addition it would make 
to the little portion saved each week from the narrow means! 
It is so much the custom of the present generation to fancy 
they cannot live without beer, that in every Estimate, how¬ 
ever small, twopence a day is quietly set apart for the 
purpose, without a thought being given as to the propriety 
or possibility of doing without it, and to very many even that 
allowance will seem distressingly small. But when we look 
round among the labouring classes, and see how well steady 
men work, and work for years too, without tasting beer, the 
better classes need never complain of the deprivation, whose 
food is of so much more nourishing a kind, and so much 
less limited in quantity. I am not now alluding to those 
whose constitutions, from delicacy or disease, require a 
degree of stimulus, and even in such cases I think it 
probable that other treatment would produce a far more 
beneficial result; but I am speaking of those whose health is 
good, whose strength is in full vigour, and whose means and 
families demand that the strictest economy should in every 
| thing be maintained. 
I have frequently been disturbed at hearing ladies whose 
worldly circumstances required no exertion, and who had not 
even the fatigue of a young family to encounter, say, with the 
utmost seriousness, “ Oh, I must have my beer! I cannot get 
on without my beer,” and at the same time wonder why they 
always felt oppressed and uneasy after their luncheon and 
dinner, and so frequently suffered from disordered stomachs. 
So coarse and heavy a beverage can rarely be needed for 
“my sisters.” Those who are in the habit of using it 
would feel themselves immeasurably benefited by its discon¬ 
tinuance, and where expense is to be strictly avoided, 
scarcely any article can be so conveniently and profitably 
dispensed with. When the mother and children are prac¬ 
tising the utmost moderation in the use of food needful and 
proper, and the father is indulging in that which is, at best, 
superfluous, there is a wrong principle evidenced, and want of 
thought, at least, is strongly apparent. 
For the benefit of those whose health absolutely requires a 
stronger beverage than that sweetest and simplest, and most 
wholesome element, water, I will in my next paper give a 
receipt for a cheaper and far less mischievous beer than 
that which can be purchased, or is usually brewed at home ; 
but I earnestly desire to impress upon my particular readers 
the entire practicability of doing without it, and the very few 
cases in which it can ever be considered as either necessary 
or useful. 
VINEGAR PLANT. 
I have used it for Reveral years, and think it far exceeds 
any vinegar I can purchase in flavour. We pickle with it 
radish pods, onions, cabbage, vegetable-marrow, cucumbers, 
&e. It may, perhaps, be useful to some to know that we 
have found it much improved by boiling one stalk of rhu¬ 
barb in the water when making it.— T. Thorpe. 
TO CORRESPONDENTS. 
*** tVe request that no one will write to the departmental writers of 
The Cottage Gardener. It gives them unjustifiable trouble and 
expense. All communications should be addressed “ To the Editor of 
The Cottage Gardener, 2, Amen Corner, Paternoster Row, London.” 
Oyster Plant. —We had dozens of applications for the seed of this, 
many of them without postage stamps; and we take this prominent 
opportunity to say that we never had any of the seed, and that if our 
correspondents had read attentively they would have discerned that the 
lady who applied, as noticed at page 106, wished some one would send 
seed to us for her. 
Flower-beds (F. X. Y.). —The composition of your flower-garden is 
exceedingly good and rich, and the planting no less so. Beds 19 and 29 
would be much improved by a patch of the Gladiolus psittacinus between 
each moss and cabbage rose, and would look gay after the roses were 
over; or if every other rose in 19 was Geant des Batailles and Buron 
Prevost, the same in 29, you would have the nearest colours to the roses 
now in use, and flowers to November. The Baron is nearly as sweet as 
any of the old roses. 21 and 25 might be emptied late in July; the 
carnations would easily transplant, and Tagetes tenuifolia just coming 
into bloom transplanted, and these would be very rich till hard frost set 
in, and would always carry the eye across the garden in that direction : 
threepence-worth of seeds sown in the*'kitchen-garden about the first of 
May would fill them. Emma and Barherii do not look well together; 
they want a brighter colour between them ; we would change Amathystina 
from the opposite side for one of them. What a splendid mass you have 
collected into this group, and how well 15 and 17 balance them, and the 
whole garden. You are not an apprentice in planting flower-gardens, at 
any rate ; but what a slow process to learn! 14. Plant one half of this 
bed with Verbena Amathystina, or, which is better, Duchess d'Aumaule, 
that is, every alternate plant save the outside row ; and when you see the 
effect let us hear how you like it. Your plan of writing the names of the 
plants, and the numbers on the beds, makes it the easiest to us ; and a 
list of names on the corner of a plan is the next easiest. 
Flower-beds (Y. Z .).—You have confused your list by writing it 
higgledy-piggledly in the body of your letter. Always write the names J 
of the plants by themselves under a b c, &c., or 1 2 3, or put the same 
letters or numbers on the beds ; but F. X. Y.’s plan, as above, is the I 
best, as then one can in imagination almost sec the plants growing. 
Your garden is on the true geometric Dutch style, and a very, pretty 
example of that school, and always the easiest for beginners to plant. 
Planting standard roses (3) in the centre of intersecting walks is new to 
us, but we like it much. The Irish yews (1) are also much to our taste. 
You must keep the rhododendrons (4) in neat trim to harmonise with the 
rest. Antirrhinums will live out the winter, unless your ground is wet, 
and so will Penstemons. The centre group (J. K. N, O.) are the beds 
