438 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
March 9. 
flower, in order to learn and mind the names of them, 
and to bo uble to tell such names to the rising genera¬ 
tions ; not such specimens, however, as the Society had 
on view from India, as we shall see presently. 
! Whether it was from a desire to have a sight of even 
a dried branch jj,nd a picture of that gigantic tree 
which is to commemorate the great Duke, or to hear of 
the great national advantages of planting all the knolls 
in England, and all the hills in Wales, in Ireland, and 
| in Scotland, with the Deodar, I cannot tell, but I think 
[ they could not have brought together a more high or 
more respectable company if they had advertised that 
the Emperor of Russia and Omar Pacha were to play a 
j game at cribbage in the Egyptian Hall. I never saw 
such an in-door assemblage of horticulturals before. I 
was glad to see Mr. Appleby look so well, and so busy 
noting down from the Lecture on the merits of the 
Deodar, for his Essays on Forest-planting, no doubt; be 
also booked a new Orchid that was there, but he passed 
over an extreme novelty in the half-hardy bulb way, 
with a nod, as much as to say, “ do not you wish you couid 
tell the name of it ? ” and ho turned to a collection of 
most beautiful Cyclamens, all crosses, and all of them 
all but quite new to gardeus. One pot of a new Cycla¬ 
men had 254 blooms wide open, besides buds, and those 
that were going to seed. 
Then, as to Fruits ; Her Majesty sent such as nobody 
ever sent before to that room, two splendid Pine Apples 
of exactly the same size, the same looks, and the very 
same weight to the split of a hair, that is, a match pair, 
each weighing 6 lb. 4 oz.; and the two crowns could 
not weigh 4 oz. between them. It was remarked of 
them, that if they had been made in a mould they 
coidd not come out more alike; add to this, that they 
were the very best kind of Pine known to us—the 
Smooth-leaved Cayenne —and that the plants which 
produced them were only suckers this time last year, but 
chips of the old stools, no doubt, rather than ordinary 
suckers; yet who could do so much with the best Black 
Jamaica, or the second-best, or worst Montserrat Pines, 
seeing that Envilles and Providence Pines are out of 
date. After these, there were line specimens of the best 
of all Black Grapes, the Barbarossa, and as fine dessert 
Pears as we ever had at this season, notwithstanding the 
bad season for all sorts of keeping fruit. 
But let us begin with the Flowers to describe the 
whole in the order in which they stood on the tables. 
| First of all, there was a large specimen of a new Orchid 
! from Assam, sent by Mr. Veitch—this was a Cypripedium, 
i in the way of the old plain-leaved one called Insigne, 
but as large again in the flowers, which are of a brighter 
: colour; the habit of the plant is also much stronger; 
1 there were seven large flowers open on this plant and 
others coming. Mr. Jackson, of Kingston, sent another 
Orchid, as good as new, being the lovely Barkeria 
elegans, at last; the flowers are about the size of those of 
1 Barkeria spectabilis, or about those of Dendrobium 
nobile, a better-known plant; the colour of the sepals 
and petals deep lilac on the back, and lighter on the 
inside ; all over something of that delicate tint which is 
seen in the lilacy portion of a Dendrobium nobile; the 
lip is large and French-white, with a broad blotch of 
intense purple about the middle of it; the column lies 
flat on this lip, advancing just to the margin of the 
blotch, and ending like the head of a fish—say a small 
pike, with two dark spots just where the eyes ought to 
be, and a third dark spot to represent the mouth. You 
could not look the flower in the front without imagining 
something of this sort; all the colour is like pure 
ivory, with these markings, and a little streaked with 
light purple along the back—of the little fish—altogether, 
it is an exquisite gem, worth, perhaps, about a guinea 
the inch. There was a small plant of Barkeria Skinned 
major, also from Kingston. This I have seen in flower 
since last November, and, as I said before, they find no 
sort of difficulty in growing and flowering these tiny 
Orchids, but they keep them much cooler than most 
growers, and they grow ou nothing so well as on bare 
chips of wood quite close to the glass, on a north aspect; 
it would pinch one’s fingers to hold them so near the 
glass this cold winter, yet a score or more of these 
Barkerias were in bloom there all the time; but the 
great demand for them has thinned the roof sadly. 
Tho same firm sent an African bulb, which they 
bought as a new plant, but by some mistake it turns 
out to be what I believe is Veltheimia viridifolia, and 
which comes very near Eucomis punctata. I have 
grown the two in a front border, and found them nearly 
hardy; at least, I could always keep them with coal- 
ashes and an empty pot turned over the bulbs in winter. 
Some of our readers may recollect about the new 
seedlings of Cyclamens, which I described atone of these 
meetings this time two years; the plants have never 
been touched since, and now it is hardly possible to 
conceive how pretty two specimen pots of them looked 
to-day, at this meeting, just such things as a Duchess 
would like to see on her work table, where they would 
be just at home and in keeping with all around. One pot 
had 254 flowers open in a diameter of twelve inches, and 
every one of them stood upright on a rigid stalk, and there 
was not the eighth-of-an-inch of difference in the height 
of all that mass of bloom, so that a house-fly might 
walk all round on the top of them, stepping from flower 
to flower, without ever using his wings at all. The tops 
of the flowers could hardly be five inches from the rim 
of the pot, and the leaves are numerous, but small 
accordingly. The colour is a delicate French-white, 
getting a little deeper at the eye; then, it stands as 
clear as anything that this is an entirely new Cycla¬ 
men ; and so it is, and a real cross, too, between coum 
or vernum and persicum, and the name is Atkinsonii, 
after Mr. James Atkinson, of Pains wick, near Gloucester, 
who made the cross, and got this, and many other fine 
varieties of the same family, some of which, if not all, 
are now on sale in London. But I must describe how 
Mr. Atkinson managed his plants, for I was lucky 
enough to get introduced to him, and once the ice is 
broken, there is no more ceremony about flowers and 
their possessors from her Majesty downwards. 
First of all, Mr. Atkinson is a practical amateur, who 
has retired from the busy scene and enjoys himself—as 
all practical men ought to do as soon as they are able— 
in his own way. Ho has travelled abroad, and seen how 
the Cyclamens do in a state of Nature; and he told me 
that he often found them growing most luxuriantly 
among broken limestone and other rock fragments, 
where all the earth they could reach was from decayed 
leaves, drifted in among the stones from the neighbour¬ 
ing forests ou the Swiss and Italian Alps; that these 
accumulations of rotten leaves formed a kind of cement, 
to fill up the fissures among the stones and broken 
rocks; that the bulbs, so to call them, might appear, in 
the hot season, to be roasting among the hot stones; 
but, that from the nature of the situations, the dead 
leaves and stones among which the roots penetrated, 
the latter were never dry, winter or summer; and, 
moreover, that in the wettest season, no more water 
could lodge among these roots than if they were hung 
up in a sieve. His practical eye saw at once how all 
this could be imitated at home, so far as to improve 
on Nature in the wilderness. He had pots made on 
purpose for them. These are eight inches deep, twelve 
inches across the top, and eight inches across the 
bottom. The first two inches of the bottom he filled 
with small pieces of soft stones, with a few clean leaves 
mixed among the stones; then, nearly three inches of 
light, rich compost of rotten leaves and good loam; 
then, four bulbs, at equal distances, in each pot; and, 
