32 THE COTTAGE GARDENER. April 15. 
matter of labour. Our readers may depend upon it, that 
prevention is much cheaper than cure, and assuredly less 
disastrous in its effects. 
The extirpation of the aphides the moment they 
appear we do hold to be the most important proceeding 
of the spring. He who commences operations the 
moment one appears may count on an almost perfect 
immunity until near Midsummer. Who would not, by 
a timely movement, cast overboard such a load of 
anxiety? There has been but too much apathy about 
these blood-suckers. I have not unfrequently heard 
persons exclaim, “Oh, ’tis only the green fly!” But 
they should please to remember that there is a very 
close connexion—strange to say—between aphides and 
naked walls, barren stems, and vitiated constitutions. 
Indeed, if there be one feature of improved modern 
gardening which claims more attention than another, it 
is the freedom from insects in these days of well- 
cultivated gardens. There is not now a first-rate gar¬ 
dener in England, who can either look at, or talk 
or write about, insect depredations with indifference. 
It is a great pity but that somebody who has plenty of 
of leisure would make up their mind to discover a 
cheaper remedy than tobacco. As for tobacco paper, the 
gardening world should at once set their face against it. 
The extortionate character of some dealers in it has 
become abominable. Eight-pence to ten-pence per It), 
for an article which used to be sixpence ! and when at 
the latter price and unadulterated six times as strong. A 
great portion of what is now sold is, we are informed, 
rough paper from paper warehouses, deluged in lamp¬ 
black water, to which a little tobacco juice has been 
added for conscience (?) sake. R. Ebkingion. 
EARLY HARDY BULBS. 
In the preface to the volume of The Cottage Gar¬ 
dener just concluded, we are ordered to keep this 
vessel well up in the wind’s eye against the trade winds. 
The meaning of that order I take to be this,—that the 
trade of book-craft might get other vessels afloat, steer¬ 
ing on the samo tack as ourselves, and that if we let 
any of them go a-head of us we might lose the first of 
the market. But I see no reason to fear, even if the 
I rench President himself were to come across our bows; 
and it the worst come to the worst, we could raise eighty 
thousand volunteers, without a Militia Bill, to defend 
our coast against all the trade winds within the compass. 
Let all the readers of The Cottage Gardener make 
notes on their spring flowers, send them to our helms¬ 
man for these pages, and the thing will be accomplished 
before May is out, and here is an example :— 
This very week I saw a pretty spring flower, which 1 
had not seen before for the last threo-and-twenty years. 
The owner called it the Dwarf Jonquil. It is dwarf 
enough, it is true, not more than four or five inches 
high, but it is no Jonquil, although it belongs to the same 
family—the daffodil tribe. All the true Jonquils have 
the leaves rounded like a rush, with a slight channel 
up one side. Narcissus gracilis is the nearest of them 
to the Jonquils; but the one that I saw is the true Ajax 
minor —a very old bulb, which was known, if not 
named, by Linmcus. (It is Narcissus minor in the Cot¬ 
tage Gardeners' Dictionary.) I think Mr. Appleby could 
furnish tho plant from this description. It flowers in 
March. There is only one flower on a stalk, and the 
stalk is not six inches high; the cup, or centre part of 
the flower, projects beyond the true flower; the leaves 
are glaucous, or milky green, very blunt at the point, 
flat on the upper side, and rounded below. It is one of 
the prettiest and most hardy of the family, and, coming 
into flower so early, is a valuable border plant, to be 
treated in all respects like the crocus, and would make 
a nice contrast in a crocus arrangement, being in flower 
at the same time. I saw lots of it in pots for forcing 
last Christmas, which came into bloom before the end 
of January, with merely the protection of a small green¬ 
house. This little bulb has a melancholy interest in 
my eyes; it was the very last bulb on which Dr. Her¬ 
bert experimented, endeavouring to get a cross between 
it and another slender-leaved one, which blooms at the 
end of the autumn, by keeping the pollen dry through 
the winter, till this bulb flowered naturally—according 
to an assertion in The Gardener's Magazine, to the 
effect that pollen of Rhododendrons might be gathered 
on the Alps of Thibet, sent over to England, and would 
be as effectual in crossing as if it were the produce of 
the next garden; but the bulb-experiment failed. 
There is no tribe of bulbs more deserving of extended 
cultivation than that of the more hardy Daffodil or 
Narcissus; and although there is no end to the varieties 
into which they have already sported, there is still 
ample room for improving them by a judicious course 
of cross-breeding. We owe all that we now possess of 
them more to accidental seedlings than to the labours 
of the cross-breeder, and there is nothing definitively 
known of how far the various sections of them will inter¬ 
breed with each other. All the finer kinds of them 
prefer a rich light soil on a dry bottom, but recent 
or fresh manure is poison to them; an elevated bed, 
on a south or well-sheltered border, would suit them 
better than any other, and very likely the more early 
kinds would seed and cross better in pots, under the 
same treatment as florists give to their fine auriculas 
and polyanthuses. If they were in pots, some of the 
later ones could be forced, and others could be kept back, 
so as to have a good assortment of them in flower at the 
same time, so as to provide fresh pollen for crossing; 
but any kind of pollen may be kept fresh enough for a 
few months, if it is kept quite dry in tissue paper. The 
only drawback to reserved pollen is, that if it does not 
take effect, we are apt to suppose that it is owing to its 
not being fresh, and we are not satisfied with the result 
of our experiment, although the chances are that the 
same pollen would fail if only gathered the same 
morning. 
The spring Cyclamens, the dog’s-tooth violet, Erythro- 
nium, and American cowslip, Dodecatheon, are highly 
deserving of being tried for crosses; they arc favourite 
flowers with every one. I saw several patches of the 
purple dog's-tooth violet the other day in a mixed border, 
and they were four feet or more from the walk ; an ex¬ 
traordinary bad arrangement, which must have been 
quite accidental. Some one had removed the roots when 
digging the border in the autumn, when their leaves 
were not up. There were six or seven other kinds of 
plants quite as much out of their proper places in the 
same border; and I mention this in order to point out a 
very common error in cottage or villa gardens, where the 
mixed border is too often planted in this huddled sort of 
way, which never fails to make a bad impression on 
every one who is at all acquainted with the natural 
habits of the plants. Now is a good time to begin to 
put such borders into regular order. A great part of 
our labour in The Dictionary must be lost to our readers 
if any of them could not tell, with that book in his 
hands, what place in a border every plant in it ought to 
occupy. A fair average of the heights, and the colours 
of the flowers, with the ordinary time of flowering, is 
given in that most useful work, and all this was intended 
by us to instruct our young readers how and where to 
plant all the more showy plants that are usually to be 
met with. All the little plants, as, for instance, the snow¬ 
drop, crocus, dog’s-tooth violet, Ajax minor, or the 
smallest daffodil, should go in a line quite close to the 
side of the border next the walk. Then, for parting the 
colours, for they are almost all in bloom at the same 
