May 0. 
COUNTRY GENTLEMAN’S COMPANION. 
95 
that of paying for the necessary experiments. The 
cross-breeder furnished the best portion of the materials 
which are in use at present; and gardeners have pro¬ 
claimed the advent of the youngest art in their practice, 
and writing to an admiring and patronizing age; say 
not, therefore, that any one of us in particular is the 
lion in the way, seeing that all have helped, from “The 
Doctor’s Boy ” onwards; but, as surely as I am writing 
this, the origin of the art rests on the foundation which 
I have assigned. 
Commander-in-Chief is the next on my list as the best 
bedder of the horse shoe class of real scarlets. It is 
also an excellent pot plant. Baron Ilugel is the best 
edging plant, of the same style of dark horse-shoe leaf. 
Cerise unique is falling out of favour in some quarters, 
owing to the faintness of the leaf, and Lady Middleton 
is taken to represent that peculiar tint; both of them 
make exquisite house plants for the autumn when they 
are grown into good specimens. My own specimens, 
which bloomed till last Christmas, and were then cut, 
are just now green, and no more;, they are out-of-doors 
every day since the beginning of April, but are taken in 
the last thing at night. They look as if they might be 
expected to bloom a little after midsummer, but every 
flower-bud will be cut off as soon as it is perceived, till 
the end of August, if not later; after that, I shall expect 
them to flower on easily till the end of January. 
Now, if you look out from among your old bedding 
scarlets a dozen of the strongest plants, and such as 
have a few inches of clear stems, before they branch 
into a head, shake them out of whatever they are grow¬ 
ing in at present, and pot them at once into as small 
pots as you can pack their roots into, in rich soil, made 
sandy, and keep them as cool as the weather will allow, 
and as free from bloom as my two favourite plants, and 
as long, you may expect six to one against your teacher 
for winter blooming ; and in my next I shall put you in 
the way of a more likely race to make the house gay in 
winter. * D. Beaton. 
Sale of Orchids. —On the 25th of April, Mr. J, C. 
Stevens sold at his auction-rooms, in King Street, 
Covent Garden, about two hundred lots of Orchids, from 
the province of Veragua, in New Grenada, some being 
collected from the volcano of Chiriqui. The following 
are some of the highest prices:—Trichopilia suavis, 
£2 2s.; T. coccinea, £2 4s. “ Cattleya, species unknown, 
found at an elevation of 4000 feet, at the base of the 
volcano Chiriqui,” from £2 to £G; Lielia superbiens, 
£2 Is.; Epidendrum maculatum, £$; Cycnoclies, species 
unknown, £2; Odontoglossum Warszewiezia, £2 9s.; 
Stangeria paradoxa, from Natal, 17s. to Ill 4s. Only 
about 180 lots were sold, and they realized L'342—an 
average of T1 18s. per lot. 
MAKING AND MANAGING HOTBEDS FOR 
PROPAGATING. 
“ A Constant Correspondent cannot find, in all the num¬ 
bers of The Cottage Gardener, an exact direction for 
making a hotbed for seeds and cuttings. She has no 
gardener that understands the subject. A hotbed was made 
in March last, in which were put, in pots, Verbena cuttings, 
and various seeds — Geraniums, Verbenas, Pentstemons, 
Petunias—and she could not get much heat, and kept them 
from the light, and no air, hoping to promote a more rapid 
vegetation; hut the Verbenas look worse than they did a fort¬ 
night ago ; the seeds, as soon as they come up, are eaten by 
something, and she has put young cabbage-leaves in to 
entice the snails, should they he in fault, and a few have 
been destroyed.” 
I give prominent attention to this letter at present, 
not only because I should like to oblige to the utmost 
every lady reader, but because I have had a number of 
private inquiries and complaints on the same subject, 
arising from similar disappointments. I think, if our 
correspondent had consulted previous volumes, she would 
have found full and explicit information on the making 
of hotbeds, and these composed of almost every possible 
material, and a little generalising would have enabled 
her to judge what was necessary for striking cuttings 
and raising seeds in March and April. The most ex¬ 
plicit directions can never supply the place of practical 
experience; nor can the greatest experience predicate 
what a certain described hotbed should accomplish, it 
left in ignorance of the kind and state of the fermenting 
matter, and all the hows as to making the bed. Given 
the same amount of material to two men, for the purpose 
of being made into a bed by each, and it requires no 
conjuring to see the possibility of one bed yielding a 
sweeter and much more continuous heat than the other, 
arising, merely, from the manner of preparing the ma¬ 
terial, and the manner of making the bed. I shall first 
allude to the hotbed-making, and then to the rooting of | 
cuttings. 
If our correspondent had told us what material she j 
used, our task would have been more definite, though, 
perhaps, less generally useful. Whatever the material, 
it should be sweet before it is used. Tan requires but 
little preparation, if not too moist. The refuse from flax- | 
mills gives a strong heat, and wants little more prepa¬ 
ration than throwing it together. The spent hops from ! 
breweries, when thrown together to get rid of the mois- J 
ture and ferment, may then be made at once into a bed. i 
Less of these are necessary to keep up a healthy, con¬ 
tinuous heat, than of dung or tree leaves. Leaves alone 
will not yield heat enough for such purposes before 
March. After March, if there are a good propor¬ 
tion of Oak and Beech leaves, and they are just 
wet enough to cake together, they would yield heat 
enough for the purpose specified, if the bed was about 
two feet six inches at the back and two feet in front. 
Such material wants no preparation, but seeing that 
the leaves are wet enough to ferment. Generally they 
are too wet, if not collected dry. Every plant likes the 
vapours that escape from fermenting and decomposing 
tree-leaves. From 70° bottom-heat and from 55° to 05° 
top-heat can be secured from such a bed, and no danger, 
except from slugs and snails. These, in a small state, 
are raked up with the leaves, and the heat produced by 
fermentation brings them into full activity. The best 
securities against their depredations are surfacing the 
bed with a sprinkling of salt, and then a layer of ashes, 
with a little quicklime for plunging in, placing a few 
leaves of cabbages or lettuces greased, or brewers’ grains, 
round the sides of the frame, aud going and looking 
over the whole with a lanthorn at night. 
Stable-dung is the most generally used, and this, 
owing to the rank and dangerous gases it throws off, 
requires considerable preparation. For such a purpose, 
a mixture of dung and leaves is very useful. For 
general purposes of early forcing, I prefer sweetening the 
dung partially before mixing it with the tree-leaves, as 
the leaves require no sweetening, and being mixed from 
the first would so far be decomposed, and thus give out 
less heat afterwards. In such a case as the present, 
however, I would not sweeten the dung much at first, 
but throw it together, water it if dry, and when heating 
strongly, turn it over, and add the leaves. I thus volun¬ 
tarily waste, or burn up unnecessarily, a portion of the 
fermenting material, the leaves, in order that by that 
slight loss I may gain security from the slugs, &c., as 
such a strong heat generally gives them their quietus, 
or sends them off to other quarters. The heap will heat 
more regularly if covered all over with loDg litter, and 
a thatched hurdle placed against it on the side next the 
wind. When turned over again, so that the rankness is 
