130 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN'S COMPANION.— May 20, 1850. 
quite say it, I am certain he proved to his own mind 
that it was as true a species as it could possibly be, 
because it never varies from seeds; but many cross 
seedlings of the present day come as true from seeds 
ns any wild species whatever. Linnaeus described the 
Cape Scarlet Inquinans, and the Horse-shoe Zonale, of 
our day, or Z ona-notalis, as he calls it, in the “ Hortus 
Upsalensis,” and there has not been another true wild 
sqwcies of the “ Scarlet breed” published since. I write 
thus pointedly, in answer to a smart letter I received 
against my views of what will and what will not cross 
in the family, and I say, distinctly, that all our bedders 
in the section came from two originals, the Horse-shoe 
and the Cape Scarlet. These are not my opinions, but i 
facts which can be proved. I did not “ set up ” opinions * 
[ against “ the authorities of the compilers of the Ency¬ 
clopaedia of Plants,” or against any other compilers; and 
as to “ mere varieties coining true from seeds,” the thing 
is as notorious to those who study the subject as is our 
defective knowledge of what constitutes a species or a 
variety. The cross-breeder must be the highest authority 
for all such decisions ; he can prove facts as they stand 
in nature; and “ compilers,” and smart letter writers, 
must acquiesce in his proofs, or subvert them by other 
proofs equally strong, not hy arguments or reasoning. 
All the varieties of the first Horse-shoe Geranium, which 
I named the other day, are not “ transitory,” and do not 
rest on the opinion, or on the authorities of Sweet, 
Doun, or Lindley. I have seen them, ns I said, and 
they were well known before those shilling lights were ! 
| in their “ new moon.” Philip Miller knew them well,, 
and described them in the first edition of his “Gar-' 
dener’s Dictionary” under his “twenty-third sort,” the 
Horse-slioe, which he says, “ is one of the oldest and ■ 
the most common sort in the English gardens;” and he 
distinctly says, that “ there are three or four varieties of 
this, one with fine variegated leaves (the Shot-silk one), 
one with crimson, and another with pink-coloured flowers, 
which have been accidentally raised from seeds “ of the 
common Horse-shoe.” The crimson one is lost, but we 
; have it in a variegated form, which will no doubt restore j 
the long-lost one. The pink one, and this very crimson 
i of Miller’s, would produce the first Nosegay, and that 
they were the actual parents of our pink Nosegay of the | 
| present day, I have not the smallest doubt; indeed, I 
] was well aware of it four years ago, and I then began 
with Miller’s time, as it were, and now I am on to the 
age of the fanciful arrangement of them by “ the 
compilers of the Encyclopaedia of Plants,” with the 
seedlings. 
I have a perfectly crimson Nosegay , or Fothergillii, 
from crossing Miller's varieties. How am I, therefore, 
to submit to the doctrine, that species only will come i 
true from seed, or that it was necessary to go to the ' 
Cape for a new form, or section, of Geraniums, which 
I make myself from common varieties at home? and , 
hereby I challenge a proof to the contrary. 
But enough for one day; let us go into other useful 
plants for the beds. I shall have a bed of Jackson’s 
Lady Peel Petunia, which, I said, I longed to see; for in I 
Mr. Walton’s greenhouse, last summer, it was the finest I 
I pot Petunia I ever saw. 1 shall, probably, have another 
i bed of the new white Petunia Imperialis, which is ad- : 
vertised in our pages by the Messrs. Henderson. It 
1 has been pronounced “ a charming thing ” by the best 
Judge on bedding plants in England, to my own know- 
! ledge. Tt is as cheap as a whistle, and every body in 
i the three kingdoms ought to plant it this season. It is 
plentiful every where. I went and booked my plants of 
it at Mr. Jackson’s Nursery, being the nearest, as soon 
as I learned that 1000 plants of it would be used at 
Shrubland Park. 
I saw Lobelia speciosa at Mr. Jackson’s, for the first 
time, which is of the dwarf blue section, but very 
different from all the rest in its fine leaves, habit, and, 
I believe, the flowers are dark blue, but I did not see 
them. 
The following is a successful mode of having a fine 
bed of Oxalis Boivii in bloom in the autumn :—Take 
bulbs now that have been at rest all the spring, plant 
three of them in 48-pots, or five in 32-pots, plunge the 
pots then in the reserve ground till next August, when 
many of the summer plants are going out of bloom, 
then plunge pots and all in the flower-bed, where this 
Oxalis will bloom till late in October. An oyster-shell 
is the best for drainage, as it prevents the escape of the 
new bulbs by the bottom of the pot. Half the world 
lost the beauty of this most beautiful plant by not 
resting it from November till May; and two-thirds of 
the gardens lost it altogether by planting the bulbs in 
deep, free beds and borders, where, in three years, it will 
bury itself so deep as not to have sufficient strength to 
open a single flower The way by which some bulbs 
bury themselves deeper and deeper every year is this:— 
After flowering, the old bulbs die, and new ones take 
their places; the Gladiolus is an instance which is best 
known, but before dying, the old bulbs put out feelers, 
or soft fangy mots, and at the end of these feelers the 
new bulbs are formed. In a wild state the ground is so 
hard that the feelers cannot get lower than a certain 
depth, and that kind of bulb, being thus accustomed for 
ages to flower from a certain depth, will always blossom 
better from that particular depth ; but when we trans¬ 
plant such bulbs into deep, free-working borders, there 
is hardly a limit to the progress of the feelers, and they 
go down ever so far beyond what is natural to the bulb 
to flower from, and so, after three or four years we lose 
them altogether, and so we lost Oxalis Bowii. The 
exact depth at which this bulb flowers best is seven 
inches below the surface, and a little less for second¬ 
sized bulbs; therefore keep this in mind, and always 
after this keep your bulbs of Oxalis Bowii plunged in 
pots, and quite dry, from late in the autumn till about 
this time in May; but under a different treatment the 
bulbs have been growing from last October, and are 
now just going to rest, after flowering for the last six 
weeks; but such bulbs will not do to bed out, or, rather, 
plunge out, for autumn-blooming, as they will only 
begin to make fresh roots next September, and continue 
to grow onjhrough the winter like the Hyacinth, and 
bloom in the spring, then rest in summer; but they 
submit to a winter rest and autumn-blooming without 
the least hurt to the bulbs. 
The next subject is Linum grandiflorum. A packet 
of seeds of this beautiful little annual is sent to my 
experimental garden by the first seed-house in London, 
through a gentleman of Surbiton. I said I would not 
undertake to prove seeds, but I shall try this packet to 
see if I can find out the cause of why it fails. The 
label is “ Linum true Scarlet.” Now, I protest against 
this trick of tho trade, for there is not a true scarlet 
Linum on the face of the earth, as far as any of us are 
aware of to the present hour. The plant was exhibited 
in bloom at the Juno Show of the Horticultural Society 
last summer, and I told of it in my report. Seven 
years before then it flowered in Paris, and they said 
then it was crimson, and if so, that plant is lost and a 
new Linum grandiflorum has been reintroduced in its 
place. It is nearly of the same colour as the old Nut- 
talia yrandiflora, with a darker eye. Atrosanguinea 
comes very near the colour. I shall sow one-half of the 
seeds in a pot, which 1 shall plunge in the open border 
under a west wall, with a pane of glass over it, and if 
the seeds come up, I shall plunge the pot an inch under 
the surface, without disturbing the seedlings, and I shall 
put three squares of glass round the pot, one on each 
side and one in front; the wall will form the back of 
the square enclosure; the panes will be merely stuck in 
