THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
April 27. 
ness, would give too great sun power in an afternoon. If 
kept well moistened, and a little shaded in the height of the 
day, we did not use to have much trouble ; the individual 
tlowers stopping only a short time, but being quickly fol¬ 
lowed by others.] 
ROOT - GRAFTING ROSES.—PROTECTING 
BLOSSOMS. 
“ I grafted some shoots of Perpetual Roses last February, 
on the roots of some old stocks from the hedgerows, and 
put them in a cucumber-frame, removing them as soon as 
the shoots had well started to a greenhouse. They are 
now strong and healthy plants with young shoots eighteen 
inches long; some have dowered and some not. Should I 
cut them down now to within an eye or two of the original 
stem, before planting them out, as T hope to do in May? or 
would that be taking too much strength from them? 
“You have some suggestions in last month’s Cottage 
Gardener about protection for fruit trees. I put up an 
iron rod under the coping of my wall, to which I have hung 
curtains, exactly on the same principle as window curtains 
fora room. These are easily drawn backwards and forwards, 
and at night are tied down to some stakes about two feet 
distant from the wall. I have found this answer perfectly, 
and a cheaper plan than rollers ami pulleys. The curtains 
are made of the commonest unbleached calico, and cost 
2|d. the square yard.—G. M. C., Ludlow.’’ 
[Many thanks for your notice on grafting these Roses. 
You will see in another page that your authority has been 
admitted in court, to the satisfaction of the presiding judge. 
Such notices are always valuable, and that about covering 
the fruit trees is not less so. It is best not to shorten 
the Roses till next November. It is now time to remove 
them from the greenhouse to a cold frame, to harden them 
still more before they are planted out by the end of May; 
they do not like sudden changes so soon after grafting. 
When you plant them let the grafted parts be buried an inch 
or so, and keep them watered two or three times a week, for 
the first six weeks after planting, and they will be quite 
safe, and more so if you stake them, as, if the men should 
1 disturb them much when cleaning round them, the grafts 
! might snap off; the matter which forms the union between 
stock and graft is delicate during the first season, but all 
j newly grafted plants require care as well as Roses the first 
! season.] 
YALLOTA PURPUREA OFFSETS. 
“ I have a large pot sent me with a centre bulb of Vallota 
purpurea, surrounded by about a dozen fine offsets. The soil 
is dry, but the plant is healthy; foliage green and luxuriant. 
I want to know when aud how to repot it, and how to treat 
the offsets. I have referred to The Cottage Gardener, 
' vol. iv., page 137 ; vol. v., p. 100 ; vol. x., p. 451, but cannot 
find out all I want. How is it possible to plant the Vallota 
out, with a saucer of water under it?—W. J.” 
[The Vallola purpurea is an evergreen bulb; the refer¬ 
ence to it, vol. v. page 106, was by a good grower, but he did 
not study that branch of culture. What he there says is 
about Amaryllis, and the Vallota is often so called. The 
reference in vol. x., page 451 ; reads odd from the want of 
one little word : thus, “ when you plant out your Dahlias 
next May, you may plant the Vallota out too ; ” or, “ put it 
under a south wall, with a saucer of water under it.” When 
an old bulb of this Vallota gets over-crowded with offset 
bulbs, and it becomes necessary to detach some of them to 
give room to the rest, to give away to a friend, or merely for 
increasing the number of plants in one’s collection, from 
the end of March to the middle of May is the best time to 
make the separation; but this bulb is so hardy in consti¬ 
tution, that a gardener would not scruple to take off all the 
offsets any week in the year. There is not a single bulb, from 
Crocus to Pancratium, or from the hardiest to the most 
tender, but will do better under cultivation, when more 
than two or three of them are tied together in a lump, as it 
were, by their own natural ties. We would separate all the 
offsets of your bulb, but the strongest four; these four we 
would leave to bloom with the old bulb, and pot the others 
in single small pots in strong loam, with a little sand, and 
keep them close for a month or six weeks. After the 
middle of May we would place the old pot in a saucer 
of water, and after Midsummer we would place it in | 
the open air under a south wall, still keeping a saucer of 
water under it, and in August we should expect it to bloom ; 
when the bloom was nearly over we should leave off the 1 
saucer till the May following. We never knew it to refuse 
to flower by such treatment, but the young offsets take some 
long time to come to a flowering age ; but keeping them in 
pots is not the surest way to get them to flower soon; if they 
were planted out under a south wall two summers, from the 
end of May to the end of September, they would increase as 
much in size as they would in pots in three seasons.] 
PLUM-STOCKS. 
“ I planted some Plum suckers for stocks, which I ! 
thought would do to bud Peaches and Apricots on; they j 
are about three feet high. Ought they to be cut down, or 
left as they are, and the bud inserted in the main stem ? I 
I want them for dwarfs.—P. W.” 
[You should have cut back your Plum-stocks to bud 
Peaches and Apricots on during the rest season. They I 
will, however, take no harm by cutting them back to about ! 
two feet now. The nurserymen do not suffer them to 
become too rampant before budding, for the grosser they 
are, the larger is the wound made in the act of heading 
them back after the buds have taken. You will, of course, 
insert the buds in July or August, about four to six inches 
above the ground-level.] 
POULTRY. 
RETENTIVE VITALITY OF EGGS. 
“ Seeing you are desirous of examples of the fact of eggs 
being deserted, and afterwards hatched, I beg to afford the 
following case in point. On the 14th March I set a hen 
upon 14 eggs which the hen most carefully tended for about 
a week; I say about a week, for I had not kept a note of the 
precise day of desertion ; nor had I then any notion that the 
circumstance might be of any use, so let it pass. At this period, 
then, she got fighting with another hen for the right of the 
eggs, and actually left them, as did the other hen also; and 
both sat nearly a whole day, and part of a night, say until ten 
o’clock P.M., upon another nest, thus rendering the whole 
fourteen eggs, to all appearance, stone cold. This was very 
mortifying to me, and I thought it a hopeless case; but I 
put her again upon them as a sort of forlorn hope; and no 
chicks appearing,I yesterday (April 6 th) determined on break¬ 
ing up the nest, eggs, and all; but, as she had sat so long, I 
thought I would chance the hen sitting until Saturday 
(to-morrow), and then have done with it. To my surprise, 
this morning, on going to the fowl-house, I heard the faint 
chirp of a chick, and on lifting up the patient sitter, I 
found 11 chickens all alive, and apparently hearty, although 
one lias since died—the other eggs were abortive, and I can 
well afford to lose them after such good luck so unexpectedly. 
This proves, that after a week the impregnated ova retains 
its heat, although the shell may feel externally cold.— 
W. F. Whitmore, Grove House, South Lambeth." 
An anonymous correspondent (S. B. P.) says, “ I beg to 
offer a few remarks relative to the article that appeared in 
your valuable journal of the 0th of April. In the first place, 
I will mention having a hen that had sat nine days, and 
then leaving her nest for eleven hours. I put the eggs 
under another hen, and, to my surprise, I had from every 
egg a bird. I had another hen that had sat three days, left 
her nest, and was off six hours; however, she returned and 
sat well afterwards, producing me from every egg a bird.” 
“ I set a young Cochin-China hen about the middle of 
February; she sat very well for three nights and days, but 
in going to the house early the fourth morning, I found the 
hen on another nest, and her eggs quite cold, having, I 
suppose, been left from feeding-time the day before ; but I 
allowed her to take to them again, but only to have another 
mishap ; for, on going to the nest a few days after, I found 
she had by some means broken three or four of her eggs. 
1 made a fresh nest, washed the eggs that were left in warm 
water, and let her try her luck again; the result was they 
were all had. At the same time I had another hen brought 
of seven chickens, which I put in a room with a boarded 
floor; they did very well for the first fortnight, after which 
