July 14. 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
291 
I vary the food very much—in grain, I give barley, wheat, 
and Indian corn. Of soft food, I give sopped bread, 
potatoes, barley-meal, and rice; plenty of cabbage-leaves, 
grass, and other green food; occasionally worms, but no 
meat. 
All have been healthy but my white-faced Spanish ; one of 
those pines, looks sickly, gets off her food, and two of them 
have lost feathers off the head. 
I have sat 110 eggs, but have only hatched fifty-four 
chickens; at the present time I only have forty, having lost 
fourteen by death, casualties, &c.; this is very bad luck, but 
most of my friends have had the same. I cannot account 
for it; "some of ray nests are near the ground, others on 
shelves ; that seems to make no difference. 
My Cochin and White-faced are only fourteen months 
old, but the Hamburghs are two years old. 
Sat 24 Cochin eggs: now living, 7 chicks. 
„ 40 White-faced Spanish „ „ 27 „ 
„ 38 Hamburgh „ „ 0 „ 
The casualties were confined to Spanish and Hamburghs, 
no Cochin chicks having died. Thus, age of parents gives 
no criterion to judge by. 
I find Cochin fowls, both young and old, eat by far the 
most food, and yield the fewest eggs; for had I given you 
the results from the 1st of January to the present time, it 
would have been far more unfavourable to the Cochins. I 
shall not increase, or, perhaps, even continue my stock of 
Cochins, both for the above reasons, and also because they 
are ungainly table birds; and I find, by observation and 
experience, that there is no certainty in the plumage of 
the young birds; they as frequently differ from, as follow, the 
plumage of the old birds from which they descend, thus 
making the production of good birds so uncertain. But 
Spanish always breed uniform ; Black Spanish and Ham¬ 
burgh the same. These two breeds, also, never become 
broody.—B. S. S., Redland , Bristol. 
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.” 
Sea Kale (A Surrey Subscriber). —In your two-light frame you may 
produce the quantity of Kale you mention (two weekly cuttings). Tan 
would give heat sufficient, and it would take two large cart loads ; place 
a covering of littery dung, or fresh gathered leaves upon it, and upon 
that nine inches of good loam to put the roots in. To obtain plants you 
must devote a piece of ground for the purpose, and sow a portion 
sufficient to fill the frame every year. Old roots that have forced are of 
no use for forcing in that way. To blanch the Kale, all that you would 
require would be a dense covering of straw and mats to keep out the 
light. You should fill half a light at a time, in order to produce a 
succession. 
Bramah-Poutra Fowls.— Mr. J. J. Nolan informs us that he has 
received some of these from America; and adds, that he thinks them a 
distinct race, although “ a sub-division of the Shanghae.” He also says 
that they lay “ as many eggs, but as near as possible the size of a Turkey 
egg.” As we entertain grave doubts upon these points, we will say no 
more upon the subject, until a little more experience confirms or removes 
those doubts. 
Food for Young Shangiiaes (E.S. Roberts). —Barley, whole and 
in the state of meal, wheat, boiled rice, Indian meal, with the scraps of 
meat and bones from the house, and plenty of green food, such as grass, 
cabbage and lettuce leaves, are a good varied diet for Shanghae cockerels 
and pullets. 
Blood-hound Puppies (B. H.).— We hnve a letter for you. 
Lemon Balm Wine. — A Clergyman has favoured us with this recipe 
for “J. F.” — “To 10 gallons of water add 18 pounds of loaf-sugar, 
and the whites of 12 eggs, well-beaten ; put all into a large pan, and let 
it boil till the scum rises ; take off the scum into a sieve, arid return all 
that runs through till all the scum is off, then turn it into a vessel to 
cool; take 2J pounds of lemon balm (pick the delicate tops of the lemon 
balm); put it into a well-seasoned cask j and when the liquor is as cold 
as summer water, pour it into the cask, and add a tablespoonful of best 
top yeast; press down the lemon balm with a stick, and fill up the cask 
with what runs over every night and morning. It will work violently 
for two or three days ; let it work ten days ; then bung it up close, and 
that day month bottle, cork, and wire it.” 
Erratum. —The small rods, mentioned near the bottom of the second 
column, p. 241, should have been described as one-and-a-lialf inch, 
instead of half-inch in diameter. The latter would not bear the weight. 
Dormant Lime Tree. —IF. II. says “ One of a row of limes, from 15 
to 20 feet high, advanced with the others, this spring, to the point of the 
full swelling of the buds, and there stopped. The others came into leaf; 
this one alone has not burst a bud ; yet the buds appear ready to burst, 
and are full of sap : the twigs are lithe, as usual, to the very extremity.” 
It is quite uncertain what ails the tree, but we have little fear about its 
making a midsummer start; at any rate you can do no more to it than 
you have. “ The dwarf Rhododendron bed you gave me some advice 
about a month or two ago has just gone out of flower, and rather alarms 
me by its vigorous growth. Should the plants be pruned back ?” The 
Rhododendrons are doing remarkably well, and you must not touch a 
shoot or a leaf of them this season, nor until they go out of flower next 
year, and then you can cut them back to anywhere you like; but our 
other readers must be told that your plants were only lately put into the 
bed, and that alone is the reason for sparing them from the pruning knife 
this season. 
Bella Donna Lily Bulbs (C. C ). —If you have a well-drained 
border, of good soil, in the south front of your house, or any wall, you 
may plant the bulbs at once, the sooner now the better. Place them six 
inches below the surface, nine inches apart, and six inches from the wall; 
but, first of all, read what has been said about them at Claremont last 
October. In the open ground they will grow in any soil that will carry 
good cauliflower, or, indeed, any good kitchen-garden ground. They 
are not very good bulbs for pots, and the chief reason is, that they receive 
too much kindness that way. We only know one amateur who does 
them well in pots, and he certainly does them better that way than any 
one in England, as far as we know, and so he does all the true Amaryllid 
tribe, including the very rare Amaryllis blanda, from which lie has 
obtained crosses just at the time we all thought this fine bulb was lost to 
Europe. He pots his Bella Donnas in the same kind of strong yellow 
loam as we recommended, and without any mixture of leaf and peat, 
with which so many fine bulbs have been sacrificed. He puts one bulb in 
a number thirty-two pot, an upright one, and only half buries the bulb 
in the soil, and he leaves an inch empty at top to receive copious water¬ 
ings when the leaves are full grown; he does not “shift” one of these 
till they break the pot with their roots. He begins to water by the 
middle of August. The flowers are up in a month ; after them come 
the leaves, and the bulbs are kept as cool and airy all the winter as 
possible, they often get two or three degrees of frost. In February, 
March, and April, they get abundance of water ; by the middle or end of 
May they are at rest, and are kept dry in the sun till the time of watering 
comes round in August; or say strong loam, upright pots, no shifting, very 
cool and very airy all winter, a large supply of water in the spring, and a 
hot dry summer in the open air, will grow the Bella Donna, in pots, to 
perfection ; but coddling and messing them about soon spoils them. 
Flower Garden Plan ( Stripling). —Remarkably well done for an 
Italian garden on English soil. There is one small principle violated in 
the'disposition of the beds d, both the small and large sizes; these are 
in the middle of grass figures, and the grass figures are bounded all 
round by walks, therefore the outlines of the beds next the walk should 
be an exact repetition of the lines of grass. The broad ends of the 
smaller beds d should have two corners, with a very small curve between 
them, to correspond with the green carpet—the rest of these beds are 
quite right. The four large beds D should be altered on the same 
principle ; at least, we must say so when the pLn is engraved. In a 
private way, if the “ governor ” approves of them as they are, he has a 
perfect right to have them so. The chain pattern, all round, is not 
original, of course, but none the worse for that—your own way of 
planting it is quite original, and very good indeed ; some would object to 
having the plants so high on the side next the house. 
Bees — to prevent Swarming (An Amateur Bee-keeper). —“I have 
two stocks of bees in common cottage hives, which I nadired the begin¬ 
ning of last month (May), one with a bee-boy. containing about 250 cubic 
inches, the other with a large straw hive having a hole in the top. They 
have now nearly filled these with comb, and in the bee-box I can see that 
a considerable number of drone cells have been sealed over the last week. 
They also give indications of swarming—that is, in the middle of the 
day, when the sun shines hot, they fly about the garden in an agitated 
manner. What means should I use to prevent their swarming ? ” Had 
you si«/ier-hived your bees, instead of under-hiving, you could by this 
time have had some fine honey from them. However, as it is, you had 
better nadir-hive again, with a box not more than five inches deep, and 
the size of the hive—that is, if they appear to want room. 
Bees — Joining Casts to Swarm ( J. IF.).—“Can you account for 
the following result of uniting a cast to a swarm ; and can you tell me 
how such a fatality is to be avoided ? On the 23rd I hived a swarm, which 
in the evening weighed three pounds ; on the same day I hived a cast 
weighing one-and-a-half pounds in the evening, these I united by knocking 
out the cast, and placing the swarm over it. On the following morning, 
I found on the sheet spread under the mouth of the hive about 500 or 
600 bees ; before tivelve o’clock the whole left the hive, and settled within 
a yard or two of the place on which the swarm had settled. I hived 
them, and weighed them, and found they had lost one pound ten ounces, 
so that my hive (swarm), after putting to it the cast, one-and-a-half pounds, 
Had lost two ounces by the experiment. Is not this a strong argument 
against the practice ? Would it not be better to hive casts separately, 
join bees to these in autumn, and feed them a little, they would have 
young queens, and this fearful loss would be avoided ? ” We have 
