THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
112 
May 20. 
and warm dung and leaves. The temperature of this 
material has ranged from 70° to 90° all the spring. 
We may now advert to the materials for “top-dress¬ 
ing,” seeing that it is not simply organic matter, as in 
the mulching. Loam: a free turfy loam from an old 
pasture, should form one-half the compost in most cases; 
much allowance should be made for the character of the 
soil beneath, and of the subsoil. If the latter is natu¬ 
rally damp and retentive, the compost should, in all 
j cases, be of a lighter character, that is to say, either a 
I greater amount of sand in the loam, or sandy material 
j added to the mass. If a dry and poor subsoil, loams of 
J a sound character, with less sand; and so on. It must 
| here be understood, that very good composts may be 
J made without a particle of loam; any ordinary soil of 
good staple will do, but not prove so durable as the 
loam. One-lialf soil, and the other compounded of any 
half-decayed vegetable matter, with some dung from 
the last year’s hotbeds, will make a good compost, and 
may, in all cases of need, be applied from four to six 
inches in thickness. Our practice is to apply it in a 
dry state, or, if not so, to spmead it until dry, and then 
to tread it firm. Some persons may wonder why tread¬ 
ing should be resorted to ; the fact is, loose soils placed 
in thin layers over a solid substratum are very incon¬ 
venient to walk on in showery periods; the surface¬ 
dressing is apt to clog to the heels of any one operating 
on the trees, and this, of course, deranges the texture of 
of the top-dressing. Trodden firm when dry, these 
inconveniences are obviated. R. Errington. 
HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY’S SHOW, 
MAY 8th. 
However we may differ on some points, or value 
the excellence of this or that arrangement of flowers, 
or other things, there is one point in a subject in 
which we are all deeply interested, and about that 
point very few indeed will be found to disagree—the 
best dish or the best dinner that can be cooked and 
sent to table will spoil the appetite, if it is continually 
presented before you. The proprietors of The Cottage 
Gardener felt something of this, relative to the reports 
of the great shows round London. First of all, they 
devoted a supplemental number to their first report. 
After that the most approved forms of the reports were 
given in a less stylish fashion, but still very correctly, 
and at great length, over and over again. Whether it 
was the Great Exhibition of last year, or the dry easterly 
winds of this, I cannot tell, but so it is, we have all 
come to the conclusion, that each report of this season 
shall be given in a running commentary, without taking 
heed as to who had the best load of medals, or who 
went away grumbling without any medal at all; and 
when the lots were drawn, I was in for it, for this 
season at any rate; but for fear that 1 should scald the 
florists who cook their own flowers, if not their dinners, 
Mr. Appleby undertook to see that as much justice shall 
be done to them, as if they were growers as well as cooks. 
He went in early, and finished before I arrived, and I 
had the benefit of his patience and counsel for the rest 
of the day. 
To begin at the beginning. The members of the Hor¬ 
ticultural Society, among other privileges, have that of 
entering their garden on show days some time before 
the public, through a new gate in Chiswick Lane. I 
was too soon there, but the place was blocked up then; 
lords, ladies, commons, and cads, under no provisional 
arrangement but universal suffrage, and if His Royal 
Highness Prince Albert and Lord John Russell had 
arrived a quarter-of-an-liour sooner than they did, they 
would have seen that system in full force, and in broad 
day-light. When the gate was opened at last, the scene 
was beyond description. Mr. Dickens’s sea sickness 
going to America was nothing to it; no, nor even 
getting your ticket at the Eastern Counties Railway | 
Station in Bishopsgatc-street. The arrangement is 
altogether most foolish and most dangerous, and must 
be given up; a black-leg or a blue-stocking could get 
in as easily as I did, if his ribs were as strong as mine. 
I wrote my name over the left arm of a member of the 
House of Lords, and if I had written King of ilie Cannibal 
Islands, instead of D. Beaton, it would have been just 
the same; everybody expected a broken rib, or a fractured 
arm ; and the bewildered porter thought more of the 
safety of his tent-box, than of who was, and who was 
not, a Fellow of the Society. Of course, I felt very 
much ashamed of my privilege, and began thinking on 
the spot how best to avoid this unpleasant scrambling. 
1 would do away altogether with the writing down cf 
names at the gate, for there is not the least security 
whatever against the admission of rascals in that, the 
blackest leg in London can procure a list of the names 
of Fellows, and choose one of them for his own sig¬ 
nature, and he is in amongst the first as sure as fate, 
and who can help it, or how is he or they to be detected; 
the thing is impossible. Let every member who wishes 
it, have a pass ticket along with his regular admission 
one, or even cut his admission ticket in two, and give 
one-half to the porter, and the stream may flow in as 
easily as I write this, and there will be an end to the 
temptation for getting in by hook or by crook, without 
paying a stiver, as some had done that morning, for 
I was hardly through the gate when I overheard two 
gentlemen saying that a third party, whom one of them 
knew, had thus passed under false colours. 
How charming the prospect, however, when you have 
once passed the gate, and find your ribs once more in 
their natural position. A walk as straight as an arrow 
leads the eye up to the very centre of the end of the large 
conservatory, the exhibition tents stretch, along on either 
side of this beautiful walk, and a few flower-beds invite 
you on to the first tent. One of the most difficult 
problems in landscape gardening is to create interest 
on a flat surface without distant views; but this 
problem is solved there; and whoever thought of it 
had his head put on the right way. The same mind 
could also be read in another part of this garden, which 
I then saw for the first time since it was altered, 
I mean the inner termination of the old long walk 
which, for a quarter of a century, led you from the 
lodge near the cloak-room, up to nothing behind the 
council-room. I seldom passed along that walk without 
thinking that he who first laid it down had a long 
head too, but very little in it. Whenever you see a 
long, straight walk, without some otopet at the farthest 
end to account for the meaning of izfor if it turns off to 
the right or left without something—a tree, a bed, or 
a clump, &c.—to show a reason for the turn, you may 
note down the designer for a dolt, and something 
more. This glaring fault in the walk alluded to 
has been rectified since I was last in the garden, two 
years ago, according to a hint or suggestion given by 
Mr. Loudon, eighteen years before, in his Gardeners 
Magazine. 
The garden has been very much improved in every 
part of it in that time, and I never saw it looking , 
better at this season, but many of the plants are 
much later than usual; the large Glycine had only 
a few flowers open here and there, and Mr. Davidson, 
my successor at Shrubland Park, suggested an ex¬ 
amination of it, to see if it really produced pollen, as so 
many of them refuse to do; the first bloom he opened 
was fertile enough, and so were the next, and the third, 
and all of them. He, like the rest of us, will be far too 
busy this season to attend to crossing. From being the 
first garden in the country, they are going to make 
