March 18 , 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
385 
and then its destruction is more easily accomplished; 
while, in many other cases, where a perennial plant, as 
couch grass, forms the principal intruder, a dry season 
is the best to extirpate it. Although new seeds of char¬ 
lock, &c., deposited in the ground, will retain their 
vitality there for a very long period, we must not con¬ 
found this mode with the sowing of turnips, cabbage, 
&c., in dry, hot weather, and expect them to grow when 
at length rain does come; as we all know such seeds 
lose their vitality when subjected to such a baking in 
an unshaded situation. But nature does not do so, as 
she, with a parental affection for her offspring, retains 
them by her, and only turns them out in the world 
when the chances are favourable to their well-doing 
there. Now, in garden culture, we are compelled to 
depart from such rules; our tastes and wants induce us 
to sow and plant things to come into use at times the 
most unnatural, as well as that the most common to 
them, or, in other words, we endeavour to prolong the 
utility of every article to the greatest length of time 
compatible with its well-being; and, to accomplish this, 
we must humour or coax the plant we operate on to 
comply with our wishes, by securing to it as many 
advantages as our knowledge of horticulture enables us 
to point to, and not the least is the condition of the 
ground at the time the seed is deposited there, and to 
that we now address ourselves. 
When a mild, wet winter passes away, the ground is 
usually left in a sour, improper condition for supplying 
the wants of a newly-germinated seed, and the con¬ 
sequence is, that such seedlings perish almost whole¬ 
sale, or, it may be, the seed itself refuses to grow in 
such ungenial soil. Means must, therefore, be taken 
beforehand to alter and improve that ground, by judi¬ 
cious draining, digging, &c., and the usual period of 
sowing may be delayed a little, if the prospect of the 
ground becoming finer imply it advisable; and, pre¬ 
viously to sowing, the surface only of the soil should 
be stirred; if done deeper, the chances are, that there 
will not be time for it to get pulverized, and much de¬ 
pends on this, as we have seen excellent crops of seed¬ 
lings on ground very obstinate to deal with. But by 
timiugthe digging by that shrewd knowledge of coming 
events, the cultivator contrived to have everything in 
season, while a single spadeful of soil turned over in 
May, displayed in an unmistakeable manner what diffi¬ 
culties he had to contend against. Now, it sometimes 
happens, that a succession of wet weather prevents our 
getting on land of this description, besides, our doing 
so must be hurtful to it; we therefore, in such cases, 
sow our crops on beds, treading only on the alley. This 
especially refers to carrots, onions, beet, &c., and contrive 
to have some fine soil for the top, of a kind not likely 
to get caked by heavy rains and subsequent dry wea¬ 
ther; as a preventive to which, we generally add some 
material of an opposite nature, as clean-sifted coal-ashes, 
or, what is better, charcoal-ashes. This latter substance 
has of late years become very fashionable; but its use 
as an auxiliary to the onion-bed is, we believe, coeval 
with its first production, and its utility in that respect 
was made known to the world through the pages of the 
Horticultural Transactions, some twenty-five or thirty 
years ago, by Mr. Smith, then gardener to a gentleman 
residing in one of our northern counties. 
We have seeds to sow at other times than the spring, 
and to get these seeds to vegetate at Midsummer, or 
more difficult still, “ the dog-days,” some little trouble is 
often encountered, more so in the south of England than 
in the north of it, unless the season be extraordinary; 
but in meeting this case we must take another leaf out 
of that inestimable volume “ the book of nature,” and, 
copying her directions, we must try and sow our seeds 
on some shady place, otherwise interpose some obstacle 
between them and the bright glare of sunshine they are 
opposed to; the latter is by far the best, as it can be 
removed when its uses are no longer necessary, and the 
young brood will be all the better for the increased day 
light. As an example, in this case, we generally cover 
our beds of new-sown cabbages, lettuce, endive, cauli- 
floiver, &c., with pea-boughs, or other partial shading 
material, which, allowing the sun to play amongst them, 
partially obstruct its direct rays, and prevent them 
scorching the young plants too much, or rather prevent¬ 
ing the seed germinating at all. Now, at that period, 
the state of the ground is less an adjunct to success 
than a congenial atmosphere, as the latter plays the 
best part in securing a progeny. Now, our shading in 
this way is neither more nor less than is done daily in 
nature. A plant sheds its seeds, which, falling where 
the shade of its “perhaps expiring parents” performs 
to it their last duties—that of protecting it from the 
sun’s too violent action—vegetate in due time. In ordi¬ 
nary garden cultivation, this shade is not necessary in 
spring, as we rarely have such an amount of sunshine 
as to render it necessary, and what we do have is con¬ 
genial rather than otherwise, by warming the earth, and 
drawiug to the surface some of that moisture with which 
the ground is charged below; but a fine state of tilth is, 
nevertheless, necessary, as by it the seed finds a bed 
and food, both suitable to its wants. While we here 
urge on the propriety of having a few inches of fine 
surface mould to start our seedlings on, we by no means 
infer that culture should stop there; on the contrary, 
the ground for all vegetable crops ought to be properly 
loosed and broken up, for at least eighteen inches deep, 
in order that, as the hot weather sets in, the roots may 
find their way downwards with facility, as the drought 
and lack of food compels them to do; but this under¬ 
stratum need not be so fine as the few inches at top, 
where the seeds are deposited; it is generally suf¬ 
ficient if it be roughly broken, sweet, and have 
been dug in dry weather. So convinced are we that 
deep cultivation is essential to success in all gardens 
lying dry, and subject to the punishing effects of sum¬ 
mer sunshine, that we would almost as soon put in a 
crop without manure, as without making sure that it has 
sufficient depth to send its roots to collect food, when a 
scarcity exists near the top. But, as our object was an 
elucidation of the conditions calculated to ensure a good 
healthy vegetation, we may remark that on one or two 
cases, the season has an effect on young seedlings not 
known to every one. First of all, we may say that car¬ 
rots are tender, as independent of its seeds’ unwilling¬ 
ness to germinate until late in the spring, it is a deli 
cate plant, and a very little amount of frost kills it, as 
we never saw carrots sow themselves as other things do. 
Then, again, we have young turnips which, if sown too 
soon, and receive any frost while in the seed-leaf, the 
plant, though it continues to grow for some time, yet 
eventually runs to seed without producing a single root. 
These two cases speak for themselves the propriety of 
securing to them some kind of a protection while in that 
state. J- Robson. 
THE GOLDEN AND THE SILVER PHEASANTS, j 
{Continued from page 374.) 
Swainson has generically distinguished the Golden and 
Silver Pheasants from the Common, the Ringnecked, and j 
the Versicolor or Japan species; and this proved impos¬ 
sibility of combining, or call it confounding, the species of 
his two genera, confirms at least their separation by a 
natural interval. What makes the incompatibility of such 
alliances the more remarkable, is the successful issue of the 
late Lord Derby’s bold experiment. It has already been 
related in print, but deserves to be still more widely known j 
than it is. The facts are briefly these. His lordship had 
obtained from Japan a pair of rare and beautiful pheasants, 
Phasianus Versicolor , or Diard’s Pheasant, the first imported ; 
