October 31. 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
77 
rich soil, keeping the roots as low down in the pots as I j 
could cram them, as plunging over the rims would be I 
sure to entice the roots to rise to the surface, rather than 
seek their way through the bottom-hole; and if 1 did not ' 
have a better bloom of Geraniums next autumn than 
was ever seen on the coast of Morven before, I would I 
never roun the Mull of Kintyre again for Geraniums, or 
anything else in the gardening way. 
I think 1 have already told of an old Geranium I have 
with a stem as thick nearly as my wrist, it is now nine 
years old; and last year, in September, I cut it as close 
as I dare without actually killing it, and I declare I got 
it comfortably into a 48-sized pot, which it tilled with 
roots in less than three weeks; I then put it into a 32- 
pot for the winter, and in March I shifted it at one 
jump into a No. 12-pot, in which it bloomed as no 
Scarlet Geranium ever bloomed before. I intend to keep 
this plant as long as I live, for two reasons; the first is a 
private consideration which affects no one but the owner; 
the second is to prove to the gardening world that any 
one of the Scarlet breed of Geraniums can never be too 
old to bloom extraordinarily well, provided it is managed 
well; but there is nothing new in the idea; I heard it 
asserted just twenty-niue years since, by one of the best 
growers of the tribe in those days, the late Lady Cum- 
ming Gordon of Altyre, in Morayshire, who was the first 
to plant flower-beds in masses of one or two kinds. 
I never tried, or saw the plan of hanging up Scarlet 
Geraniums in the cellar, but unless the cellar is damp 
naturally, I see no reason why old Scarlets thus prepared 
should not keep by thousands that way. At all events, I 
am satisfied that we shall never succeed in keeping our 
bedding Geraniums in a dry state over the winter, except 
as by mere chance, until we learn the proper manage¬ 
ment, and the value of old plants of them; and I foresee 
j the difficulty that must always attend our oxporiments in 
flowering bods of them in plunged pots, until we learn 
| and acknowledge the fact that a Scarlet Geranium can 
never be too old for a flower-bed; but I forgot to mention 
one of the best properties of my nine-year-old plant, 
which is, that the leaves are now only about half the size 
they were when it was a “ seedling. ” 
Well, talking about seedlings never tires one either. 
I have a thousand of them at this moment, and many 
not up yet. I sowed the last batch iu the middle of 
October, and, as I never think of transplanting seedling 
Geraniums in the autumn, I hit upon a plan this season 
which, it seems to me, will answer remarkably well. A 
full ear, or beak, of Geranium, carries five seeds. As 
soon as the covering of the seed begins to change colour, 
I cut it off a little below the torus, or thick part to which 
the seed is fixed, and sow it, the same day, close by the 
side of the pot. The whole of the beak stands out of 
the ground; so that, if I do not have enough to fill 
round my pot to-day, the upstanding beaks will show 
me where to begin planting my beaks to-morrow, or 
! whenever it may bo I allow two inches from one beak 
to the next—at least, I ought to do so ; but really, when 
one has so many, there must be exceptions to general 
rules now and then. The best size pot is the 48. If all 
is well, five little seedlings rise, in a lump, from each 
beak, or head of seed; but they are entirely free from 
the others, and their being so close together, and in 
! contact with the side of the pot, they assist to drain 
; better than single plants, at nearer intervals; besides, a 
pot holds more than double the quantity of seedlings in 
i this over the usual way; and, if one or two out of a 
j five-plant patch dies in winter, there are still threo 
chances that each crossed flower will give a seedling, 
: which is the greatest comfort of all. 
I By-and-by, the seedlings will touch one another all 
the way round; but that is no hurt—if they do not meet 
their leaves across the pot all will be right enough; 
but early - sown ones will meet across a 48 - pot 
occasionally, as early as October; but no one in his 
senses would transplant them at that season, unless, 
indeed, he had a strong dry heat for them ; and if he 
had, he might pot off’ seedlings of any Geraniums all 
through the winter with little risk. Now, the plan I 
have adopted this season, for the first time, is to obviate 
this difficulty—seedlings covering the whole top of a 
pot. Gardeners may also find the plan useful for stove 
pots of tender cuttings, and other things; whatever the 
size of the pot, cover it with a bell-glass that will leave 
sufficient room for the row of seedlings, or stove cuttings, 
between the edge of the glass and the side of the pot, 
the inner leaves will then lean against the dry outside 
of the glass, and never damp, or cause dampness, to the 
soil. The pot will not require a quarter of the attend¬ 
ance in watering and looking after it; the moisture 
which rises from the soil is condensed on the inside of 
the glass, and trickles back again, as in a Wardian case, 
so that the little space of free soil in which the seedlings 
stand need seldom bo wetted at all, and I am sure the 
plan may be applied in different ways with economy; 
but I shall report on it again. I am highly pleased with 
my last year’s seedlings, but as I am on quite a new 
track I have little more to say or boast about. My best 
White, of the Horse-shoe breed, had ninety-six flowers 
on the only truss I allowed to come; this will beat, by 
fifty or sixty flowers, any truss of pure white which we 
have yet seen; but the bother is, out of fifty-seven pure 
white-flowered seedlings, not the smallest improvement 
is perceptible in the substance, or shape, of the individual 
flower. Perhaps we shall have better luck next time. 
In pinks and purples of the same breed I am the richest 
man near Loudon, at any rate; but here, also, nothing is 
yet good enough to keep up the old credit of my shop 
and firm ; but better times are coming for us all. 
D. Beaton. 
NOTES AND GLEANINGS EROM ALTHORPE 
GARDENS. 
(Continued from page 02.) 
Walks. —I have been told that a very pleasant and 
beautiful walk was made at Abbotsford, when all the 
directions given by the author of “ Waverley,” to his 
faithful woodman, and factotum, Tom Purdie, was “ to 
make it neither straight nor crooked, but just as he 
would walk, or rather dander across the space in going 
home in an evening;” and the chronicler relates how 
successfully Tom embodied the idea of his loved master. 
I have often been amused by the circumbendibuses left 
by different individuals on the wet grass, as they went 
from one point, as they thought, straight to another; 
the bends and twists in the route, without ever such a 
thing being thought about, evolving much of these 
graceful turns that by artists have been denominated 
the “ line of beauty.” Walks with graceful curves will 
ever, therefore, be the most pleasant to walk upon, just 
because we would naturally take something of these i 
turns when sauntering along in a contemplative mood. | 
Starting from such a good idea, many, lacking the mother- 
wit sagacity of Mr. Purdie, have never known where to 
stop in their convolutions and twists; just as in the 
case of a parsonage not a thousand miles from hence, 
where, at no great distance from a straight boundary, 
the walk is so serpentined, and in-and-out folded, that 
how a studious man, with a book in his hand, as wo ; 
might expect a pastor to have, could thread these 1 
windings in a summer’s evening without leaving traces 
of his hands and knees, by a sudden somersault on the 
grass, from his feet coming in rude contact with the out- 
jutting corners, was a problem past my powers of solving. 
But notwithstanding our line for graceful and easy 
curves in walks, there are circumstances iu which they 
