331 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
I March 6. 
course, involves a liberal use of water, washing the floors 
and moistening the shelves daily. Cleanliness lias more 
to do with the health of vegetation, especially indoors, 
than people commonly imagine. 
And now for ventilation, which, although only in 
vulgar parlance “giving ah,” is yet of the very first 
importance. It is not merely suffering sudden accumu¬ 
lation of heat (of too violent a character to he safe) to 
| pass away: it is the purifying of the internal atmosphere, 
j by an agitating current, which should doubtless be, if 
i possible at all times, night as well as day, suffusing the 
internal area in a mild, equable, yet continuous way. 
The difficulty hitherto, has been to accomplish this 
without draught; for the latter, although a matter of 
necessity with the culture of the outdoor vines, (which 
are, it may be, cradled by the storm,) is, nevertheless, 
frequently prejudicial to those Tinder a highly artificial 
course of treatment, as all indoor vines of necessity 
must be. Having thus pointed to the main features of 
the “ air-giving” question, our readers must endeavour 
to work it out as a mere common sense affair. All we 
can add is—Pray do not scorch your vines; neither would 
we have them starved. Give a little air early, very early 
in the morning, especially at the back of your houses, 
soon after six a.m., if you please. Beware of fires left 
in over-night; pray pull them out, or put them in sub¬ 
jection, when you first give air; and if you want to get 
your grapes forward, apply what artificial heat is neces¬ 
sary principally between four and seven p.m. 
R. Erringtox. 
THE FLOWER-GARDEN. 
Evergreens. —How different are objects associated 
with the word “ evergreen,” compared with what we 
used to understand by it twenty years ago! Laurels, 
hollies, junipers, rhododendrons, and a few others, 
made up the whole sum of them; but now there is a 
legion of them, and yet we see people planting nice 
new gardens just as if no increase to this class of 
plants had taken place for many years. This afternoon 
I called on a medical gentleman, a great gardener, 
who within the last two years had been getting up an 
entire new place, house, gardens, and all; and he planted 
the whole with such of the best old fruit and ornamental 
trees as he and his nearest nurserymen happened to 
know between them, with the assistance of a friend or 
two; and the result is, that everything is good of its 
kind all over the garden, which, with the house, stands 
on rather less than an acre of ground. Now, if I had 
money enough to enable me to retire from planting 
cabbages, and had an acre of ground to plant for my 
own amusement, when 1 made up my list of ornamental 
trees and shrubs, there are very few families indeed of 
which more than one plant could be found in it; at 
any rate, unless it were for the purpose of a screen or 
hedge, I would plant no duplicates until I had the 
cream of all the fine things that could be had for love or 
money already planted. Instead of having half a dozen 
of this or that plant, I would have six different kinds of 
plants. On my way home I could not get rid of the 
idea of having actually an acre of ground to plant this 
way. The tea things were on the table when I got 
home, and the first thing which took my attention was 
the picture of the weeping willow on my plate—“ the 
willow pattern” as they are called. Well, then, from 
this incident, I go on to notice several new and very fine 
evergreens, suitable for planting in and about gardens, 
small or large. 
What all the rest of the world took for a weeping 
willow, on the porcelain and paper hangings of the 
Chinese, has turned out at last, and very recently, not to 
be a willow at all, but a most beautiful Cypress, an ever¬ 
green, a plant of which I have just looked at, and I have 
also read all that has been said about it; but in the des¬ 
cription of it I find a serious omission, which I must point 
out, lest I be called over the coals again, as in the case of 
the scarlet thorns, for setting our readers against the 
nurserymen about the Weeping Cypress of China, which 
is so familiar to all of us from the willow-like drawings 
on the china plates. The plants are not yet of an age 
to show this weeping habit; it is only when they are of a 
certain age that the side-shoots from the main branches 
hang down gracefully, while the main branches them¬ 
selves grow out from the trunk at right angles, and only 
weeping a little at the points as they advance in years. 
Old larch and spruce fir trees grow that way in many 
parts of this country. The trunk of the Chinese Funeral 
Cypress grows as straight as an arrow, like a spruce or 
silver fir; therefore, a person buying this most beautiful 
new evergreen might feel much disappointed at finding 
no tendency of weeping in it at present. It looks now, 
and will do so for some years to come, just like a juniper, 
or red cedar, with this peculiarity, that the very ends 
of all the shoots flag as if the plant was beginning to 
fade for want of water ; and this is a sure test to know 
it by. Endlicher, a much-lamented German botanist 
who died lately at Yienna, gave it a very expressive 
name—not penclulus, as we call our weeping plants—but 
funebris, signifying mourning—the Mourning Cypress, 
or Cupress us funebris; but the way they intend to call 
it here, is the Funebral Cypress, a very easily-remembered 
name. In China this name would have a double mean¬ 
ing ; and it may have the same here if we plant it in 
cemeteries and other burial-places. 
The first account we have of the Funebral Cypress is 
in Lord Macartney’s voyage, where it is mentioned as 
growing in a place called, “ The Yale of Tombs, near the 
tower of the thundering winds.” This vale is in Chinese 
Tartary, where the winters are much colder than in 
England: more like the winters at St. Petersburg than 
like ours, so that there is no fear about its hardiness in 
any part of this country. Mr. Fortune, who wrote his 
“ Wanderings in China,” sent large quantities of the 
seeds of it to England, and the plants will soon be as 
common and as cheap as the Italian Cypress, because 
they can be increased from cuttings quite easily, and no 
one who loves a garden ought to be long without it. As 
it grows after the manner of a spruce, and not spreading 
like a weeping willow, it will not require more room 
than a larch or spruce, although it will grow to 50 or 60 
feet high in good soil. It is very likely they keep some 
of it yet in pots for ready sale in the nurseries; and 
when one is bought that way, the best plan is to shake 
away all the mould, and spread out the roots at full 
length at the time of planting out, as we have always 
insisted on in such cases in The Cottage Gardener ; 
and the reason is, that roots confined in a pot will coil 
round and round in the ball, and if allowed to go on 
that way after planting in the open ground, the coiled 
parts would so increase in time as to act on the tree like 
a corkscrew, and turn it, sooner or later, out of the 
ground. 
The next best of the tall Cypresses is one called C. 
macrocarpa , or large fruited, from Upper California. 
Mr. Hartweg found it on the hills above Montez, growing 
to the height of from 60 to 80 feet; and says, when old, 
it has much the appearance of a Cedar of Lebanon; but 
in the young state it grows up with us as straight and 
as fast as the Italian Cypress. This very handsome tree 
has been in England these 12 years. It was introduced 
from Russia by Mr. Low, of the Clapton Nursery ; seeds 
of it having no doubt been sent from the Russian settle¬ 
ments on the north-west coast of America. The late 
Mr. 1 .ambert gave seeds of it also to the Horticultural 
Society in 1838, without knowing where it came from, 
and the Society called it after Mr. Lambert; but their 
