December 1R. 
COUNTEY GENTLEMAN’S COMPANION. 
10.5 
'I'lio ]inincr, however, must bo guided in the main by 
the chiiriieter of the wood of his trees; for not only do 
kinds dilfer exceedingly, but the same kind does not j 
always possess llie same habit. If the tree is disposed | 
to produce natural blossom-spurs, what good gardener j 
would choose to retain one “ snag,” if hoi)es of the true ' 
spur wore manifest ? ]\[y plan, then, at all limes, is to 
get rid of what tliey call snags as si)eedily as I can; a 
very small ])leji for their absence seems to invent an ; 
excuse for “war to the knile.” Plverybody knows, or ] 
should know, that taking the average habit of Pears in : 
any garden, some three-fourths of these snags deceive | 
the hand that fondled them; they “run to wood,” to use , 
a gardening phrase. 
The last inquiry of “M. P.” is, “Are Quince Stocks 
n'riUij preferable to Pear? Soil, deep hazel loam, 
stiffening below into brick earth, and ultimately lying 
on mere red sand-stone; space no object.” Here is a 
curious question to answer. Doctors differ; why not 
gardeners? But here I am reminded of an old couplet, 
which may do for a preface to the remarks 1 would 
respectfully ofler concerning this ticklish affair— 
“ The difference is as great between ! 
The optics seeing as the objects seen ; ” 
so that it is hard to say who should speak loudest iu i 
the matter. iNfr. Piivers is too high an authority not to : 
he listened to; ]\lon. De Jonghe, too, seems to do the ; 
thing well in French; then we have some noted men i 
from the Channel Islands; also lots of good English I 
gardeners who have their favourites; and lastl}^ let me 
he “ one in the ring,” for I have long kept an eye on i 
the subject. 1 
This is, indeed, a question whicli will, probably, never 
he finally settled in the abstract. My advice is; first, : 
ascertain what kinds irill succeed on the Quince, and , 
what will not; next, ascertain if your soil will grow ' 
well the Quince tree itself; and finally, make up your 
mind as to whether you are willing to sacrifice amount . 
of produce and longevity in the tree, to speedy hearing, 
a dwarf habit, and, consequently, economy of space. 
Gentlemen who have invested hundreds — perhaps 
thousands—in propagation by the Quince are, certainly, 
not the very best evidence in this question ; it is too 
much for human nature to expect they will at once 
relinquish long-cherished opinions and hags of gold at 
one fell swoop. If the latter remarks have no weight j 
in them, they will, by the ordinary laws of gravitation, i 
evaporate unnoticed. R- Eriungton. ; 
POMPONE CHRYSANTHEMUMS. 
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On Sunday morning, December 9th iust, the glass 
indicated nine degrees of frost, and that iiiuch has not 
affected my buds of Pompone Chrysantheinums in the 
8lighte.st degree; and Dcqjhne is now nearly a scarlet 
flower, after being open full six weeks. FAise MieJlez is ^ 
also much redder and more beautiful than it was a month ^ 
ago; but Laig and Atroj)os {not Atwinis) are still as j 
dark brown as they were the first day they opened. 
Miononette, Ninon, Colibri, Fenella, Fiancee, Piquillo, 
Giralde, Madame .Tides, Graziella, Jonas, and a few 
others, are now, lltli December, just in their prime ; 
and Le Nain Behe, President, Surprise, La Pogue, 
Autumna, Prine Brine, Cedo Nulli, Louis Piton, are a 
good deal faded, and must be cut down in another week. 
Ifendersonii was cut in the last week in November. 
Here, then, we have three broad facts distinctly proved 
already; we have an early race, a middle and a late 
race, among Pompones ; and any amount of November 
fogs,’ more 'than the usual average of rain, and ten de¬ 
grees of frost, will not spoil these flowers ; so that, for 
nine years out of ten, it is quite possible to keep any 
number of flower-beds quite gay with them till the be¬ 
ginning or middle of December. Possibly there are 
some later kinds than those 1 possess. 
Toison d'or has opened beautifully since my last letter, 
and I see 1 have done itgreat injustice ; it is a larger tJowei- 
than Sacramento, fully as good for a mass; and the indi¬ 
vidual flowers are a little browned iu tlie centre at first; 
theplantis more dwarf,and it comesin justasAV/cruHicwto 
is going off. Now, what 1 want to teach from all this is, 
that we should take advantage of these “ iiroiierlies,” as 
a florist would say, and turn them to account for sup¬ 
plying the various uses for which Pompones are or can 
be used. First come, first served, apjilies here with con¬ 
siderable force. The first or earliest kinds ought, cer¬ 
tainly, to be propagated before the middle race, and the 
latter to be divided or struck from cuttings a full month 
before the very late kinds. I made up my mind for this 
division as far back as the middle of last September, 
and I am now so confirmed in the opinion, that it is a 
fixed principle with me. As far as I can yet see my 
way, Hendersonii, and all that are as early as it—these 
are coming—should be on their own roots, either by 
cuttings or dividing, before April is out; and the earlier 
in April, I think, the better, snd they should not be 
stopped after the first week iu July. As there was no 
special date that I could rely on for the last time of 
stopping Pompones, I went over every one 1 had, and 
stopped the Whole of them on the last Saturday in July; 
by doing that my Hendersonii did not come into flower 
until the 10th of October, just ten days or a fortnight 
later than I shall have it next year, if I live so long. 
All my transactions with the family are dated, iu a book, 
as carefully as if their golden, and silvery, and coppery 
])etals wore the true “ currency;” and I shall keep the 
account “ open ” to the end of the “ cha])ter.” 
According to my limited experience, all those Pom¬ 
pones which come in from the 15th or 20th of October, to 
the middle of November, should be on their own roots, 
and ready to shift for themselves, by the 20th of May, and 
the very late kinds the same, only, by IMidsummer day ; 
the latter to be stopped for the last time any day in tlie 
last \Veek in July ; and the former, or middle section, not 
later than the 15th of July ; that is to say, when we shall 
know which are the early, the middle, and the latest 
kinds; for I have only indicated that we may reasonably 
expect the three sections, or be able to form the middle 
and late sections by particular management,—we are 
certain of an earlier race of them; and the following is 
the manner by which I obtained an insight into the 
fact. 
On the Rth and 9th of last June, I got in a large 
collection of thirty-two kinds of Pompones, whicli were 
grown in No. Ifi-pots the previous autumn; the pots 
were kept in a cold frame all last winter; and by the Rth 
of June, the plants, or suckers, were grown to from nine 
to twenty inches high. I took short cuttings of the tops 
of the strongest shoots of all of them that day, and then 
cut the whole of the shoots down as close to the surface 
of the pots as I could reach. Alter that, I shook oil' all 
the soil from the balls, and divided each ball into four, 
six, or eight pieces, according to the size of each hall; 
and, lastly, I cut back the roots to the very bottom of 
the old stumps. To handle the pieces now, was like 
handling little patches of Double Daisies; there were 
more than 150 patches in all; but a friend, a very good 
gardener, who came for the day to help me,—took bis 
share, and was to report, from time to time, on his dif 
ferent way of treating his plants, so as to have two 
strings to the bow. He struck his part of the cuttings 
in heat, and my cuttings were struck in tiO-pots, placed 
inside a cold box with a flat to}) of loose panes of glass, 
after the manner of a Waltonian case ; and I had a 
share of those which were struck in heat, to plant out 
with my own, to see the difference, if any; but there was 
no appreciable difference from the two systems of strik- 
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