16 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
[April 10. 
able features, men saw a new creation opening before their eyes. The 
i living landscape was chastened or polished, not transformed. Freedom 
I was given to the forms of trees ; they extended their branches uure- 
i stricted, and where any eminent oak, or master beech had escaped maim¬ 
ing and survived the forest, bush and bramble w'ere removed, and all its 
honours were restored to distinguish and shade the plain. Where the 
united plumage of an ancient wood extended wide its undulating canopy, 
and stood venerable in its darkness, Kent thinned the foremost ranks, 
j and left but so many detached and scattered trees, as softened the 
! approach of gloom, and blended a chequered light with the thus 
j lengthened shadows of the remaining columns. 
“I do not know whether the disposition of the garden at Rousham, laid 
' out for General Dormer, and in my opinion the most engaging of all Kent’s 
works, was not planned on the model of Mr. Pope’s, at least in the 
opening and retiring shades of Venus’s vale. The whole is as elegant 
and antique as if the emperor Julian had selected the most pleasing 
I solitude about Daphne to enjoy a philosophic retirement. That Kent’s 
ideas were but rarely great, was in some measure owing to the novelty of 
his art. It would have been difficult to have transported the style of gar¬ 
dening at once from a few acre3 to tumbling of forests : and though new 
fashions like new religions (which are new fashions), often lead men to 
the most opposite excesses, it could not be the case in gardening, where 
the experiments would have been so expensive. Yet it is true, too, that 
the features in Kent’s landscapes were seldom majestic. His clumps 
were puny, he aimed at immediate effect, and planted not for futurity. 
One sees no large woods sketched out by his direction. Nor are we yet 
entirely risen above a too great frequency of small clumps, especially in 
the elbows of serpentine rivers. How common to see three or four 
beeches, then as many larches, a third knot of cypresses, and a revolution 
of all three I Kent’s last designs were in a higher style, as his ideas 
opened on success. The north terras at Claremont was much superior to 
the rest of the garden. A return of some particular thoughts was com¬ 
mon to him with other painters, and made his hand known. A small 
lake edged by a winding bank with scattered trees that led to a seat at 
the head of the pond, was common to Claremont, Ksher, and others of 
his designs. At Esher, 
Where Kent and nature vied for Pelham’s love, 
the prospects more than aided the painter’s genius—they marked out the 
points where his art was necessary or not; but thence left his judgment 
in possession of all its glory. Having routed professed art, for the 
modern gardener exerts his talents to conceal his art, Kent, like other 
reformers, knew not how to stop at the just limits. He had followed 
nature, and imitated her so happily, that he began to think all her works 
were equally proper for imitation. In Kensington-garden he planted 
dead trees, to give a greater air of truth to the scene—but he was soon 
laughed out of this excess. His ruling principle was, that nature abhors 
a straight line. His mimics, for every genius has his apes, seemed to 
think that she could love nothing but what was crooked.” 
Meteorology of the Week. —At Chiswick, from observations made 
during the last twenty-four years, the average highest and lowest tem¬ 
peratures of these days are 56.1° and 36.8°, respectively. The greatest 
heat, 73°, occurred on the 9th, in 1844, and the lowest cold, 22°, on the 
11th, 1843. Rain fell during 82 days of the period, and 86 were fine. 
We are always gratified by every display of well-directed 
industry, and no one can admire more than we do the 
power, and accuracy amid intricacy, displayed in all the 
engines, machines, and implements employed in our 
national mines, workshops, and manufactories. All 
these combinations proclaim that wealth is making 
giant efforts to increase its wealtliiness;—efforts praise¬ 
worthy, and diffusing competency and comfort to millions 
necessarily enlisted to aid and sustain those efforts. 
We survey the whole and see the good effected, and we 
rejoice over that good. But, if some one stejis forth 
and proposes some little implement, some simple ar¬ 
rangement of household utensils, whereby the home 
comforts and innocent luxuries of the employed millions 
can be increased at a cost quite within their means, we 
look upon that with quite as much pleasure as upon the 
steam-impelled giants of the mechanical world; and this 
pleasure springs from a consciousness that there is ano¬ 
ther honey-drop sprinkled in the cup of millions—that 
cup which, though “ well-mixed,” man has so contrived 
that it usually brings somewhat too much of the bitter 
to the lip, Any device, then, that sweetens the every-day 
life of the mass of our fellow-men, we hail with more 
than ordinary pleasure; and if it be only a mode 
whereby he may obtain a violet in winter to sweeten his 
! chamber, or an early cucumber to render his crust of 
1 bread more palateable, we rejoice over the device, and 
spare no pains to render its adoption easy and general. 
One of such devices is contained in the following letter 
\ from a gentleman who signs himself C. J. P., Daiclish; 
: and though there is nothing new in the principle, yet 
there is some novelty and merit in the mode of its 
application, so we give it this prominency—- 
“ I am induced to send you the description of a very eco¬ 
nomical and excellent means of raising cucumbers, vegetable 
marrow, and other plants usually requiring a hotbed or 
greenhouse for their propagation. The well-known philo¬ 
sophical fact, that vegetation is most luxuriant where the 
atmosphere is both moist and warm, was the principle that 
guided me in the experiment I am now about to detail, and 
which in the result proved singularly satisfactory. I had | 
a common large-sized garden pot filled one-third from the 
bottom with coal ashes, to serve as drainage; on that a third 
i consisting of well-decomposed leaves and stable manure 
| mixed together as a compost; and on this was placed the ; 
remaining third of rich black peat mould, in which, as a 
first experiment, were set twenty-two vegetable marrow 
seeds. A large flint glass bottle, such as those exposed in 
chemists’ shop windows, and usually containing poppy 
heads, &c., and which, at any of the large glass works, may 
be purchased for a very small sum, was now procured, the 
circumference of the mouth of the bottle being about two 
inches greater than the circumference of the garden pot at 
its widest part. The bottom of the glass bottle and the 
sides, to the height of the rim of the garden pot, were then 
lined, as it were, with damp moss, and the pot, filled as 
above described, gently slung by means of four strings 
passed round it into the bottle. For the sake of neatness 
of appearance, the strings are confined to the outside of the 
neck of the bottle by means of one of the ordinary elastic 
vulcanized India-rubber rings.* The moss serves a two¬ 
fold purpose ; first, to imbibe the moisture, which is after¬ 
wards evaporated by the heat of the sun or room in which 
the bottle is placed, and is again condensed in the interior of 
the sides of the bottle in the form of dew, thus serving 
constantly to maintain the warm damp atmosphere so fa¬ 
vourable to vegetation. Over the mouth of the bottle is 
placed a glass cover, removable at pleasure. The following 
rough diagram may serve to illustrate the above plan. 
I) 
A, damp moss. B, the garden pot with seeds, when plunged into the 
moss. D, the moveable glass cover. 
* Instead of representing the pot of seedlings suspended by strings 
from the cover of the glass jar, we have shown it as plunged in the moss, 
which we think more simple, and more likely to keep up a proportionate 
root-action.—E d. C. G. 
