380 TIIE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN’S COMPANION.— August 20,1850. 
done flowering, if possible. This rest should consist in 
subjecting the plant to as low a temperature as it will 
bear, say, 32° to 30°, giving little or no water. In 
order to carry this out effectually, I advise that they be 
not suffered to expand every blossom-bud which Nature, 
in her bounty, may have bestowed on them; but rather 
t,o pick oil' the latest, or those which lag much behind, 
in order to gain a longer rest period. If plants are 
kept constantly at work without any rest, removed 
annually from the warm winter conservatory to the 
forcing-pit, the sure consequence will be a weakened 
appearance. 1 need hardly dwell here on the im¬ 
portance of using liquid-manures. This must surely be 
somewhat generally known. I have plants here which 
are seven or eight feet high and bushy, in about ten- 
inch pots, and have been in them without repotting for 
the last half-dozen years. These are, of course, “pot- 
bound” in the strictest sense, and look as healthy as 
any in the house. They have, unquestionably, kept 
their standing by the use of liquid-manures. I use 
guano-water, good Peruvian; and when the plants re¬ 
quire feeding extra this is used constantly, only very 
weak and very clear. 
Much more might be said concerning Camellias, but 
it is to be hoped these bints on important points in 
their culture may assist some of the readers of The 
Cottage Gardener. R. Errington. 
THE COMPOST HEAP.—BEDDING 
GERANIUMS. 
The doctors do say that pastry is very bad for the 
stomach, worse for some stomachs than for others, and 
worst of all in the time of cholera, and I partly believe it; 
but I beileve, also, that use is second nature, and that 
one might, by use, learn to live in a pastry shop, or 
over a pastry shop, or in the close neighbourhood of a 
pastry manufacture ; and it strikes me, from something 
iu the wind, that more of us arc living in the neigh¬ 
bourhoods of such manufactures than doctors are aware 
of; but from a knowledge of the ins and outs, and of 
the outlets of the Experimental Garden, I can vouch 
for no pies and pastry to be found there, or in that 
direction. Now, consider on it, and just say, if you can 
conscientiously say, that your garden is not surrouuded 
with pastry, that you do not employ a pastry-cook of 
some order or degree, and turn a deaf ear to the doctors, 
f shall take your confession for or against the “ allega¬ 
tion;” but, like the lawyers, I may use it against you 
lower down. 
Haggis is chieftain of the pudding race, as Burns 
said, and I say that a “muck pie” is the head and 
heart of pastry—that a muck pie breeds all sorts of 
things. In the first place, it breeds laziness; in the 
second, it breeds rats and mice; in the third, snails and 
slugs; in the fourth, flies and grubs; in the fifth, a 
disagreeable odour; in the sixth, a horrid bad smell; 
and in the seventh place, the old culminating number, 
it breeds pestilence; the pestilence that walks by noon¬ 
day, and slumbers not at night; that cuts down the 
fairest of our (lowers before our eyes, some before they 
are hardly in the bud, and some in all tho different 
stages on to ripe maturity. 
How few of us seem to understand that seven steps 
are the actual distance between the back door of the 
garden and tho front door of the sexton’s house, or, in 
other words, between tho cradle, the nursery, or the 
drawingroom and the churchyard; but the actual 
number of steps is now before you, and now answer me— 
Do you keep a pastry-cook to make muck pies on the 
right or left of the back-garden door, or along the back 
of the shrubberies, or anywhere else, that you are aware 
of, with such limits as would cause a shudder, a faint¬ 
ness, or a languishing to any one of your family, or to 
those whom you employ about you? or is he a man who 
“ knows his business,” and keeps your place in apple- 
pie order, and his own place in the order of muck pies, 
where all about the “back premises" are heaps and 
humpies of all the scratchings and scrapings of the last 
few weeks, some “smoking lmt,” some steaming it to 
leeward, and some iu all the “ incipient stages,” or first 
steps, without a crust or covering? 
The old despiser of books tells me that all pastry “ in 
back gardening” is “a downright wastcry;” that no 
one but “ a reader o’ books” would be so daft as to lose 
the “cream o’ the garden” that way; that the “ pestilence” 
is the strength of all compost heaps; that the “fool 
who lets it go” should be. sent after it next day ; that if 
properly made and “ cared for,” a compost heap might 
“ lie anywhere,” and be “as sweet as nutmegs;” that, 
no matter how many “fingers are in the pie,” one man 
should have the charge of it the year round;” and no 
matter if it be “ all fish which comes in the net” or to 
the compost heap. All fishes require “ sauce of some 
kind, but the sauce of the byre for me,” said the old 
man, with a knowing look and a long pinch of “Lundy- 
foot,” meaning the drainage from the cow-house or byre. 
He says that the new doctrine of putting ammoniaeal 
water on refuse vegetables, to kill them and the bad 
smell together, is “ all gumption,” and could never come 
into a man’s head without readiug books. 
I was a long time before I could get out of him how 
he managed to keep down bad smells if his heaps were 
“anywhere,” and what, 1 think, I did learn was only 
made out of parables, such as throwing up coppers for 
school-boys to battle for, or letting off bad smells from 
compost yards for philosophers to write^about; the poorest 
boy ought to get most copper, as he needed it most. 
Poor soil, he maintains, “ needs most dung, and takes it 
readiest,” but it must be wet. Take the top part of the 
poorest “brake” or plot of ground in the garden ; when 
it is frozen just two inches deep pile this up, and put it 
under cover in the compost yard; short, littery dung is 
the best covering. As the men bring in the rub¬ 
bish and refuse of tho garden, let them lay it down 
in a ring round the compost heap, or tho foundation of 
one, till the ring begins to heat; then the man iu charge 
is to fork it all up, mix it, and lay it on the heap, and 
then lay a thin coat of the poor, wet soil all over it, and 
the poor soil will take in and fix the bad smell “ better 
than anything.” 
At all events, a better system than that which it 
obtains in general is absolutely necessary to save the 
spirit of the compost heap and the lives of people who 
pass that way, or are obliged to live near it in the Dog- 
days ; and that we manage pretty well at the Experi¬ 
mental, much after the manner of the despiser of book 
learning. 
From the day which brings you this tale the gates of 
tho Experimental Garden will be closed for the season, 
unless some one discovers the long-lost Variegated 
Pellatum, or Running Pink Ivy-leaf Geranium in the 
variegated form, and that would be a treasure indeed. 
I think I had it once in my hands, but 1 am not quite 
certain of that. I think, also, from knowing all the rest 
of them, that I could tell it by a leaf or cutting. It 
was figured in “ Andrew’s Geraniacese,” or coloured en¬ 
gravings of Geraniums, a work which I have no access 
to without going to tho British Museum. If any of our 
readers happen to havo that scarce book, or could see it 
iu the national library, I should be thankful to know 
what is said about it. 
There is a little plant, which I mentioned in the 
report on a meeting in Regent Street, last November, 
which would make a greater sensation in a family than 
any now Geranium or Pelargonium—the little red, 
