March l j. 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
3G7 
The general principles on which a selection of fruit 
trees should be made, are the requirements of the family, 
the extent of the aspects, and the garden generally. The 
wall-trees may be about seven feet six inches apart on 
an average, dwarf standards untrained, running east 
and west about sixteen feet, the same running north 
and south twenty-four feet, and pyramids about ten feet. 
For perpendicular and table trellises, the trees may be [ 
about twelve feet. 
Vines, figs, peaches, nectarines, and apricots, must in 
the main be on the south aspects ; nevertheless we have 
known apricots, especially the Shipley’s, succeed to ad¬ 
miration on east or west, and sometimes figs. Where 
early desserts are required, there should always be one 
Duke cherry, and an early plum,—say River’s favourite 
—on the south wall; and one Morello highly deserves a 
place there also. 
The very best pears, and especially those which look 
tempting while growing, should be on the east and west 
in the interior, and of course all luscious plums, cher¬ 
ries, &c., and the slip must receive all the harder 
featured, later and hardier kinds, and some bush fruit. 
R. Errlngton. 
SEASONABLE SCRAPS. 
Once upon a time I could take down two suipes, or 
two woodcocks, or even two swallows, with a double shot, 
but now if I were a patriot, as of course I am after a 
fashion, I need as much practice to hit a bull's eye as 
the youngest of them, and being very anxious to defend 
our good old constitution, I now go once or twice a month 
for this practice to our own rooms at 21, Regent-street, 
London, where we hit right and left as well as straight¬ 
forward. 
I was there the other day, and who should I meet but 
Mr. Appleby himself, looking as much of a patriot as 
any of us. He had a most beautiful new evergreen tree 
there, called Araucaria Goohii, named long since by Dr. 
Brown, after Cook the great circumnavigator, who, as 
well as the naturalists on board his vessel, mistook the 
tops of this conifer for basaltic columns, on the south¬ 
east coast of New Caledonia. After that, however, they 
discovered their mistake, and Cook described the tree in 
his account of New Caledonia, “ as an elevation like a 
tower; ” and it appears now that the very tree thus 
described is still alive and healthy, looking “ exactly 
like a well-proportioned factory chimney of great height,” 
a fact recently asserted by Mr. Charles Moore, the able 
superintendent of the Botanic Garden at Sydney, who 
took a trip in 1850 among the islands of the South 
Pacific, looking out for new plants and seeds. To Mr. 
Moore’s industry we are indebted for the first introduction 
into England of the very species which first puzzled 
our great sailor, and which, in gardening language, is to 
commemorate his name in that long list of eminent men 
who often perilled their lives to extend the boundaries of 
natural history. Mr. Moore sent over two plants of this 
beautiful Araucaria , together with drawings and dried 
specimens of the cones to the Horticultural Society last 
year, and Mr. Appleby was the first wdio brought a plant 
of it for us to see at our own rooms, but, strange to say, 
i lie had no prize for it. The fact is, we forget ourselves 
I in these troublesome times, because the French Presi- 
I dent knows our rooms just as well as any of us, and 
may be he is as fond of new plants as we are, and 
I perhaps will take it into his head to run over some 
“ meeting,” and clear the whole room of them; so if we 
were to spend all our money in prizes how could we buy 
rifles to defend our rooms in Regent-street. 
Mr. Fish ought to have been there also to see a fine 
Hybrid Begonia, also shown by Mr. Appleby, and a still 
finer plant in his way, for this season, called Selago 
distans, from our own garden. Everybody who has a 
greenhouse or a conservatory to keep gay in winter, 
ought to grow three or four specimens of this plant, 
which may be done in the course of one season, or in 
two at most. It belongs to the very small-leaved section, 
and every shoot ends in a close spike of small white blos¬ 
soms. i have bedded out this plant, and two more of 
them, but I did not much like them that way, but that 
is no reason why they should not be Fished * out for the 
greenhouse and conservatory ? 
I have always maintained that the older Camellias are 
as hardy as our Portugal laurels, because I found them j 
so, but I set my face against them because the cold 
winds destroyed their flowers so soon; but one should 
not be too positive, for now I must eat my own words, 
and acknowledge that Camellias can be flowered with 
impunity out of doors: for at this meeting we had a 
. large box of the flowers of the old variegated, from an 
open wall in Hampshire, in the garden of the Rev. Mr. 
Beadon, of North Stoueham, and they were very much 
admired; few gardeners could pack these flowers so 
well; at all times they are ticklish things to pack, i 
because the least touch of anything will damage them, : 
but there was not a spot on these. 
We had a very interesting collection of cut flowers 
from one of our members, the Hon. W. S. Strangways, i 
of Abbotsbury, in Dorsetshire, the gentleman after 
whose name Stransvesia glaucescens is called. The 
best of these for the flower-borders early in the spring 
was a Saxifrage from the north of India, and called 
Saxifraga ciliosa; it blooms in large spikes, just like 
the old broad-leaved one called cordifolia, but the 
flowers are more pinky and altogether finer. It is very 
well worth asking after. There was an extremely rare 
plant in this collection which I never saw or even heard 
of before, and no one in the room knew the name of it 
except Dr. Lindley and Mr. Strangways; the name is 
Azara integrifolia. The shoots were small, and the 
leaves not unlike those of the Correa speciosa, but grow¬ 
ing much closer together. The flowers are yellow, small, 
and in tufts along the underside of the young wood. It 
is a native of Conception, and we have another species 
called dentata, from the south of Chili. This last plant 
was against a wall in the Society’s garden some years 
ago, and perhaps is there yet; and very likely this 
integrifolia would live out about London in the same 
way: if so it would be useful for cut flowers in the 
[ winter. 
A much better winter plant than the last, from the 
south of Europe, and called Lithospermum rosmarini - 
folium, took my fancy very much. It is a Boragewort, 
and looks like a sprig of rosemary, with the flower 
of a deep blue Forget-me-not; and from the way these 
Borageworts flower on coiled spikes, I have no doubt 
this plant would go on flowering for three weeks, if a 
sprig of it were cut for filling up a glass of mixed cut 
flowers in the drawing room. The Fuchsia splendens in } 
the same collection looked as fresh and vigorous and as 
full of bloom as if it were Midsummer ; there was an 
Edwardsia in this lot that I never saw before, and several , 
other plants which require no more notice. 
Mr. Epps, the great Maidstone nurseryman, had a j 
couple of cut spikes of a sweet-scented and curious new 
plant from China called Edgicorthia chrysantha. You 
would just take it for a spike of pale yellow Daphne; it 
was among the first which Mr. Fortune sent home- 
Mr. Fortune was at the rooms the same day, but bo did 
not think his Edgicorthia was improved by our dull 
climate. In Chuzan, he says, it is a bright yellow, 
flowering in July, so I suppose Mr. Epps forced this 
plant and a good addition it will make to early forced 
flowers, though at the expense of the colour. 
Mr. Appleby could not keep his eyes, like a fond 
parent, otf lots of beautiful Orchids from Mrs. Lawrencej 
* Mr, Fish says that D, B, will always Be-at-one. 
