200 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
January 22. 
insert the plant; and as you fill up, gently press the soil to 
tire roots, and let the compost be finished up within half-an- 
inch of the top edge of the pot, and up to the collar of the 
plant, which is just below the base of the bottom leaves ; 
place all the plants in a frame, of which the bottom must be 
impervious to water, and so contrived that the superabun¬ 
dance of moisture on watering may run oif and not soak in, 
for damp is invariably fatal, and that which arises from 
moisture in the ground is the worst. 
As we will suppose this to be the general potting time 
(unless we are buying plants out of the usual season), it 
may be well to intimate that the rules of those who grow for 
sale are adopted with a view to the increase of stock, and 
are no guide for amateurs. We have found that the best 
season for repotting is after the bloom has gone off, and the 
seed ripened; offsets have then grown large enough to 
detach from the main plants. The largest sized pots in 
which the plants should be grown are called 32s,—six inches, 
or a trifle more, across. All the plants should be turned 
out, and the soil shaken away, the main root examined, and, 
if too long, shortened; at all events, if there be any cankery 
spots every morsel should be cut away ; most of the long, 
matted fibres should be taken away also, and the repotting 
should be in sizes apportioned to the plants. Offsets must 
be all removed, whether rooted or not; those not rooted 
should be placed round the edges of pots, and put into the 
shade, under a hand-glass. The repotted plants should be 
watered with a fine rose, and shut up in the frames, shaded 
from the sun, for two or three days ; then they may come 
under the general management, shaded for three or four 
hours from mid-day sun, but allowed all the air that can be 
given at other times, and be freely watered. 
As winter approaches they must be cleared of their yellow 
leaves, and be watered seldom, but when they are watered 
they must not be watered sparingly, nor need they ever have 
moisture until the soil is nearly dry. In mild weather, all 
through the winter, let the glasses come right off, but in 
cold drying winds the glasses must only be tilted, and that 
on the side or end opposite to that on which the wind blows. 
In 1'ebruary stir the compost on the top of the pots as low 
as you can without touching the fibres, and throw the loose 
stuff out, and fill up, by way of top-dressing, with three parts 
of rotten cow-dung and one part sand, well rubbed together; 
fill up the pots to the base of the bottom leaves, and at all 
times, before and after, remove all yellow leaves. In the 
spring the plants may have genial warm showers, and be 
watered more freely, and particularly when their bloom 
trusses begin to show; at this time they must not be watered 
in the heart of the plant, and all through the winter season 
they must be covered to protect them from frost, and the 
covering not be removed, even by day, if the weather be 
severe. 
As the blooms rise and show colour they will require to 
be removed to a sheltered situation, under a hand-glass, 
propped up so that the bottom shall be just below the edges 
of the pots; and here they must be shaded from all the 
mid-day sun, and carefully protected from cold, for a chill 
will check the opening, and they will never afterwards come 
flat. The number of pips must be reduced to eight or nine 
at the most, by removing carefully those most backward, 
and the remaining ones must be so spread, by putting little 
pellets of soft moss between the footstalks, that the pips 
shall not touch each other as they open, and they must be 
attended to daily. If they are too forward or too backward 
for the show, it is better to leave them alone than to attempt 
keeping them back or hastening them, until you are well 
acquainted with them, for the most experienced hands 
cannot help their being the worse for any artificial means; 
those who are used to them might advance them a little in 
a greenhouse, or by giving them a little more sun, or retard 
them by keeping them darker, but nothing can produce 
them so good as if they are unchecked and properly shaded. 
As they get nearly perfect you may again reduce the number 
to the best seven pips, and when they are put up to show 
the moss must be removed, and the pips so placed as the 
edges may touch, but not cover each other. 
After the bloom is over they may be placed in a shady 
situation, and have all the weather until the potting time, 
when they may all undergo the operation of potting again. 
Rooted offsets, in small pots, may be placed in larger ones, 
and those which have rooted round the edges of pots may 
be potted into small sizes. "When you are inclined to try 
experiments, poultry dung, rotted into mould, is the best of 
all exciting materials, and may be either mixed with four 
times its quantity of loam and sand, in equal parts, as a top¬ 
dressing, or ten quarts of water to a pound, and given, as the 
blooms are colouring, as a liquid manure. But we recom¬ 
mend these experiments to be tried on three or four plants 
that can be spared, for much depends on the strength of the 
dung, which varies much in its different stages of decom¬ 
position ; we never used it, although we have seen a neigh¬ 
bour do it, sometimes with questionable advantage, occasion ¬ 
ally with mischief, and most assuredly when we came to the 
operation of repotting we had rarely a bit of canker to 
remove, while he would rarely find a plant without a touch 
of it. Growers for sale use exciting compost; they want 
rapid growth, and when the plants are sold it matters but 
little to them if the whole perish after the first bloom. 
The only dealers near London now, are Groom, of Clap- 
liam, and Dickson, of Acre-lane, Brixton. Tn Lancashire 
they cultivate to some extent, and so far as we could judge 
from turning out their plants, they seem to grow in simple 
compost. Slater, of Manchester, and Holland, of Middle 
ton, have both taken some pains with them. We should be 
rather anxious to show from the following, if we were begin¬ 
ning again:—Page’s Champion, Fletcher’s Ne Plus Ultra , 
Booth’s Freedom, Leigh’s Col. Taylor for green edged: —Dick¬ 
son’s Unique, Waterhouse’s Conqueror of Europe, Oliver’s 
Lovely Anne, Cheetham’s Lancashire Hero for grey edged: 
Taylor’s Glory, Thorpe’s Magpie, Taylor’s Lncomparahle and 
Favourite for white edged. But there are newer varieties, not 
yet in general cultivation, which will beat some of these. 
What ought a Good Auricula to be ?—Bound, flat, 
smooth in the edge; the tube round and well filled with 
thrum; the white pure, round, smooth, and thickly covered; 
the ground colour equal, dense, round, very slightly fea¬ 
thered, and the edge the same width as the white, and 
ground equal all round, and slightly feathered inwards; the 
pips all equal size, edge to edge, but not covering, not less 
than seven; truss, even though a little rounding on the face, 
all seen at once, and with a leaf, or leaves, behind, forming 
a green ground to the truss of flowers. Pairs should be 
alike in size but different in character; the truss well above 
the foliage, which should be large and healthy. 
G. Glenny. 
COCHIN-CHINA FOWLS. 
Perhaps the following statement of the very extraordinary 
productiveness of this truly magnificent breed of fowls may j 
be interesting to the readers of The Cottage Gardener ; ; 
indeed, to that portion of them who are as fond of this 
description of poultry as myself, I am quite sure it will. 
Mr. Thomas Nice, of Great Bradley, Suffolk, pm-chased a 
Cochin-China cock and pullet of Mr. Punchard, of Haver¬ 
hill, on the 6th of January, 18-31. They were placed at an 
off-farm of Mr. Nice’s, under the care of Hannah Ashman, 
who lives there, and who says that the pullet laid the next 
day (probably had been laying before she left Mr. Pun¬ 
char ds), and after for twenty-two days, when she wanted to 
sit, but was not allowed; and in nine days after recommenced 
laying, laid twenty-three eggs, and was then allowed to sit. 
She hatched seven chickens, kept with them only three 
weeks, and began, and had been laying only a few days, 
when she met with an accident in the yard, and was killed. 
The first eggs were put under brood hens, as were such of 
the others as she did not sit upqn, and in the whole thirty- 
four chickens were reared, seventeen cocks and seventeen 
pullets; eleven pullets out of the seventeen commenced j 
laying in September, and between that time and Christmas ! 
laid upwards of six hundred eggs; the other six pullets have 
not yet laid. Hannah Ashman says, that she has for mam- 
years had the management of fowls, and that she is sure 
these new fowls have laid double the number of eggs in the 
same time, than any others she ever before had the care of. 
She is open to any inquiries that may personally be made 
of her. J. H. Payne. 
