! November 13. THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 9 9 
; Devoniensis were once called white, hut they are far from 
it; light buffs, blushes, and yellows, are their prevailing 
colours. Vicomtesse de Gazes is the best yellow of the 
lot, and Pactolus, or Le Pactole, is the second-best yel¬ 
low ; both are strong enough for beds, and the best 
bedders of the whole race. Eliza Sauvage is a splendid 
i Rose, but it is too tender for a bedder; under a south 
wall, in a dry bright summer, it is a tolerable yellow, 
but in a wet cold season it has no colour at all. Bougere 
is the hardiest of them all, and as good as any against a 
, wall. On a dry sultry morning, it is as sweet as a fresh 
! opened tea-caddy, but it must have a wall to support its 
immense blooms; the colour I cannot tell, and I never 
yet saw it rightly described in any book or catalogue ; 
pale rosy bronze they call it, but, like the countryman, 
they might as well say that its huge blossoms were as 
big as a piece of chalk. 
Adam, a beautiful blush; Comte de Paris, a light 
J blush ; Madame Lacharme, in the way of the Malmaison 
j Rose; Moire, a very sweet yellowish sort; Queen Vic- 
I tuna, the same; and Souvenir d’un Ami, a light rose 
colour, are as good as one could wish, and the most 
likely to do well out of doors. Our list of them, then, 
will run thus :— Adam, Bougere, Comte de Paris, Devo¬ 
niensis, Eliza Sauvage, Le Paetole, or Pactolus, Madame 
Lacharme, Moire, Niphetos, Smith's Yellow, Queen Vic¬ 
toria, Souvenir d un Ami, and Vicountesse de Cazes. The 
last name was given wrong in some of the catalogues 
when it first came out, las Cassas for de Cazes. 
I must here break the thread to notice a few things in 
the last double number. The Double Yellow French 
Marigold, mentioned by “ R. L.,” page 70, should have 
been called African Marigold ; and there was one-thiid 
of the orange variety, in tlie same row, which added to 
the effect of the other; but when planted in large beds, 
as I often had them, the Double Yellow alone should be 
I used. For a late autumn bed of Matricaria, the plants 
should be in the reserve ground till early in July, and be 
cut down about the end of May, before they come into 
flower,—they remove any time in July, and will soon 
begin to dower and last to the end of October. Of course 
an earlier bed may also be had in the usual way. Senecio 
alba I mentioned and condemned long since in The 
Cottage Gardener; it is a French white. All the old 
plants of Oenothera prostrata should be kept and divided 
next April into small pieces; it improved much after 
“ R. L.” saw it with me; and it is to be the yellow 
ribband next year, in the same place, without any fresh 
soil; the ribband is about a foot wide ; old plants and 
dry poor soil are the only means to establish its charac¬ 
ter. The suggestion about planting the Heliotropes in 
their pots, and the grey Verbena between, is excellent 
where the soil is damp or rich. I over-did that job, and 
some others, last year, by making the beds too rich, to 
get the things up quickly, in time for the Prince. 
“ R. L.’s” receipt for striking the Unique Geranium is 
! worth the price of a volume of The Cottage Gardener. 
At the risk of getting a rap on the knuckles for taking 
up so much space, I must answer our worthy friend, 
S. N. V.,” page 70. I had lots of Moor's Victory in 
J 1829-30-31, and again, from 1840, at Shrubland; it is 
l very common about Ipswich. Mr. Jeffries and Mr. 
Salter have plenty of it on sale, but it is not worth a 
snuff as a flower garden bedder, and that is a great pity, 
for with the exception of Unique, there is not a more 
marked Geranium grown; its fault is that the most of 
the flowers hang down out of sight; on rock-work, or on 
a greenhouse stage above the eye, arc the only modes of 
1 making the best of it. Every writer on cross-breeding 
Geraniums has named Moor's Victory as the best to 
: breed from, for bedders, but it will not breed at all—I 
i tried it to the utmost. We have no bedder in the style 
j of Rouge et Noir that is worth a penny, except Rouge et 
I Noir itself. Touchstone is the nearest to it, and Oliver 
Twist the next, but both of these have been shelved 
years ago. D. Beaton. 
GREENHOUSE AND WINDOW 
GARDENING. 
Gas Tar eor Anti-moisture Purposes. —This has 
several times been alluded to in these pages, but I think 
it has not received the attention its importance demands 
and deserves. More than twelvemonths ago, I men¬ 
tioned gas-tar as being useful for keeping even the walls 
of earthen-pits dry in wintery, or other wet weather, and 
yet some of our readers and friends, who think them¬ 
selves privileged, on the score of acquaintance-ship, to 
dispense -with the prohibitions of our good editor, are 
frequently complaining, that do what they will, that 
fellow, damp, is an almost invincible, because so sure, 
though stealthy, an enemy. I have frequently heard 
many speak in the following manner:—“East winds, 
and north winds, the most stormy of sleets, and the most 
severe of frosts, we can manage pretty well—thanks to 
a waterproofed covering, and plenty of non-conducting 
dry material beneath it; but what matters this, so long 
as, though we defend the top, the moisture finds easy 
access at the sides and ends, and especially at the fronts, 
where the tlirown-off moisture falls from brick-pits, and 
turf-pits, and earth-pits, and pits of all kinds? It 
is true that something in the shape of a water¬ 
spout may be placed in front of the first of these, yet 
this is always getting filled, or stopped, or cracked, 
and shivered, by coming in contact with feet and knees, 
as well as forks, and every other conceivable implement; 
so that the moisture on the outside gets soaked into the 
inside, and a pestilental damp, in the many shapes and 
forms of what you call fungi, spreading with their lmir- 
like processes from plant to plant, consigns our favour¬ 
ites, in muggy weather, notwithstanding all the air that 
can be given, as effectually, though less slowly, to their 
last resting-place in the rubbish-heap, as if we had care¬ 
lessly left them exposed to a cloudless atmosphere, with 
frost verging to zero.” I feel so much the force ot such 
representations, and have suffered so much at times 
from similar causes, that if I had strenuously recom¬ 
mended temporary cold earth pits for protecting tender 
plants in winter and these cold pits placed on north 
borders, as some good folks have done, without men¬ 
tioning any easy method by which dryness was to be 
secured, I should feel half-inclined, opposed though it 
be to my natural inclinations, to skulk into a corner, or 
go a mile round, to avoid the meeting with any angry 
disappointed enthusiast. Before saying any thing ot 
this cheap come-at-able remedy, which I have no doubt 
will soon be more in demand by our clear-headed earnest 
friends, allow me, once for all, to state, that I use the 
word enthusiast above in no contracted view, but in an 
expansive, genei’ous sense, implying the ardent desire, 
the concentration of purpose, and the inflexibility ot 
resolution, combined with the probable and the practical 
in execution, without tvhich enthusiasm, no man, what¬ 
ever his natural talents, ever did much to advance a 
science or an art, or to promote the weal and progress 
of humanity. 
As many things are more easily understood by seeing 
them done, instead of reading about them, I will, by j 
way of example, mention a few circumstances in which j 
I have found great advantage from the anti-moisture 
quality in tar. A number of years ago, when the flower- j 
gardens and verandas were forming here, I found I 
had no pits, for winter vegetables, or for preserving 
bedding-plants, either in winter, or for turning them out 
before they were weakened by the heat of forcing-houses. 
So without more ado, several pits, consisting partly 
of tiu'f, but chiefly of earth, were constructed, and so 
