October 23. 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
47 
handled about like so many eggs, as they ought to be. 
There is no harm in cutting oft' a few of the larger fangs 
as soon as the dahlias are taken up, if done carefully, 
and the wounds get dried over before the roots are 
stored ; but if the necks of these large, heavy tubers get 
twisted, or otherwise too much strained, at the time of 
lifting, that will be sure to induce decay sooner or later. 
There is another great error which a young beginner is 
apt to fall into with his Dahlias at this season, which 
is this:—A good piece of the bottom of the stem is 
left to carry the roots by, and often to hang them up 
by when they are partially dried; but by-and-by this 
bottom piece begins to damp, or otherwise decay, 
because there is no great substance in it to hold out 
like the tubers, and the decay reaches the collar, where 
all the eyes or buds for growing next spring are 
clustered around. If this is allowed to go on, and the 
buds are injured, no matter how sound the tubers may 
be next season, they cannot form new buds, and they 
might just as well have gone first as last. Experienced 
growers act differently; they, too, leave a piece of stem 
to the roots at first, and until the whole are well dried ; 
then, before they put them by for the winter, they cut 
away, very carefully, every part that is likely to decay, 
leaving only a mere stump above the neck or collar; 
and not only that, but they never put away a valuable 
root until they see that no speck or blemish is left on 
this stump to endanger the safety of the bud. All 
around the collar must be as sound and dry as a nut 
ere they consider it safe to store them. There is another 
way of dealing with very small and scarce roots that 
have very little substance in them, by which they can 
keep them safe enough, which is, potting them in sand, 
or sandy earth, and keeping them like pot geraniums of 
the scarlet breed, that is, not wet or dry, and the pot is 
a great convenience besides, for you can move it from 
place to place at any time to insure the proper keeping 
of the roots. I had half-a-dozen roots of the Scarlet 
Zelirula sent me two or three weeks since, and this is 
the way they were served; not that they were at all 
weak, but, having been taken up when they were in full 
growth, that is the safest way, to ripen them slowly in 
an open shed as long as the frost holds off, then a dry 
shelf somewhere will be found for wintering them. I 
never saw this dwarf scarlet dahlia in growth, and some 
visitors told me, early in the season, that it was confined 
to one garden, one which nobody could see until the 
death of the owner a few months since; but since, I 
learned from Mr. Forbes, gardener to the Duke of 
Bedford, and from Mr. Spencer, gardener to the Mar¬ 
quis of Landsdown, that they had it, and that it was 
quite as dwarf as the original dark Zelinda which they 
saw here, so that I am quite sure that it is a good 
flower-garden plant. They sent me flowers of it, along 
with the roots, and if Mr. Glenny had seen them he 
would not have slept for a night or two, as their image 
would press on his nerves like the nightmare. But I can 
vouch for it, that nine-tenths of the ladies, and the higher 
classes in general, care not one fig whether a dahlia is 
round or flat-faced, or whether the petals are round- 
cupped or star-pointed, so that the flower is of a striking 
colour and a profuse bloomer. This Scarlet Zelinda has 
the petals as sharp and starry as any flower can be; 
the nearest to it of all the dahlias I have seen is one 
called The Garland, which Mr. Jeffries, nurseryman, 
at Ipswich, grows every year. This also is a famous 
flower-garden plant; the flowers are small, very nu¬ 
merous, and quite scarlet, but the plant is from three to 
four feet high, and only fit for the centre of a large, 
round bed. I saw a fine, new, bedding geranium with 
Mr. Jeffries, the other day, and I told him to increase 
every morsel of it. I shall describe it when 1 come to 
the descriptive list of all the best bedding geraniums, 
which I promised some time since. Meantime, 1 have 
another dahlia to describe, a beautiful thing for the 
flower-garden, as single as a Zinnia, and not unlike one 
of the best purple Zinnias, with stripes of a lighter shade, 
very round petals, as thick as if they were made out of | 
gutta percha or India-rubber, and not bigger than those of 
the wild dahlia called Scabigera —the name is The Glory 1 
of Thetford. The gentleman by whose kindness 1 got 
acquainted with this dahlia, is R. Bevan, Esq., Rookery, 
Rougliam, near Bury St. Edmunds, a great and enthu¬ 
siastic collector of fine and rare things, who would give 
any plant from his unique collection for a root of the 
wild original Dahlia coecinea, which he failed to rein¬ 
troduce from Mexico; and he believes it is lost to culti¬ 
vation altogether. Brrt let us hope not; and that some 
one amongst our thousands of readers may give a 
clue to its whereabouts. To send for it direct from 
Mexico would be a better speculation than to be in pos¬ 
session of a whole bundle of Mexican bonds. I wrote 
back immediately for the biography of the Glory of 
Thetford, and hinted that it should be increased in the 
way of trade, thinking that it was in the hands of some 
nurseryman round about. The following is the answer 
I received from Mr. Bevan:—“The single dahlia, the 
Glory of Thetford, I got from the late Mr. Sparrow, of 
that town, who was gardener to that distinguished cul¬ 
tivator, the Rev. Reading Leathes, of Shropham, and j 
brought it with him thence ; it was probably raised 
there. Roots or seeds of it are at the service of any \ 
person who will apply to me, or I would commit the | 
distribution to any agent whom you would recommend. ! 
I am glad to exchange, but 1 cannot sell or bargain.” 
We must get this single dahlia into general cultiva- j 
tion, and we must not be so rude as to trouble the gen¬ 
tleman about it, who is little aware of the enormous 
trouble his kindness would entail upon him. Five 
hundred letters the first week would be enough to 
frighten any one, but that is nothing to the number of 
applications he would be sure to encounter. Let no one, 
therefore, apply for it direct unless he can give a root of 
D. coccinea in exchange. But let Mr. Appleby’s em¬ 
ployers, or some other spirited firm, take the surplus 
stock in exchange for some other plauts, increase it in 
the spring, and let it out cheap, that all may have a 
slice of it. 
I have been regretting for years, and many have 
shared my disappointment, at not having a beautiful 
race of single dwarf dahlias for the flower-beds. I would 
submit to the last turn of the screw at the hands of the 
regular florists, for a lot of really good single dahlias, 
piccotees, carnation stripes, seifs, and all as round as a 
full moon, if so they must be. Now the Glory of Thet¬ 
ford is, perhaps, the best single dahlia ever got under 
cultivation, and, therefore, the fouudatiou is already 
laid for a fair start. I have myself tried hard for several 
years to do the thing out of Scabigera, but although I 
got every shade, from dark purple to pure white, in the 
seedlings, and also experimented on seeds from the ray 
and from the disk parts of the flower, I am just as badly 
off as when I first began; not a single good flower did 
I get, and I prefer the original lilac of the species, if, 
indeed, it is a species, to any of the hundreds of seed¬ 
lings. Yet, in the progress of improving a race of 
singles, I think Scabigera would be useful to keep down 
the coarseness of the leaves; no dahlia has such beau¬ 
tiful leaves as Scabigera. 
If we do not make a push just now with flower-garden 
dahlias, the hollyhock makers will put down the whole 
of them in a few years. Hollyhocks are fast getting into 
splendid order—but there is one thing about them that 
will never come up with the dahlia—amateurs cannot 
show them for prizes and have them to look well at 
home, for the moment you cut a spike from a hollyhock 
its beauty is gone with it for that season—and this is 
the right season to buy in a lot of fine new ones, and to 
