74 THE COTTAGE GARDENER. May 4. 
pot was ballooned by turning down tbe shoots, and from 
the top of this balloon the centre started as from a pot; 
when this stage gets bare, or rambling, it will probably be 
ballooned also, and so on they go, till they make a full 
pillar of this most elegant Acacia , which every preen 
and empress in the world ought to have. 
I have no more room but for tbe fruit; and tbe late clear 
sunny weather allowed Mr. Fleming, of Trentham, to give 
such quantities of air by night, no doubt, as well as by 
day, to the Duke and Duchess of Sutherland’s forced Cher¬ 
ries, that they seemed more like those from an open 
wall than forced fruit; he had a good prize for a beau¬ 
tiful dish of them. There were six bunches of Black Ham¬ 
burgh Grapes from Mr. Spary, of Brighton. There were 
also dishes of Keen's Seedling Strawberries, and of British 
Queen, with a dish of Apples, and some Potatoes, of which 
one, called the Fluke potato, which we were told, in the 
lecture, never yet took the disease; and many people are 
going to try if it holds out against it this season under 
different circumstances. There were two or three kinds 
of Lettuces from the Garden of the Soeiety, dr Lettuces in 
different stages of growth, some from the open air, and 
some of the same over which hand glasses had been 
placed last March ; those under the hand-glasses were 
forced as beautifully and crisp as any Dutch gardener 
| coidd turn out, and the kind of band-glass which an- 
! swered the best is the one of which Mr. Errington 
wrote about the other day ; they were invented by Mr. 
Errington, and they are made by Mr. Pilkington, and 
j the Horticultural Society of London have already 
| proved them to he the best. These good bell-glasses 
I have a neck, a throat, and an open mouth at the 
! top; a little pot, say a sixty, turned over the mouth of 
i this glass, cuts off the air; or if you want it more light, 
! a little bell-glass turned over the mouth would do that; 
i but I prefer tbe little flower-pot. D. Beaton. 
FAILURES. 
There are few, however humble, that will studiously 
keep their success tinder the extinguisher of an opaque 
bushel measure. Without getting into the miry egotism 
of a self-laudation, there is something pleasing to our 
feelings, as thinking agents, in finding that we have 
done or produced any thing worthy of favourable notice, 
or intelligent approbation. The great failing with some 
people is, that do what they will, they never do wrong, 
however disastrous the result. There is always a 
sufficient reason, wholly apart and inseparable from 
anything they could have done or left undone. The 
hump of self-esteem, a good thing in its way, lias 
quite closed up with its bulk the organs of perception, 
that would have enabled them to see virtue and successes 
among their neighbours, and among'these, some causes 
of their own failures, [f such happy specimens of 
humanity should ever even affect to ask for an advice, 
it would only be after their own plans were fully 
resolved upon; or that they might have thq pleasure of 
acting directly contrary to what some of their friends 
deemed an authority. The scrapes and disappointments 
their headstrong, self-opinionated determination get 
them into are never so much as mooted by them. An 
accidental success will be duly chronicled; a host of 
failures, never. With a spirit overtopping the meanness 
of envy and jealousy, speak of the abilities and achieve 
ments of some third party, and forthwith our hero will 
shut you up with a homily on his own wondrous deeds. 
Previous experience would tell 11 s, that to all such we 
can he of little benefit were our knowledge as amplified 
as it is limited. 
Were 1 to take the correspondent column as any test 
for guidance, I would say that failures are some of the 
chief bonds that unite writers and readers. The best 
way of doing a thing is all very well; the stating the 
reasons why such a mode is best in the circumstances 
is also instructive ; but we find there is a something 
wanting after all that, when we do as well as we know 
how, and yet do not rightly succeed. In fact, however I 
much we may respect and honour a man, we can have j 
but little sympathy in common, if we find that upon a 
given point, in which we are greatly interested, he is 
immeasurably above or beyond us. There is some¬ 
thing cheering to a pupil, however hazy and intricate 
his task, when he knows that similar difficulties attended 
the progress of his preceptor. Hence, keeping this in 
view, as well as from a principle of honesty, I have 
deemed it right not uufrequently to allude to failures of 
my own, even when I did not clearly see the reason; 
and the failures of others, when a mode of success 
could he pointed out; and to a few cases of this latter 
description, thrown together at random, will our atten¬ 
tion now he directed. 
CHANGES IN THE WEATHER. 
Among all earnest amateurs, during the greenness of 
their first zeal, this is a fruitful source of disappoint¬ 
ment. The day has been so beautiful and mild, they 
reck not of the dangers of the night, but banish care 
and anxiety when slippered at the fireside, until frequent 
disappointments have taught them to be ever watchful. 
A favourite article may he properly secured at tbe time, 
hut a change of temperature may require a great change 
in its treatment. A lady, last season, was right proud of 
her Dahlias and Scarlet Geraniums. She found out 
that oldish plants of the latter bloom more profusely 
than young ones. She described her conveniences, and 
received appropriate directions for managing them in a 
spare room. The Dahlias were packed in dry earth 
and ashes, and the Geraniums, after the soft wood and 
leaves were removed, were packed in earth neither wet 
nor thoroughly dry. The season approached when signs 
of active vitality should be appearing, but though 
anxiously looked for, still they came not, and, so far as 
the Geraniums were concerned, never will come. They 
had beeu rightly kept every way, only that the frost bad 
thoroughly penetrated them, and made the inside of 
their stems as black as hats generally were before so 
many new tints of colour were coming into fashion. 
No shutters bad been put to the window; a single fold 
of a piece of mat had been laid over the plants, and no 
more was thought about them, though the frost was suf¬ 
ficient to crack crystal decanters in bedrooms, by the 
freezing of the water within them. Many found in un¬ 
heated bedrooms an extra blanket something more than 
a luxury; and if an extra blanket had been given to the 
plants, in the shape of a good covering of a non-con¬ 
ducting medium, the Geraniums would have been green 
and flourishing to-day, and most of the Dahlias would 
not have required a resting-place in the dust-heap. 
PROTECTING VINE BORDERS. 
A friend of ours has generally had fine heavy crops, 
and yet such small foliage as to demonstrate two things 
—first, that the Grapes received the chief strength of the 
Vines; and secondly, that the roots must he near the 
surface, when the Vines, were so distinguished for 
fertility instead of extra luxuriance. lie had no reason | 
to find fault either with the quantity or the quality of 
his Grapes; he took every opportunity to admire the 1 
splendid parasol-like foliage in the vinery of a neighbour ■ 
—and the bunches everything that could be hoped for, ! 
though rather scanty. They both forced moderately ! 
early. In one point chiefly did their practice differ. 
Our friend carefully covered his border, and tried to i 
thrown little heat into it; as well as preventing the j 
escape of the heat stored up %iu autumn. His friend j 
regularly laughed at him for his pains. “ Disfigure the 
