A rail- 20 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
35 
The lute winter had-destroyed so many kitchen veget¬ 
ables that no one here thought it worth his while to 
compete for the prizes offered by the Society, and those 
who fought the kitchen battles so gallantly last year are 
either gone to the Baltic themselves, or their vegetables 
have been crushed by the Northern Autocrat , with 
whom we poor gardeners have had to contend every 
winter and spring of our lives, without making half the 
fuss about it that they do now-a-days. 
There were sixty kinds of Roses, cut-flowers, in Mr. 
Lane’s collection, and from four to six flowers of every 
: kind, besides buds. They were in four long boxes, stuck 
| in green moss, just as they show cut Roses in summer, 
and you never saw so many cut Roses in summer look¬ 
ing half so well; it is too hot for them in summer, and 
the Roses open too much, or get half faded before the 
l public are admitted. Not so in the beginning of April; 
they then come out of a warm house, are carried in 
■warm vans, and our room is beautifully heated by two 
gas stoves; the cold air and the sun do not reach them 
all the while, and that is how people in London and 
other large towns ought to manage the cut-flowers they 
get up from the country, or buy in the market; instead 
of letting them droop the next day, and die, and be done 
with, and send home for more before half the week is out. 
There is nothing about which some people have less 
; conscience than about cut-flowers, and about which less 
i is understood by the great bulk of the moving world. 
A man who would grudge to give twenty shillings for a 
fancy waistcoat would not scruple to kill fifty shillings 
worth of cut-flowers in two days, as if his gardoner 
could cut and come again, like bis tailor. 
Geant des Battailes, Paul Joseph, and General Cas- 
tellane, are, perhaps, the three most fiery Roses we have. 
Paul Joseph, and the General, are darker in the summer 
than they are now, and less like the Geant. 
There were two Roses in this collection which I never 
I saw before, and they are far above all that I know of in 
richness of tint. They may not be so good from the 
open air, and the habit of the plants I cannot even 
guess at, but two such Roses were never seen before at 
one meeting. They are both Bourbons, one is called 
Scipion, with dark, velvety, crimson flowers, and the 
other is Jury, a sister to Scipion, with petals equally 
velvety, but they are more of a scarlet-crimson. 
Every one who forces Roses for cut-flowers for the 
drawing-rooms ought to buy these two at onco, grow 
them well this next summer, prune them at the end of 
September, and save the cuttings; keep them half dry 
in a cold pit till the first week in January, then begin 
to force them, as Mr. Errington would do a Peach or a 
Cherry; ripen off, and begin to force next time in De¬ 
cember, and so on, till the plants take to winter growing, 
as if it were natural for them, and then you will have 
these dark, velvety, Bourbon Roses for the Christmas 
party ; and to match them in blush, take Souvenir d’ un 
Ami, and Madame Willemory, a new one to me, and a 
worthy rival to Devoniensis —the flowers of it were really 
magnificeut. Baronne Hallez, Inermis, and Eugene 
Sue, were extremely rich hybrid Perpetuals, and Vis¬ 
countess de Cases was the best yellow; but as forced 
Roses are so very different from Roses in the open air, 
I must not describe any more of them till next May, 
and even then one is apt to be deceived. Last May I 
took Queen Victoria to be a white Rose, but when I saw 
it in June, out-of-doors, it was not even a blush Rose 
till it began to fade and lose colour. 
The Rhododendron Dalhousianum is the most extra¬ 
ordinary plant that has yet come to us from the blast 
Indies, and there is not a man between here and India 
who could tell what flower it is if be did not see the 
plant. This flower, in shape, size, or colour, has not 
the slightest resemblance to any Rhododendron you 
; ever saw or heard of before. Its flowers are of a creamy- 
white colour all over, and more inches across the open¬ 
ing than I venture to say ; suffice it, that 1 likened this 
flower to that of Hippeastrum solandrijlorum with the 
tube cut off, and that one of our botanists observed on 
this that it was “ not a bad hit.” Others said it looked 
more like the flower of the Gigantic Lily of India, 
which Mr. Veitch showed last summer. At all events, 
there it was, and of more substance, too, than most of 
the Lily flowers. It was brought into bloom at Ewell 
Castle, a few miles from Kingston, by Mr. Packman, 
gardener to J. Gadesden, Esq., and, as some said, for 
the first time in Europe ; but in the lecture we were told 
that one flowered before this at Dysart House, in Fife- 
shire, with Lord Rosslyn, a place on the north side of 
that great arm of the see called the Forth, and opposite 
Edinburgh. 
Among a collection of nice plants from the Messrs. 
Henderson, of Pine-Apple Place, were two very interest¬ 
ing ones,—the first was called Eleocarpus dentatus, a 
pure white little flower, in the form of a bell, mouth ; 
downwards, and fringed all round, as if it was .jagged j 
on purpose for an artificial flower. Then there were j 
from six to ten or twelve of these white-fringed bells on ! 
a slender stalk, growing out from every joint, quite i 
horizontal, and if they were only in bud, one might 
mistake them for whito currants, for that is like the i 
kind of stalk. The leaf is dry, thin, and as large as a 
bay-leaf, and the whole plant seems well adapted for 
pot-culture, and not requiring much room. The other 
plant has been known here for some time by specimens 
sent home from New Holland,.! think, by tbe late Allan 
Cunningham, who named the genus; but this is the first 
time it flowered, and it was foiced for that purpose, and 
were it not, they said it would be so much the better. 
The name is Cheiranthera linearis. The leaves are 
long and linear, and the flowers are blue, like some 
Campanula. 
The Society furnished a newish plant, Weigeliu ama- 
bilis, evidently a variety of the old one, but a better 
form, flower, and colour, and on those grounds entitled 
to be called a species. 
Mr. Veitch had a new kind of Dendrobium, a monster 
variety of macrophylla, the rhuharb-scented one, and 1 
with flowers more than three times the size of those of 
macrophyllum, with the eye or bottom part of the lip of i 
a more decided purple. He also sent a strong white 
Calanlha, a new one, belonging to the section of vestita. 
The Messrs. Rolliuson, of Tooting, sent a collection 
of Orchids, among which were Cypripedium barbatum, 
a variety with a darker pouch than usual; a new An- 
guloa, with purplish flowers; Chysis bractescens, a 
strong Orchid, with large? white flowers; Dendrobium 
densiflorus, with eight long spikes of deep-yellow flowers; 
Cattleya Shinnerii , perhaps the most lovely of all Orchids, 
certainly the most lovely of this charming genus, with 
eleven open flowers, but rosy-crimson is but a faint 
expression of this rich colour; Burling to nia fragrans, 
with eight large flowers on a raceme, and all but white ; 
Dendrobium albo-sanguineum, not very pretty, a dull 
white and a dark eye, or, rather, two dark eyes in every 
flower ; a very prettily-branched Oncidium, with small 
speckled flowers, having the back parts, or sepals, rolled 
back—it was called phymalochylum —a much larger name 
than the flower itself; Cattleya citrina, with its large 
yellow flower; a stubborn little Alpine Orchid, from 
high parts in Mexico, requiring to be kept as cool as 
the Barkerias. 
There were six pots of sixties in Mr. Henderson’s 
collection filled with very little plants, which were all 
flowers, such as they were : this was Grevillea calendu- 
lacea. There is not much beauty in these flowers, but 
as the plant can be had in small sixty pots, and in full 
bloom all over, and at this early season, they are well 
worth having for fringing baskets of plants in the 
