THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN’S COMPANION.— June 17,1850. 
202 
inclination to parching, so amongst dungs, some are 
fat and cooliug, as that of oxen and cows; others hot 
and light, as that of sheep, horses, and pigeons. And 
whereas the remedy must have virtues contrary to the 
distempers it is to cure, therefore hot and dry dungs 
must he used in cold, .moist, heavy earths, and oxen 
and cow-dung in clean, dry, light earth, to make them 
fatter and closer.” 
Again, as to what constituted manure in his opinion, 
■ he says, “ Not that these two sorts, though the principal, 
are the only materials for amendments of earth; for 
upon farm lands all sorts of stuffs—linen, flesh, skin, 
bones, nails, hoofs of animals, dirt, urine, excrements, 
wood, fruit, leaves, ashes, straw, all manner of corn, 
soot, &e.; in short, all that is upon or in the earth, 
except stones, or minerals, serve to amend and better it.” 
So we may see, that with the exception of inorganic 
materials, which our ancestors despised, they had very 
similar notions to what we now possess, after all the 
parade of science. R. Erhington. 
A Novelty in Floriculture. —Mr. W. H. Osborn, 
of Perry Pont House, Perry Barr, has, at the present 
time, a perfectly Green Rose in flower in his Rose- 
house. The Rose, called Rose verclijlora , is of a full 
rich green, and is, perhaps, more interesting on account 
of its novelty than for its beauty. A drawing of the 
flower has been made by Mr. Wallis, of the Government 
School of Art, in this town. The tree was obtained 
from a French nurseryman, and whether it will endure 
| the severity of an English winter remains to be seen.— 
! Birmingham Gazelle. 
BEDDING-PLANTS. 
New Bedding-plant. —I was told of a new bedding- 
plant which was in full bloom in a celebrated garden 
not far from London, and I was urged to introduce it 
to the new experimental garden; but I had no invitation 
to go and see it, although the gardener is an old ac¬ 
quaintance, so I had to ring the bell and answer it 
myself. The new bedding-plant turns out to be a hardy 
perennial, and as easily propagated as a Strawberry 
plant. I never saw the plant before ; yet it is a native 
plant, and one of the oldest in the “English Botany.” 
A bed of it, twelve feet long and four feet wide, was, 
without exception, the richest flower-bed I ever set my 
eyes on. When Sanvitalia procumbens just covers the 
bed, and all the plants of it in a bed are of exactly the 
same strength, I consider its habit and the style of 
flowering to be the seek-no-further of a bedding-plant. 
Saponaria Galabrica comes the next nearest to my ideas 
of what a bedding-plant ought to be. Now, the new 
plant, or, let us say, this very old plant, excels them 
both in style of growth; and as to the flowers, which 
are yellow, there is not another flower of the kind under 
i the sun that is more beautiful- It is a very double 
“ Buttercup,” and the double flowers are, in size and 
shape, like those of Sacramento, the Pompone Chry¬ 
santhemum; but the gloss or varnish-like lustre of the 
I double Buttercup places it above all Povnpones in rich¬ 
ness of tint. The field Buttercup keeps in bloom from 
the end of April to the first or second week in August, 
and I suppose the double form of it will flower as long, 
and not longer; but, as I said before, I never saw a 
more perfect flower-bed than that was, nor do I expect 
it will ever he better in the experimental garden, for 
which I got a good supply of plants; aud not only that, 
but they were proud of being thus able to contribute to 
my hobby, although they have the royal family and all 
the court party among their yearly visitors. The reason 
why I cannot show my side of this kind of pride is 
this—unfortunately, among such a crowd of readers as 
we have created, as it were, there are some few who 
when they hear of any good thing which would suit 
themselves, they forthwith make war on the unoffending 
owners, and there is no other way of keeping clear of 
them than keeping them in the dark corners of the 
vineyard. But what is the book name for a “Butter¬ 
cup?” or what is the Buttercup itself? Everybody in 
the country will tell you this or that field is lull of it, 
and there is a five-acre field, which I can see out of the 
window, which is now (-Tune 10th) one mass of yellow, 
with the grass or hay about twenty inches long, but the 
yellow “cups” show above it all, and they call them 
Buttercups; but the truth is, there are not ten men in 
a parish in England who can tell a Buttercup from a 
single-flowered Bachelor’s Button, which is the only 
yellow flower in the five-acre field, or from a bulbous- 
rooted Crowfoot, which is fully as common in the fields 
as the true old English “ Buttercups.” My double 
yellow bedder is the rare Ranunculus repens Jiore-pleno. 
R. acris, when double, is called Bachelor’s Buttons; aud 
R. bulhosus, the true “Buttercups,” the “cuckoo-buds 
of yellow hue” of Shakespeare, “ the Gold-cups,” and 
“ King’s cups,” never creeps at the root, which is a solid 
bulb, or by the stem, while repens, or common Crowfoot, 
the worst weed in a gerden, propagates itself, just like 
a Strawberry, by rooting at every joint. In strong, 
marshy land it puts up flower-stalks as high as R. acris; 
but the double form of it does not rise above nine or 
ten inches high, and the flowers are not much higher 
than the leaves; but, coming in one mass of dazzling 
yellow, they make the greatest show of all the Ranun¬ 
culuses, not excepting the endless tribes from A stations 
the florists’ breed. 
I lately saw a bed of mixed double Columbines, 
(Aquilegias ), and from that hour I made up my mind to 
have a similar bed of them in the experimental garden. 
They were almost as beautiful and as varied in colour 
as the Dendrobiums at the Crystal Palace, excepting the 
yellow ones. How strange that public taste has not 
yet called for an improved race of Columbines. Hitherto 
the theatres have monopolised this branch of our craft; 
but if I shall bo as successful as I anticipate, I shall 
turn the Columbines to better account, and if you can 
assist me in any way by seeds or roots of improved 
sorts, and double ones more particularly, I shall be able 
to do it all the sooner; but I have so many things to 
write about just now, that I must work up as for a 
Saturday’s dinner. 
Linum grandiflorum. —I sowed the seeds from the 
London House packet, which contained twenty-five 
seeds, on the 13tli of May, just as the rains came on, 
which will make this season the most memorable of any 
for “ planting out.” The way I was to manage them is 
already recorded. Those which I sowed in the open air, 
under a west wall, with three pieces of glass round the 
pot, were up in fourteen days, the sun being hardly out 
the whole time. Another pot of them, which stood on 
the inside sill of my kitchen-window, were up in ton 
days, and the place was too hot for them, which tells 
plainly enough that it is murdering work to put them 
in a hotbed, as I expected. I plunged that pot half¬ 
way into the mould in a larger pot, and placed the 
double pot on the outside sill of the same window full 
facing the south,—that place seems rather too hot for 
this Linum, but the plants look as healthy as those 
under the wall, only somewhat more drawn. 
Now, I have made up my mind already that wo have 
been all wrong hitherto with the treatment of this very 
beautiful plant. I am quite certain that it requires the 
self-same treatment as Schizanthus Hookerii; that it 
should never be sown in the spring or in heat; that 
our days are too long, too hot, and too dry for it, in a 
seedling state, in April, May, and June; that it requires 
