! March 11, 
COUNTRY GENTLEMAN’S COMPANION. 
423 
sent over seeds of this Lily to be tried for the twentieth 
time. I had some of these seeds tliree years, in a pot in 
the Calcutta house at Shrubland Park, hut they would 
not grow, and I could not make them start anyhow, yet 
the seeds were quite fresh all that time though it had no 
more body than a Carrot seed, if so much. Now, Mr. 
I.,ow has about two thousand of this Lily for every 
parish in the three kingdoms, from seeds—two thousand 
seedlings, recollect, for every parish. Multiply that by 
the number of parishes, and see how many thousands 
tliey will all oome to. The secret for raising this Lily 
from seeds has been in a nutshell all this time. It will 
not come in heat at all, but sow it as thick as Mustard 
and Cress, at the same time as Wheat, in October, and 
cover the bed well from the frost, and in the spring the 
seedlings will come as “ thick as grass,” but only one- 
third of the number, or thereabouts; in twelve months 
another third of them come, and the last of them not 
till the third spring after sowing. At the Clapton Nur¬ 
sery they placed a fine, large, light frame in an out-of- 
the-way place, and made a suitable bed nine or ten 
inches deep, as long and as wide as the frame, sowed 
the seeds as I have just said, last October, covered the 
frame with glass, five sashes, and when the frost ap¬ 
peared the whole was covered as we would a cold pit for 
bedding plants, and so left till the first sprouting, which 
was just pushing the last time I saw them. 
Tlie second “ sight” was about as much shelf-room as 
would extend the length of the Crystal Palace in single 
file, occupied with seeds of Araucaria inibricata, planted 
lialf their length, and as close as they could stand, in 
pots filled with strong loam, together with twenty-nine 
lights of a cold pit entirely filled with these seeds, but 
not in pots. A bed was made for them on purpose, like 
as for the seeds of Liliumgiganteum; they were planted 
across the pit in rows half-an-inch apart, and one-eighth- 
of-an-inch from seed to seed in the rows. The soil is a 
stiffish, yellow loam, and the small end of the seed was 
pushed into this, till one-half of the length of the seed 
was biu’ied, and no more. To look down the whole space, 
and see the bristling appearance of so many thousands 
of these seeds was enough to make a fellow wish he was 
young again, for, after all, we are just as so many 
children, in gardening, as compared to what all this will 
bring young gardeners to, some day or other. Then, as 
children, let us learn that the small end of all seeds of 
the Pinus tribes ought to be lowermost. The roots 
come from that end, and the stem from the thick end. 
All these tribes of seeds do better in yellow loam kept 
rather dry, and the seed standing on end, and not much 
covered. Indeed, I believe that all seeds of Pinus and 
of their relatives do better standing on the small end, 
with the thickest end just level with the soil. From the 
middle of March to the end of May is the best time to 
sow the Pinus seeds from India, the Deodara, and all 
the tribe. We shall have abundance from the Crimea 
if peace is made. Late in the spring is the best time 
for them also, and for all those from the Western hemi¬ 
sphere. 
The third wonder consisted of so many thousands 
of seedlings, for the first time in England, I believe, of 
the lovely Lapageria rosea, or Climbing Lily, or the 
Copiouet of the Spanish Americans of Valparaiso, who 
esteem it as rare presents from the south, from about 
Conception. Long wreaths of it, in bloom, may be cut 
and kept for months hanging about the rooms, as the 
Chinese hang the flowering shoots of the Renanthera 
coccinea. We shall have Lapagerias cheap enough by- 
and-by. I say Lapagerias, liecause I think they run 
into many shades of colour, like their more northern 
rivals, the splendid Bomarias, of which we know yet but 
of the existence. There was a pure white, or nearly a 
pure white, Lapageria, flowered at Paris last autumn; 
and I should not be surprised to hear that every shade. 
from white to crimson, appears among this vast number 
of seedlings at Clapton ; and if they were mine, I should 
not sell one of them till I “proved” them; but Mr. 
Low sells everything he introduces, on principle, as 
soon as it is fit for the market. 
Our friends in Suffolk will be glad to hear that Mr. 
Thomas Bridges, from Bury St. Edmunds, is still alive 
in the far West, and that Mr. Low had sent him, last 
summer, a first-rate gardener, and that no sooner did he, 
the gardener, arrive in Chili, than master and man took 
to the mountains in search of diggings in the plant way. 
Sorry I am to see the ebb-tide in the affairs of the 
Horticultural Society, and I cannot help seeing, that if 
our funds had been expended in encoiu-aging others to do 
what we attempted to do ourselves, the progress of gar¬ 
dening, and new discoveries of plants, would have been 
greater and better than they have yet been; but lotus 
hope that Mr. Bridges and his new gardener will find. 1 
out that route on which Matthews discovered so manj’ | 
beautiful plants so many years since, and that his Ca- i 
vendishia nohilis will soon be as plentiful in the trade as I 
the Pampas Grass, the Araucarias, the Lageagerias, and ! 
the great Indian Lily, all of which may now be had for ' 
as many shillings as they would cost of pounds sterling j 
a few years since. 
Another gratifying item of news is that the real 
habitat of'the New Holland Pitcher '2\wnt, Cephalotus 
follicularis, has been discovered at last, by one of our 
best British gardeners, not later than last summer, and 
this discovery will change our system of growiiig it, and 
render its cultivation more easy and certain. It is not 
a native of bogs, or of a bog near the coast, as was first 
represented. The plants which were found in the bog 
had only strayed there by some accident, if, indeed, any 
of it had ever been discovered in such a locality. The 
gardener who sent home immense numbers of this 
charming little Pitcher Plant to ]\[r. Low, found it pro¬ 
fusely covering the face of a steep bank, at the roots and 
under the branches of Epacris grandiflora, with common 
Acacias and Gum Trees, in sheer spongy peat, such as 
that in which they grow Camellias in Germany. I have 
seen lumps of that peat which he sent home with the 
plants, and Mr. Low now treats his new importation 
like so many Slylidimns. Anybody who can grow those 
pretty Stylidiums from Australia may venture on , a 
Pitcher Plant with equal confidence. Nothing could 
look more promising than hundreds of these pretty little 
gems looked, under this treatment, in a house which was 
kept just a little closer than a greenhouse, and no more. 
A similar treatment seems to suit the North American 
Pitcher Plants, the Sarracenias, of which I saw large 
numbers here, including Jiava, rubra, variolaris, as well 
as the more common purpurea. I also saw samples of 
the very peat in which they flourish in America. It 
is not so fat and sponge-like as that for the Cephalotus, 
and from its black, loose appearance, I should say that 
we give too much water to this class of North American 
plants. 
One of the days on which I called, Messrs. Low 
were unpacking a large consignment from Montreal, 
consisting of Ferns, Lilies, Sarracenias, and many others 
which are much in demand for trade orders all over 
Europe, and nothing is more convincing to a practical 
eye than to see the very soil in which a plant grows 
naturally. Many kinds of low plants. Ferns, and her¬ 
baceous plants, natives of a much colder place than 
England, must be kept from the frost in pits and green¬ 
houses with us, to secure them that long rest and per¬ 
fect freedom from the variations of climate to which 
they are naturally accustomed under the deep snows 
of the Canadas for so many months of the year; but 
is it not equally essential that during a great part of 
this rest time such plants should be in the dark? I 
know tliat many of our best plants never do so well 
