COUNTRY GENTLEMAN’S COMPANION. 
June 2G. 
down, about one mile further on, at Kew Bridge, 
crossing which, and visiting Kew Gardens, he can see 
the large Palm House, and a most extensive and varied 
collection of plants, both in-doors and out, and a very 
interesting and instructive Museum. The hours of 
admission to the public are from one to eight o’clock 
in summer, and from two to six o’clock on Sundays. 
At the west end of Brentford, about one mile from 
Kew Bridge, is Sion House, the seat of His Grace the 
Duke of Northumberland. Although the prophecy of 
Sir Joseph Banks—“ That ere long the Akee and the 
Avocado Pear of the West Indies; the flat Peach, 
the Mandarine Orange, and the Litcbi of China; the 
Mango, the Mangosteen, and the Durion of the East 
Indies; and, possibly, other valuable tropical fruits, 
will be frequent at the tables of opulent persons; and 
some of them, perhaps, in less than half a century, 
be offered for sale on every market-day in Covent 
Garden,”—is not yet fulfilled; nevertheless, the many 
tropitJal plants that have been fruited at Sion House, 
and exhibited at the Metropolitan Shows, testify to the 
possibility of fruiting such things in this country. 
We shall resume, next week, our list of the gardening 
sights near London. K. 
STOPPING SUMMER GROWTHS. 
You would hardly suppose that there is a man, 
woman, or child, in the kingdom, or in all the world, 
who could not learn the art of “ stopping” the shoots 
of plants and trees at one lesson—pinch out the top of 
the shoot with the forefinger and thumb, and the thing 
is done in a moment. So it is, sure ■ enough ; but 
there is no art in that way of doing it at all; and there 
may be a great deal of mischief in it, and often is, to 
the bargain. 
I once lived with a gentleman who never went about 
in the country without his walking-stick, which had a 
“ spud ” on the bottom end, with which he was con¬ 
stantly routing out Docks, Thistles, and other noxious 
weeds in and round the fields and plantations, where- 
ever he went; also the Plantains and Daisies on the 
lawn, and such weeds as he could see in the beds or 
borders; and, to the last, I could never convince him 
that he often did more harm than good by so doing. 
It was his way, and he could no more help it than I 
could. A Groundsel, or a Shepherd’s Purse, or a Dan¬ 
delion, and many more such common weeds, take 
several days after the flowers open before they seed, 
or do any more harm than is done already; meantime, 
some one passes by that way who pulls out the weed, 
and carries it out of the way at once, or sends some one 
else to weed that bed or border; but the “governor” 
gets there before him, with the everlasting spud and 
tho ruling passion, twists down the Groundsel with one 
turn of the spud, cuts the neck of the Dandelion in two, 
or makes a hole in the grass, big enough to play 
marbles into, trying to root out a Plantain or a Daisy 
—all of which is, as I said before, doing more harm 
than good. The Groundsel has sap enough in it to 
ripen its seeds while it lies unperceived till the mischief 
is done, till a fresh crop of seedlings spring up. So tho 
bottom half of the broken neck of the Dandelion sends 
up four heads for the lost one, and there are thus four 
chances that the mischief will run much farther than it 
would were it not for the spud. In short, I would as 
215 
soon let a Welsh goat into the shrubbery, as let an 1 
amateur spudder into any part of my own garden. 
There are other people, and most of them are nice, 
amiable people, who never do any real harm in a garden, 
save one kind of mischief, and that they do unknow¬ 
ingly to themselves. It is their way of “stopping.” 
If they stop a thing, they think it is stopped for good, 
and there is an end of it; but the end is no better than 
from spudding ; they pull up the weed, and, may be, 
shake the soil from the roots ; but they throw it down 
in the same place, and if it is of the seedling class, a 
crop of seeds is sown there before the gardener sees 
that a dead or dying weed was there at all; whereas, if 
this weed had been left standing, he would have seen 
it the next time he passed that way; and he would 
“ stop ” it, according to the rules of his own art; he 
would have it up, root and branch, and carried off at 
once; and all those who stop weeds on any other plan 
do, or may do, more harm than good. 
There are other masters, and some mistresses too, 
who read a great deal about gardening without ever 
studying one single word on the subject. You would 
take them to bo very clever on gardening from their 
conversation, but if you saw their “ stopping,” you would 
i just think as I do, and I think a great deal at times 
about such things. The meaning of a sentence of 
much import may be lost by 'puttiug the comma, the 
smallest “ stop,” in the wrong place; and it is the 
same if you apply the smallest stopping to plants and 
trees; stopping a shoot at the wrong time, or in the 
wrong place, may spoil the shape of a specimen, the 
flowering of the best Geranium, the fruiting or the 
future crop of a Vine, or a Beach, or any one plant you 
may think of; and yet these superficial people think 
there is no art in stopping, beyond the mere process of 
doing the act, from the weeding of the walks, up to the 
regulation of the branches of the Mangosteen itself. 
You have only to put their stopper on, and all is right; 
and must be right, for they have read of it and knew 
it years ago ! 
I made a fresh start this season with Chrysanthemums, 
and more particularly with the Pompones, some weeks 
back. I told about how I would treat them, and as far 
as it was possible for me to do them. I did them that 
way, and now I am satisfied with all I did to them; but 
what makes me allude to them so pointedly is this,—I 
had a very knowing visitor to look at them lately ; and 
in going round, we found many of the planis wanted 
“stopping,” and there could not be a better chance for 
me to find out, indirectly, what was in the man; that is, 
how far he understood that on which he could talk so 
readily, or so readingly rather, if I may use the word. 
I did find it out; and when I tell you of it, you will 
think as I did, that his notion was like grafting a Pear 
on the wrong end of the stock; but as there are many 
in the world like him, the best plan will be to explain 
the difference, rather than find fault with the one, or 
praise the other. 
GLAZED BOX FOR CUTTINGS. 
First of all, let me say how I have struck the Pom- 
pones and other Chrysanthemums from cuttings this 
season. I had a packing-box by mo which is above 
three feet long, about a foot deej), and not much wider 
than ten inches; I got squares of glass to fit exactly on 
to the top of this box, and I put a thin layer of sandy 
soil on tho bottom of it to stand the cutting plants on, 
and placed it endways against the front upright glass of 
my back sanctum, and of all the hotbeds, or cold pits, 
you ever heard of, this may be called the simplest, and 
one of the best, for summer use. I only lost one cutting 
out of several scores, and now it is full of Rose cuttings, 
or will soon be; and if you happen to have any loose 
panes of glass by you, any old packing case may be 
