January 30.] 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
2G0 
instance of the marsh must be the ruling guide. The 
surface of the clay must not be disturbed in the least 
degree; no straw to keep back the particles need be 
used; and smaller branches will suffice to set across the 
pathway. The use of the brushwood is, of course, to 
prevent the bottom of the walk from mixing or sinking 
into the clay, the surface of which and the bottom 
surface of the concrete ought to form two distinct faces 
or layers like two panes of glass, the one over the other. 
The great blunder in making and the enormous cost 
of repairing cross-country roads will thus be got rid of 
altogether. A parish surveyor, if his head has been put 
on the right way, will go to work with a new road like 
a philosopher until he comes to the laying on of the 
j “ materials,”—a ditch and bank on either side are made 
| as good, if in England, as they could be made any¬ 
where, if not much better. In Scotland these ditches 
and banks next to parish or other roads are all but 
unknown : the rents are too high in Scotland to allow 
them to waste the laud that way. While the ditch and 
bank are in progress, the bottom of the road, in recent 
times, gets a good inclination ; and if wet and spongy, 
it is drained herring-bone fashion—that is, right and left 
to either ditch from the back-bone or centre of the road; 
or, if there is but one ditch, a culvert or large pipe-drain 
is carried across occasionally under the bed of the road. 
All this, as far as it goes, is as it should be; but no 
sooner do the materials for constructing the road with 
make their appearance than surveyor, men, horses and 
all are out at sea—deep as “ ankle deep,”—but no 
matter: it is winter time, the men are employed, and 
the work is finished before the horses can get on the 
land ; and without grumbling at rates and other things 
they say of us as a nation we could not exist for a 
twelvemonth. The winter is the worst part of the 
whole year for making or mendiug roads or walks, 
except, perhaps, preparing the bottom, all necessary 
drains, raising or lowering the surface on either side—in 
short, all the requisite preparations except putting on 
the materials; and from March to the middle of May is 
the best time for making and laying the concrete, unless 
the weather happens to be wet, when it will be almost 
impossible to carry on the work without disturbing the 
bed for the road or walk. 
The next difficult kind of bed to form a walk on 
with precaution is stiff clay, without being wet, or, if 
a little moist, easy to drain to the sides. Here the 
brush-wood may be dispensed with; and if chalk is to 
be had reasonably cheap, a layer, two inches thick, to 
keep the concrete from fixing in the clay, is the best 
material; but in the absence of chalk, the walk should 
be made a couple of inches thicker than the standard 
depth of four inches, to guard against the possibility of the 
frost swelling the clay, which might crack the concrete. 
Any kind of soil that is retentive should first be formed 
on the slope both ways from the centre, before the con¬ 
crete is laid on, and if there are any doubts about wet 
reaching it, small cross drains should be laid at short 
intervals from the centre to the sides at right angles 
with the line of the walk, to communicate with the 
drains, which may be necessary for surface draining 
both sides of the road, and into which all the surface 
water from the walk must be led in the usual way if 
the ground is flat. The neatest way of managing the 
escape of the surface water that I have seen is that in 
the Royal Gardens at Kew; but the taste of the proprie¬ 
tor, as Mr. Kemp very justly remarks, should be allowed 
to sway this part of the details. In the flower-gardens 
and pleasure-grouuds here, where we count the walks by 
the mile, there is not a single drain necessary anywhere. 
Even on the flat surface of the level terraces we do not 
require them. At the present moment, and for the last 
two Months, we have hundreds of yards of new walks, 
from nine to twelve feet wide, in progress, besides two 
new handsome terraces, and one of the old terraces, to 
be remodelled, and up to this date I have seen no reason 
for a drain of any description. The whole are to be 
finished just as I have been describing in these letters, 
and we are so confident of our handiwork, that we should 
feel no uneasiness if we were told to-morrow that a mill- 
stream were to be let loose down the surface of any one 
of our sloping walks three days after it was finished; 
yet the greatest depth of gravel that will be laid on 
any of them will not be quite half an inch. The new 
road up the hill, which I have so often mentioned as 
proof positive of the strength and durability —or unweara¬ 
bility, if there is such a word,—has had another severe 
trial during the late damp muggy weather: a very large 
quantity of the Caen stone has been hauled over it in great 
blocks, averaging about five tons a-piece, by six horses, 
and on narrow wheels; and now that this hauling is 
finished, the half inch of gravel laid on last May to 
form a smooth surface for the wheels, scraped off the 
road, is now just as good and as firm as it was when the 
first load went over it. Another half inch of fine gravel 
put on before the surface gets quite dry, and rolled three 
or four times, will make it as smooth and fine as the 
best garden-walk in England; and its whole thickness 
is not a fraction more than five inches, and all the new 
walks will be equally strong for what is intended for 
their traffic ; but their thickness will not exceed three 
inches in any part, and on the average of the whole 
surface, less than half an inch of gravel will be all that 
will be used. The terraces I shall form a little different 
from the walks ; but I shall say nothing about them till 
they are finished. 
1 have said that the body of the walks should be 
made four inches wider than the walk is intended to 
be. There are many advantages secured by this plan. 
On level ground the rain-water collects along the sides 
in ordinary walks, sinks down there, and after a while 
feeds the sides of the turf so much, that the grass is sure 
to a 2 )pear more coarse than elsewhere; a bed is also pre- . 
pared for a crop of weeds, and the more you disturb it to 
get rid of them, the better the bed is jwepared for the 
next crop. When the edging-shears cuts the grass, you 
will find that the roots have disputed for the bed with 
the weeds, and instead of being able to sweep up the 
grass as easily as off an oil-cloth, you will be in a mess 
for nobody knows how long, striving to divide your loose 
gravel from the grass and weeds, and before all is 
over the chances are, that the temper will get loose 
and mixed like the mass. A couple of inches of solid 
stuff under the turf will do away with that branch of ; 
gardening; weeds cannot grow upon it, nor will roots 
from the grass edge strike into it. The grass is as short 
along the edges of the walk as on any part of the lawn, 
and unless the turf was cut very badly in the first in¬ 
stance, the depth of the sides will be uniform through, 
and need not be quite half an inch. Last of all, the 
extra width of concrete jirevents the rain-water getting 
to the bottom of the walk, which would be the worst 
part of the whole story. D. Deaton. 
GREENHOUSE AND WINDOW 
GARDENING. 
Chorozema. —To those who are experiencing the first 
symptoms of enthusiasm for the possession and culti¬ 
vation of beautiful plants, few things are more bewilder¬ 
ing than the names by which they are known, more 
especially if such persons have not previously received 
the rudiments of a classical education. Even with this 
advantage the difficulty is not at once or easily removed, 
even so far as the meaning is concerned ; for after 
bothering themselves, for instance, to find the meaning 
