190 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
[December 2G. 
Enrille .—A great favourite, being a noble looking 
fruit; flavour second-rate. 
These comprise the best in cultivation. 
Fruits. —If a healthful course of culture is kept up, 
and the stock clean to begin with, a most essential 
point, insects will rarely appear. Mr. Hamilton strongly 
recommends the following recipe for the “ cotton bug ” 
| and white scale:—Sulphur, 8 oz.; Scotch snuft, 8 oz.; 
J hellebore powder, 0 oz.; nox vomica, 0 oz.; Cayenne 
: pepper, 1 oz.; tobacco liquor, 1 quart. Add 1 gallon ot 
j boiling water, stir the mixture well, and when cool strain 
i it through, a rough cloth. The plants to be washed 
thoroughly all over, letting a portion run down to the 
bottom of the leaves. After the leaves are done, the balls 
must be reduced, and the roots and trunk well washed 
also. After the operation, the plants are set to drain, I 
and then repotted. Mr. Hamilton adds, that this appli¬ 
cation has never been known to fail. 
R. Errjngton. 
THE ELOWER-G ARDEN. 
Gravel Walks. — llle ego qui quondam, etc., is the 
opening phrase of a spirited pamphlet written many 
years since about gardening matters, and attributed to 
“ a good old English gentleman,” now known to gar¬ 
deners by the name of Dodnian; and that phrase is ap¬ 
plicable to the present subject, if thus paraphrased—/ am 
lie who, some eight gears ago, was quit to my wits'-ends about 
making walks. A summer storm once caused such a flood 
with us as carried down with it long stretches of the prin¬ 
cipal walk on the slopes and steep banks, and ploughed 
up the bottom soil into deep holes and trenches. This 
was the first flood of the kind I had witnessed in these 
gardens, and I was much alarmed at the enormous 
labour, to say nothing of the time and expense, ne¬ 
cessary to put the walks into good condition again; and 
the more so, when some of the older hands in the garden 
told me that such visitations were not of unfrequent 
occurrence. None of them, however, could say that he 
had seen such destruction before. The first thing I did 
after replacing the walks hurriedly, was to read all that 
was within my reach about making walks; and that is 
the best course to pursue when one gets into any diffi¬ 
culty. Whatever we may have known about the matter 
before, it is only when we really want information 
on a given subject that we can make the best use of it 
when we find it. Before I attempted a reformation in 
the construction of walks, I had read the substance of all 
that was written concerning them; and I have also read 
the most of what has been since said about roads and 
walks. Perhaps some of our readers may w'ish to hear 
the authors on whom I place most reliance ; and if my 
own account is compared with any of them, it will be 
found to be very different. Amongst ourselves as gar 
deners, or in our gardening books, there does not seem 
to be any one who ever thought of making a walk on 
the right principle; and all the modes recommended are 
too expensive by one half; taking the wear and tear 
with the weeding into the account. By far the best 
hints will be found in the writings of the road-makers. 
The most stirring account of road-making on record is 
by M. Thiers, where he describes the prodigious labours 
of Napoleon, and his engineers, in the passes of the 
Alps, to get his army across the Great St. Bernard. 
The best account of road making is by Sir Henry 
Parnell, in his Treatise on Roads; the last edition of 
which, I believe, was in 1838. The works he describes 
were begun in 1815, under Mi - . Telford and a Govern¬ 
ment Commission, on the Holyhead road. The principal 
features in these works suited to my present purpose, 
was the adoption of the old Roman way of paving the 
bottom of the road with large flag stones; and where 
the bottom was very soft, a layer of small stones was 
rammed in and then paved over. That, also, was a 
feature of the Roman practice. Mr. Telford did not 
fasten his flag stones with cement as the Romans did; 
therefore, I prefer McAdam’s plan of using small rough 
stones for a bottom : still I would not make a yard of 
road or walk after either of them. McNeill’s way of 
making the Highgate Archway road is the best account 
of the whole subject; but he, too, made that road at 
double the expense it might have been done for, and 
still be more strong and durable. His plan was to 
place a coat of Roman cement, mixed with a large 
quantity of the old gravel, over a firm bottom, and notch¬ 
ing the surface of the cement before setting, so as to i 
receive a coat of surface gravel better than if it was 
finished-off smooth. This was coming nearer to the j 
Romans. It has been stated that a piece of old Roman 
road on the side of a hill, had the foundation washed ! 
away, and still the road remained fit to bear carriages I 
passing over it with safety; and this, perhaps, nearly two j 
thousand years after the road was first laid down. 
One great and common error in all roads and walks, | 
as far as I have read, is that they have been made from 
twice to six times too thick, and of course the expense 
of materials and construction is increased almost in an 
equal ratio. The principle on which the thickness of 
either walk or road should depend, is the answer to this 
question. How much perpendicular weight is a square 
foot, or a square yard, able to sustain without in the 
smallest degree affecting the foundation on which the 
materials are laid? 1 cannot make out that this prin¬ 
ciple has been observed by any one, and I know it was 
not by the Romans. We have the angle of inclination, 
or the line of draught, calculated to a fraction, but of 
perpendicular resistance it has been all guess work, and 
yet it is the most important point. First, ascertain this 
point—that is, how much your road can carry, on what¬ 
ever kind of bottom, without injuring that particular 
bottom, and then allow ten per cent, in addition for ex¬ 
traordinary loads. After that, get at the easiest slope and 
curve, if you have to depart either from the level or out 
of a straight line ; that is the second principle:—and the 
third is, the nature of the materials to make the walk or 
road with. Then, as a matter of course, those materials 
which can bear the greatest wear and tear, will be the 
best to use, and the cheapest in the long run. 
Now, I do not think that I have erred in any of these 
points. I have, for the last eight years, given all the 
attention in my power to the subject, aided by the minds 
of all who studied the question before me, and I have 
also had proofs before my eye for the last seven years 
of how these points work in practice, and I am perfectly 
satisfied in my own mind of their importance, and of 
their effects. When I mentioned the subject inciden¬ 
tally in these pages last spring,'-I knew that we had 
nothing on the subject better than the older methods, 
since Sir Henry Parnell’s treatise; but I thought to my¬ 
self, seeing how simple the thing is, that some of our 
gardeners might have hit on it, and that I might be 
erring w'idely, by giving out as a novelty that which was 
the yearly practice of some other gardeners, although 
we had no account of it in print. And knowing at the 
same time, that almost all our first-rate gardeners read 
this work, I thought they would push in their plans 
before me in these pages, instead of which they went 
and played their cricket match in an adjoining meadow, 
and when I told them over the hedge that I did not like 
that way so well as my own, if I made use of any ex¬ 
pressions they did not like in their turn, I am sorry for 
it, and I now retract them. 
Shortly after this, or about the end of last April, I 
looked over some plans Mr. Barry the celebrated archi¬ 
tect sent for adding a new entrance front to the mansion 
here. His first proposition was to lower the ground for 
