April 29. 
COUNTRY GENTLEMAN’S COMPANION. 
87 
J adopted. The Zebra Paroquet, mentioned by you, is 
; managed the same as the Budgarcfc-gav, as mentioned by 
j us recently. Meal-worms are good food for Golden l'hea- 
I sants, but they must not have many of them. A vegetable 
! diet must predominate.] 
TREATMENT OF A WEAK HIVE. 
“ A Subscriber had a strong swarm of bees (a July 
swarm) in a wooden hive all the winter, and left them 
strong in January; but not being at home, the feeding was 
! neglected, and on examination, last week, it was discovered 
j that very few remained alive. Those few have been removed 
into a room in the dwelling-house, and are well fed with beer 
and sugar, as the owner is anxious to keep them alive. 
1 How soon should they be put out into the open air? and is 
there any hope that they will survive and fill the hive, 
which is quite full of comb ? The owner is afraid to keep 
them out, lest a strong hive in the same garden should kill 
the bees in the weak one. There are not more than a 
couple of hundred left, if so many.” 
[Give your bees liberty as far from the other strong hive 
as possible. Feed them a little longer outside the hive; if 
| strange bees attack the food, place it inside; close the 
i entrance, except a little for air. They are so weak, how- 
| ever, that there are not enough of bees to collect pollen, 
nor nurse the brood to fill the places of the old ones dying 
off. We doubt your success; at best, the colony must be 
weak, and not so good as a fresh swarm put into your hive 
containing the combs.—J. W.] 
TEACHES IN A GREENHOUSE FALLING. 
“ I have a Peach-tree at the back wall in my greenhouse. 
It bloomed profusely, and set well. The fruit is now the 
j size of a small nut, and is fast dropping off. I had 
! previously thinned to a great extent, perhaps too soon. 
Now, I am not likely to have above half a crop. The 
| border has been kept pretty moist. Is that the cause ? The 
j temperature lias also been kept pretty high, but with plenty 
I of ventilation. I have Vines trained rod-fashion up every 
other rafter.—J. S. L.” 
[If the stage in the greenhouse is at all high, so as to 
shade the back wall much, the wood would not be sufficiently 
ripened. You do not say what the temperature was. If 
averaging more than from 55° to 1)0° at night, the dropping 
might take place in consequence of that and of the imperfect 
ripening of the wood. Unless the greenhouse stage shades 
the Peach, the Vines up every other rafter would do little 
injury. If the soil was very wet and cloggy—it would 
help—put the points of a fork through it. Very likely you 
will have very fiue fruit, and, as the fruit swells, there may 
be more than you expect. Your thinning early would have 
prevented the fruit falling rather than otherwise.] 
CAMELLIAS IN A VINERY. 
“ Will you tell me if I can grow Camellias in a Vinery 
planted this spring ? The Vinery has a very steep, pitched 
roof, and large squares of glass, not of rough plate, and 
the question, with me, is, whether I must shade or not. 
The buds have dropped off from the greatest part of the 
the Camellias in the conservatory just before expanding. It 
is a ridge-aud-furrow joining the house, and facing the 
south. It is a very bleak situation, and has rough plate 
glass on the top. Front and end the same as the Vinery.— 
A Durhamite.” 
[Camellias prefer a little shade when growing, though they 
do well in an open house if far enough from the glass, say 
three or four feet. After the present year, you will liavo 
plenty of shade in your Vinery. The best Camellias we 
ever saw for foliage and flower were planted out, and in 
pots, plunged in a bed, but a long way from the glass, and 
unshaded. The steep pitch of your roof fits it better for 
early and late than for summer forcing, and the steeper it 
is the less direct will the sun’s rays strike upon the plants 
in summer. You do not give the length of the conservatory; 
if more than twenty-five feet long, though you could open 
both ends at the apex, and give air at front, you should have, 
at least, one moderate-sized ventilator in the centre. Unless 
there are peculiar circumstances, we would prefer the venti¬ 
lators at the back ; but for a short house it is quite possible 
to give air enough at the two ends, at the ridge point, 
though we do not like it so well. An opening under each 
furrow, or every other furrow, at the back would be sufficient. 
We have no fault to find with plunging the pots in a bed, if 
all the beds are so done. It gives a more natural finished 
appearance, and the roots are subject to fewer changes. 
See, however, that the drainage is not clogged; leave an 
open space beneath each pot. The shading of the front is 
a matter of convenience, and pounds, shillings, and pence. 
We shade with cloth very little. Plants get used to the light, 
and, in extreme cases, a daubing of size, with the least 
whitening mixed with it, is easily given.] 
BERBERIS ASIATICA AS A FENCE PLANT. 
“ I should feel obliged by your stating if Beeberis Asiatica, 
or Kushmue Berberry, makes a fence that would keep back 
cattle generally; how old, and what size should the plants 
be when the hedge is planted; whether it should be a 
double row or single row of plants; how long, generally 
speaking, would it be before it made an average fence not 
requiring protection ; and whether it will do to plant now, 
or must I wait till October?—W. A.” 
[We have more than once said that a fence of the Asiatic 
Berberry is the best that can be against a charge of cavalry, 
if once established on light soil. We are not sure how it would 
answer on strong, clay land, or on wet, heavy soils, and we 
should be obliged by such information from any one, derived 
from the actual growth, and the time the plants required to 
make a fence size, whether as fence or single plants. We 
vouch for it to be the best hedge plant we have on 
sandy, gravelly, and chalky soils. If you plant it in single 
rows, the plants one foot apart, and from two to three feet 
high at the time of planting, in six years you will have such 
a hedge that no colt, or steer, can face, or get over; as to 
rabbits, hares, or birds, getting through the bottom of such 
a hedge, it is entirely out of the question. This Berberis 
is so given to suckering, that the bottom is always the 
closest part of the hedge. After the plants rise to eight or 
ten feet, they almost cease growing upwards; so that if a 
hedge of it is neglected for year's, it would not encumber 
the ground like huge Holly bushes and May Thorns. We 
had the plants ten feet high, in seven years, from the seed; 
but that was singly, on the pleasure ground. We made 
pretty low or half standards of them, with stems as thick as 
a man's wrist next the ground, within ten years from the 
seed. All the gardening newspapers and periodicals have 
recommended hedges of this Berberry bush, but we arc not 
aware of any nursery where a single plant of it is on sale 
with a view to hedge-making. It is now too late to plant 
for hedges, or for any other purpose.] 
TO CORRESPONDENTS. 
Work on Kitchen Gardening (Stick in the Mail).— Such a work 
as j'ou require will be published next month, among other “ Manuals for 
the Many.” 
Fibres from Vine joints (A. T.). —Such developments are usually 
caused by the air of the house being kept too moist, as well as too warm. 
It rarely occurs in any but very vigorous Vines. 
Linum monogyncm (Linda).—It is a perennial. 
Alderney Cows.— An Old Subscriber wishes to know if these cows 
“ would yield milk as well in the extreme north of Scotland as in their 
native islands ? ” We shall be much obliged by information on this 
point. We use Neighbour's Cottage Hive and Payne's Cottager's Hive. 
Write to Messrs. Deane, Dray, and Co., for drawings, &c., of their 
Churns; they are all good, and you can select. 
Wireworjis ( Constant Reader). —The wireworm is an ugly customer. 
We have driven them from Carrot ground by sprinkling it with gas- 
water, or even throwing some tar thinly with a brush several times over 
it during the winter. They must be caught by every means. Carrots, 
Parsnips, and Potatoes, cut up into slices, and inserted in the ground, 
and examined every day; a small stick inserted in the slice will show 
where it is. We have taken a score out of a piece of Carrot. The age of 
seeds ana growing depends greatly on how they are kept. If dry and 
secure from air they will keep a long time. There is hardly anything 
can be added to what is generally known on this subject. We hope soon 
to have Bees placed under the care of a competent correspondent. 
