440 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
Mauch 18. 
: l>le, liowever, that on the principle of one good turn 
deserving another, the Council may be equally polite, and 
I assent to an e.xperimental show or two, just to please 
I the “ Committee of Investigation.” But if the Council 
j should be otherwise, and spurn the idea of being obliged 
I to do otherwise than they would do of their own accord, 
what then? Why, the garden “must go for it,” to be 
: sure, as the Council first proposed, or rather as it was 
proposed for them. 
But we must rest on our oars till the 31st of March, 
I when we shall know how the Council propose to deal 
; witli the recommendations of the Committee. It is not 
j true, liowever, as the Committee assert, that “ a Horti¬ 
cultural Society, without a garden, would be like a crew 
of sailors without a ship, or an army without weapons,” 
for our unhappy e.xperience goes to prove the very con¬ 
trary. We have been a freshwater crew, it is but too 
true; but the ship proves to have been a millstone 
around our necks. As Loudon said, in 1830, a Horti¬ 
cultural Society has no more use for a garden than the 
Society of Arts has for a workshop; or, as we may say 
at present—in reference to the English and Scotch Agri¬ 
cultural Societies, who succe.ssfully stimulate and dis- 
j seminate the knowledge of their craft without farms, 
' practical and experimental—no Society should undei’- 
' take to do a single thing which could be done just as 
i well by private enterprise, stimulated by liberal awards 
: from the coffers of the Society. But, for us, it is now 
too late to think about these maxims. We have a garden, 
a valuable garden, and a great deal of our property is 
sunk tliere; tberefore, if it could be managed at all, 
the very last tiling we should think of is to give up the 
garden. Depend upon it, tlie Committee are perfectly in 
the right when they say, that “ with the garden the 
Society itself must stand or fall;” and the Council would 
do well to consider this as the hand-writing on the wall, 
before they take their stand on a legal construction of 
the charter, and so do away with the garden, as they 
first proposed. ^lany recommendations of the Com¬ 
mittee are well worth their dispassionate consideration. 
Nothing could be more courteous to all parties than the 
tenor of their report; but to hit hard, or to thrust home 
to this or that quarter, is not the right way to influence 
men of gentlemanly bearing in these days. 
I His Grace the Duke of Northumberland offered nine 
seats in the Council-room to this Committee, and now 
they only desire five seats for the most practical of the 
body. Let them have the five seats, by all means; let Dr. 
Lindley be relieved of the head gardener’s place; and, as 
he is unpopular with the exhibition gardeners, relieve 
him also from the superintendence of the shows; but 
let us not lose the valuable heads and the long ex¬ 
perience of Mr. Gordon and Mr. Thomson. I am old 
enough to know that we shall never be able to fill their 
places again; they never had a fair chance yet. I quite 
agree with Mr. Veitch, who was the best speaker at this 
meeting, that we want an “infusion of new blood;” 
that we live in “ go-a-head times;” that we have “ broken 
i down like the mismanagers of the war,” and much 
through the same causes, but under a different order of 
things. I am quite sure we may rely on the exertions 
and discretion of our generals; but let one of them be 
commander-in-chief; above all, let us respond to the 
“ earnest wish of some of the best friends of the 
Society,” put our hands in our pockets and pay off a 
large portion of the millstone. D. Beaton. 
[We purpose giving the Report of the Committee, and 
' other relative information, next week.— Ed. C. G..] 
New Scythe. —We are very glad to be informed that 
I Mr. Boyd, whose Self-adjusting Scythe is the best yet in- 
1 vented, has,now brought forwavd, what might be called,. 
“The poor man’s Scythe;” but which he has patented 
under the name of The Vulcan Scythe. Its object is to 
provide for the garden-mower, and the harvest-labourer, a 
Scythe, at the cheapest possible rate, ready bent or 
cranked to the angle required by the user, so that it 
may at once be fitted to the handle without the help of 
a blacksmith. As soon as we have tested it, we will 
again mention this Scvthc. 
RETARDATION AND PROTECTION OE 
BLOSSOMS. 
I BELIEVE it will be found correct that I was the 
first to urge the importance of this inactice, and that, 
too, in these pages. Like root-pruning by system, how¬ 
ever, which I pointed to, and highly recommended about 
twenty-six years since in Loudon's Magazine, I got 
scoffed at occasionally, and it was some time, in both 
cases, before I could got certain practical men to 
recognise the doctrine. The first of these practices has 
now hundreds of advocates, and among them celebrated 
nurserymen, to whom it has proved of eminent service 
in their attempts to establish a dwarfing system in fruit- 
trees. Retardation is, however, as yet young, and half 
ashamed to show its face ; nevertheless, I shall by no 
means blush whilst repeating my recommendation. 
There can be no question of the benefits derivable 
from the practice, wdieii w'e take into consideration the 
character of the objects we seek to attain thereby, and 
the nature of the climate we have to deal with. It is 
tolerably certain, that w^e can throw any fruit-tree w'e 
choose at least a fortnight later by this proceeding; 
and that is a thing of some importance, as I will proceed 
to show'. I will not now run over the old argument of ; 
endeavouring to prove, that as a principle, and taking ; 
the majority of seasons, the later any given kind 
blossoms, the better the chances of the blossoms setting. | 
Surely, this is so obvious, that it must, on a little con- | 
sideration, appear self-evident. It is rather to the great 
advantages accruing from the occasion of a greater 
amount of ground heat, and, by consequence, the im¬ 
pulse given to root-action, that I would wish to draw 
particular attention. 
No sane person would, for a moment, doubt that it is 
better to have an active than a torpid root during the 
expanding period ; or that increase of ground-heat does 
not facilitate root-action. If any one deem it a ti'ivial 
affair, let him, in a hard frost, apply wet mulch, in a 
half-rotten condition, to a Peach, or other tree, on a 
south wall, placing the mulch a foot or more in depth, 
and covering the area of the roots with it, and watch 
the results. The mass of soil where the roots were 
situated would scarcely attain a temperature of 45° 
by the middle of May, whilst that of another, not 
covered, would be found, in all probability, betw'eeu 
50° and 60° by that time; indeed, ice would keep until 
April under the former. Thus, with unretarded branches, 
we should have an average air temperature, close to the 
wall, of from 65°' to 70°’; and deducting the root from 
the branch temperature, we have a balance of about ] 
20° in favour of the latter! Talk of reciprocation, 
indeed! if this extravagant procedure would stand, 
why reciprocity might be for ever crossed from The 
Gardeners Dictionary. 
Thus much by way of illustrating the affair* there 
are those, how'ever, who would rather accept ordinary , 
practice without any course of reasoning; for this I i 
blame them not, so long as they will be good enough to I 
tolerate the ways of those who love to dig out Nature’s ; 
hidden stores for themselves, or who, in ordinary 
language, “ take nothing on tick.” Well, then, here is 
practice for them : do not most really good gardeners 
love to apply a little warm material to early-forced Vines 
