350 THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN'S COMPANION.— August 12, 1850. 
that the gardens round the Louvre are at present in great 
splendour with these stately flowers, which, it would seem, 
are very popular amongst the people here. The gardens of 
the Palais Royal and the Tuileries are also decked out in 
the same effective manner. This is a great improvement 
on the sickly Lilac-hushes with which jt has been so long 
the fashion to fill the gardens of Paris. Nor is there any¬ 
thing among the cut-and-dry specimens of Versailles half 
so pretty and agreeable as the charming little pleasure- 
ground of St. Jacques, with its neatly-trimmed lawn, its 
clumps of luxuriant evergreens, and its delicious beds and 
borders of Roses, Pelargoniums, Stocks, Nemopliilas, Pe¬ 
tunias, and other good bedding-plants. 
Gardening here seems to run more and more after 
English models; and it is said that the improvement is due 
to the Emperor himself, whose long sojourn in England 
has given him the best title to be a judge in such matters. 
—r. F. Keib. 
POTATO-TOPS. 
Early Dwarf Frame, or short-bladed varieties of Potatoes 
are generally spared from the prevailing direful disease, if, 
after the blight sets in, it is dry and hot sunny weather, as 
it is at the present date, scorching or starving the fungus, 
or contaminated sap in the leaves and stalks; and such 
Potatoes, we think we may venture to say, are safest left to 
chance. 
It is, however, too well known to need any further com¬ 
ment, that our practice is to cut off (not pull up) the Potato- 
stalks when luxuriant crops are attacked with blight, in 
order to bleed, as it were, the roots, and to save the tubers 
from further decay. To pull them up is to kill the plants, 
it is true; but it is to kill them instantaneously, shutting in 
the disease, subjecting the tubers to decay, and rendering 
them unfit for human food. As some persons are averse to this 
practice, and as it stops the growth of the tubers, we will 
not press it any further, and only remind our readers, that 
whether they have recourse to it or not, the blight itself in 
strong crops stops all further progress of growth in the 
roots, and it all amounts to the same result at last, except 
that decomposition takes place very often in the tubers when 
left to chance, whereas, if phlebotomy were resorted to, or 
the roots were tapped, by cutting off the stalks, such would 
not be the case, and the tubers, though small, would he more 
mealy, unless such decomposition had really taken place 
before the operation had been performed. 
The value of the Top, however, we have taken into 
consideration this season. Off one rod of a luxuriant 
crop, it will be found that one cwt., at least, of tops might 
be cut, or eight tons per acre (we have weighed some), for 
pigs or cattle; if not to be eaten, may be trodden into a 
very rich manure, which, if taken into account, with the 
chance of a lull crop of Savoys, or Cabbages, or Mangolds, 
or Swedes, to be transplanted, and watered between the rows 
as soon as the haulm is removed from the Potato roots, or 
Turnips, which may be sown, renders it of no material loss, 
even if the Potatoes at Michaelmas should prove to be 
small; for let it be recollected, they will be only small, and 
small they must be, if left to chance, after they are blighted, 
when they may and will be decayed, without the chance 
offered for Savoys, Cabbages, Ac., being secured, except for 
late ones, which would be of but little use or value. By 
forking up the Potatoes at Michaelmas, it cultivates the 
land, and prepares it well for the next crop ; and if a slight 
dressing of guano or horse droppings is applied before 
forking up the Potatoes, the green crops thus advancing to 
maturity will be very much improved, if not the crops next 
season, and but little if any loss sustained, even if the 
Potato crop were entirely lost.— Hardy and Son, Seed 
Growers, Maldon, Essex. 
P ; S.—Twenty ears of our best selected and improved 
prolific red Wheat growing with Potatoes, with one foot of 
stalk to each ear, will weigh ten ounces, and if cut off at the 
upper joint of the straw, will weigh three-quarters-of-a 
pound, which, if compared with the weight of twenty 
ordinary ears of any district, will convey to our readers a 
pretty correct idea what our “ thin seeding ” will do with 
judicious management by others who have more capital 
than ourselves.—A. H. 
CEANOTHUS VERRUCOSUS. 
Raised from seeds collected by Ilartweg in California, 
and received at the Garden, June 5th, 1848, as “ a shrub 
eight feet high, growing on the Santa Cruz mountains.” 
This proves to be a hardy evergreen of the best kind. It 
forms already a large bush, and will probably become a tree 
with long, stiff, rod-like, downy branches, covered in winter [ 
with multitudes of large oblong or roundish brown buds. 
The leaves are opposite, roundish oblong, either slightly 
notched or entire at the end, scarcely an inch long at the 
largest, flat, deep green, shining, with grey hairy pits dis- j 
tributed over all the under surface. Occasionally, when i 
the plant is young, they are coarsely toothed, as is repre¬ 
sented in the Botanical Magazine ; but that is an exceptional | 
state: the usual condition is what is shown in the annexed 
cut. At the base of each leaf is a pair of stipules, which 
gradually lose their thin extremities and change intqs soft 
fleshy conical prickles. The flowers are very pale blue, 
produced in great abundance in dense corymbs at the end 
of very short, stiff, lateral branches. 
This shrub is among the most easy of plants to grow, and 
seems indifferent to climate or soil. It is increased by cut¬ 
tings of the half-ripened wood, placed in sand under a hand¬ 
glass in a north aspect about the end of August. It is, 
however, best propagated by layering in the autumn. It 
flowers in June. 
It may be added, that with the single exception of C. cu- 
nealus, a white-flowered species of little beauty, all the Cali- 
