296 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
unchanged; but on approaching it, the foliage hangs down 
dark and dead; portions of the hark are stripped from the 
trunk, and a blackened rent marks the passage of the 
electric fluid to the earth. 
How striking and instructive are such events as these! 
We hear and read of them perpetually; a storm seldom 
bursts without some solemn cry to the children of men; the 
thunders utter their voices, and the arrows of the Lord go 
abroad, but how seldom are they listened to; how faintly does 
their sound strike the dull ears and hearts of the thought¬ 
less children of men ! Why was not the cottage roof dashed 
J to the earth, instead of the useless shed? Why were not 
the beings sheltered by the few crazy timbers, and the 
trunk of the tree, smitten also, by the lightning bolt? Was 
it accident — luck — good fortune, that spared them till another 
time? No! it was none of these. The Bible, the guide¬ 
book of the Christian, makes no mention of them. The 
Lord has vouchsafed to tell us how these things are; let us 
hear His Word, which “ cannot be broken,” and lay our 
hands upon our mouths: “ I kill, and I make alive; I wound, 
and I heal: neither is there any that can deliver out of my 
hand.” 
Those who do not see the hand of God wielding and 
directing the destroying flash, may suppose that the elevated 
position of the stricken tree caused it to attract the light¬ 
ning, and, thereby, preserve the cottage that stood so near 
it. Man is ever ready to give a reason agreeable to his own 
dark understanding, for that which can only be spiritually 
discerned. 
The very same storm which struck the tall, prominent 
tree, withered one in the midst of a thick copse, in no way 
distinguished in height or size from all the others around it. 
There it also stands, a dead and blackened ruin, to “ con¬ 
found the wise,” and teach us that although the Lord deigns 
to work by means, and to carry on His Almighty designs 
with accurate and exquisite precision, yet no storm can 
gather, no cloud can burst, no bolt can strike, no sparrow 
can fall, without our Father’s hand. It is not ‘this,’ or 
‘that;’ it is the will and command of God. “The voice 
of the Lord is powerful,” and “full of majesty.” “The 
voice of the Lord breaketh the cedars ”—“ divideth the 
flames of fire ”—“ shaketh the wilderness.” tie “ maketh 
diviners mad — turneth wise men backward, and maketh 
1 their knowledge foolish.” The cottage-gardener may, if he 
will, be a wiser man than he who sits at the table of kings. 
The “fear of the Lord” is wisdom, and the “knowledge of 
! God” is understanding. 
The cottage and the blasted tree, standing side by side, 
| read us a loud, momentous lesson. Let us “ mark, learn, 
and inwardly digest it.” 
TO CORRESPONDENTS. 
*** We request that no one will write to the departmental writers of 
The Cottage Gardener. It gives them unjustifiable trouble and 
expense. All communications should be addressed “ To the Editor of 
The Cottage Gardener, 2, Amen Corner, Paternoster Row, London. 
To Improve a Stagnant Pond (T. M. W.). —No grass seed would 
vegetate in your pond. The best thing you can do will be to procure a 
quantity of coarse-growing water plants, such as the different sorts of 
Carer, Typhus, Butomus, Water Lilies, Sic. Any ditch or shallow pond 
' would furnish numbers of suitable plants; these would grow rapidly, 
entirely cover the water, and in time would, with their leaves shedding 
| annually and their roots, fill up your pond without any expense. 
Classification of Pelargoniums (Ignoramus). —How to know 
I which section of the genus any geranium belongs to is not easily learned 
from books, but there is not the least “ novelty ” or difficulty for a prac¬ 
tised eye to distinguish more than twenty sections or divisions of them, 
] and some of the sections are again divided into smaller groups, as, for 
instance, Horsc-shoe and Noseguy belong to the Scarlet section ; Oak- 
leaves, again, are very numerous, as Fair Helen, Rose-scented, Moor’s 
Victory, and a dozen more ; Ivy-leaves are easily known, so are the 
| Diadematums, the Yeatmaneanums, the Jehus, the Ignescens, and all 
the rest of them. We never attempted to divide them, more than as 
roups for particular purposes. Hybrid perpetuals we have used to 
istinguish such as flower all through the season without intermission 
whether “ fancies ” or not. “ Ugly Stag’s-horns,” by which you mean 
their seed beaks, take only two forms—the bent footstalk of the flowers 
and the unbent, llut are you not wrong in placing Daveyanum among 
the “ Stag’s-horns ? ” We are not aware that the true Daveyanum ever 
seeded at all ; we bought it for two guineas in 1824, and began to cross 
it in 1830, but from that day to this all our ingenuity failed to produce 
one single seed from it, but its pollen is good enough. We cannot say 
how many species are in our greenhouses, but more than 200 have been 
described as wild original ones. We do not know white Purity as a 
bedding, out Carnation. 
[August 7. 
Unioue Geranium (S. R.). —Your best plan will be to grow your 
two plants of Unique as well as you can this season ; stop them now, and 
again in the middle of September, to cause them to make bottom shoots ; 
pinch off their flower-buds to strengthen them, and begin to propagate I 
them at the end of next February, and all through March and April, 
when they will root as freely as any other geranium, and every two joints 
will make a cutting, and all will bloom next season in a bed out of doors j 
but very young plants of them do not bloom nearly so free as old plants. 
We do not know the bulb you sent; we can tell better when it has 
bloomed. 
Pelargonium Leaf ( Carrig Cathol). —The leaf, we think, is that of 
Pelargonium ardens, an old original species with tuberous roots. To j 
give a list of the principal greenhouse and hardy plants that will grow j 
from cuttings would be a dictionary of itself—expert propagators can 
increase all of them from cuttings, either of the roots or branches ; but | 
we shall consider your request, and see what more we can effect. We 
insert the following extract from your letter, not only because praise is 
grateful, but to encourage others to follow the same practice under similar 
circumstances:—“ I am thankful for your advice, which saved the roots 
of my Ivy, torn from the front of my house about eighteen months since, 
and which I was about to have removed, to replace with young plants. 
Your directions (vol. iii., page 283) were strictly followed, and the wall 
is now thickly and beautifully covered to a height of twelve to fourteen 
feet.” 
Cutiiill’s Strawberry Culture. —In answer to a correspondent, 
Mr. Cuthill, Nurseryman, Camberwell, writes to us as follows:—“I am 
obliged, on account of the ground being very light, to manage in various 
ways with Keen’s Seedling, British Queens, and others. The plans are 
all fully detailed in my pamphlet, which is advertised ; but the ordinary 
way of managing the Black Prince will do—plenty of manure and 
trenching deep (as your correspondent has done); all he has now to do 
is to get runners from plants which have borne a good crop. Never plant 
runners which have not borne, for nothing deteriorates faster than the 
strawberry, in light land especially. The Black Prince came into bearing 
on the 14th of June; and the first week I sold them at 5s., 4s., and 3s. 
per pound out of doors. The ground was trenched deep with plenty of 
manure (stable), the one-year-old plants had about 50 fruit, the older 
ones from 100 to 250. Several persons have succeeded well by forcing 
the Black Prince.” 
Hardy Creeper (Osmond’s Ash). —One of the prettiest creepers we 
know, to cover the south front of a house within the reach of the sea 
breeze or spray, is the Cotoneaster microphylla, which should be trained 
and pruned like a pear-tree, fan or horizontal fashion. Very light soil 
suits it best, if two feet deep, and rich. The best Ivy for a house is the 
Broad-leaved, or Irish Ivy. While these were getting up we would use 
the evergreen climbing roses to cover the upper parts of the house. 
Pruning Dahlias. — Rusticus says—“ I always endeavour to train 
my Dahlias as nearly as possible in the form of an inverted cone; to this 
end early attention is requisite, and every shoot that has a tendency to 
grow inwards is removed as soon as it appears—in short, the plants are 
disbudded, as you direct in the case of peach-trees, Ac. By this process 
the vigour of the tree is concentrated in those branches which are intended 
to remain, and the bloom is consequently finer. The leaves, also, which 
crowd the centre of the plant are removed, although I always feel regret 
when compelled to displace a leaf, particularly a dahlia leaf, which is 
nearly equivalent to the branch of another tree of similar calibre. If, 
however, dahlias were to be grown in those countries where the heat is 
excessive, and where no rain falls for many months—for instance, in their 
native arid plains of Mexico—I would not, in that case, disturb a single 
leaf, as I believe that the vigorous organization of their leaves is intended 
to receive the necessary supplies of nourishment from the atmosphere, 
for the support of the plants whilst the roots remain in a torpid con¬ 
dition. And here we may admire ‘ the manifold wisdom of the Creator,’ 
that whilst He has ordained that cold should be the season of rest to 
plants in northern regions, He has constituted the hot season to be their 
period of repose in more sunny lands. But in our country, where 
moisture is often excessive, and sunlight somewhat of a scarce commodity, 
and where plants are generally more dependant on their roots for their 
well-being than from the supplies which they derive from the atmosphere, 
I apprehend that it is better to remove any redundant leaves that inter¬ 
fere with the free admission of air and sunlight to the plants.” Mr. 
Barnes, of Stowmarket, is the best pruner of dahlias of all the great 
growers we know; he blooms the very tallest of them most profusely at 
a yard high, and he says that none of them need be grown any higher 
than that. We shall ask him for his mode of pruning. Your own mode 
seems very good, and your physiological reasoning is equally so; but 
Mr. Beaton thinks the dahlia is not a proper subject to prove it to be so. 
Fuchsia coralina. — A Devonian says:—“Two plants of Fuchsia 
coralina trained against a south wall in my flower-garden, and covering 
a space of eighty square feet, are the objects of so much admiration to 
myself and friends, that I am anxious to know if there are any light- 
coloured varieties, that, so treated, are likely to obtain a similar height. 
My garden is situated in a warm part of South Devon, and the wall on 
which the Fuchsias are growing is broken by buttresses, into recesses, 
each eight feet wide, and covered with a thick coping of slate, so that the 
plants are in some degree protected from wind and frost. It appears, 
however, doubtful if the light varieties will attain a corresponding height; 
but if any reader of this query will give his or her experience on the sub¬ 
ject, I shall be obliged. I wish to plant light varieties with the purest 
white sepals, and scarlet or purple petals. It appears that no ordinary 
wall would be too high for Fuchsia coralina, if growing in rich soil, as it 
is a cross from F. radicans, a climbing species of robust habit, while the 
light ones, I believe, are from F. fulgens.” We shall be obliged by any 
of our readers informing us of their experience with light-coloured 
Fuchsias trained against a wall. We should try Nonpariel, which is 
robust, and bears its flowers in showy trusses, is it really true that 
Coralina is a hybrid from Radicans ? If it is, here is an opening to a 
White Coralina. Can A Devonian oblige us with the biography of 
Coralina ? 
Barley Bread. —A correspondent (Ignoramus) wishes for a good 
recipe to make this. Will some of our northern readers oblige us by send¬ 
ing one. 
