256 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
August 
will make roots either in heat or cold and throughout 
their whole existence : any mode of forcing is very 
disagreeable to them. Abundance of air, strong sun¬ 
light, and a liberal supply of water during two months 
while they are in active growth, very little water for 
the rest of the summer and autumn, and hardly any 
through winter, seem to be the most natural way of 
treating them. 
Crassula is an old legitimate name given to these 
plants by Linnaeus, and is taken from the diminutive 
of crass as —thick or succulent. But the late Mr. 
Haworth, an English writer on succulent plants, 
changed this name to Kalosanthes, and applied it to 
the more showy plants of the genus—a most unwar¬ 
rantable and uncalled for step, which no subsequent 
writer should have countenanced for a moment. The 
public, and especially public writers, should set their 
pens and shut their pages against this intermeddling 
with established names and rules on the part of 
crotchety spirits who are only confusers of the paths 
of natural history. However, instead of opposing 
such innovations, compilers, authors, editors, and 
reviewers, seem rather to delight in promoting this 
pseudo-scientific multiplication of names, not con¬ 
sidering how they encumber the student and expose 
their weak sides to the gaze of the next generation, 
who cannot fail to perceive that the abettors of this 
public nuisance knew as much about the natural di¬ 
visions and subdivisions of genera as I do about the 
sources of the Mile. Kalosanthes means a beautiful 
dower, and is as applicable to a pansy or a tulip as to 
our scarlet crassula. 
Many years since, when I had charge of a large 
collection of succulents, 1 tested the value of some 
of Mr. Haworth’s fanciful names by cross-breeding, 
and found them wanting. I am quite satisfied Ka¬ 
losanthes will not stand the true test of the pollen- 
bag. Even the classical family of Narcissus, on the 
division of which Mr. Haworth staked his future 
fame as a reformer of natural history, Dr. Herbert, 
with a few applications of the anthers, proved to be 
baseless, and that not one of the new names was 
tenable. If wo can prove that either a new plant or 
a new animal had been improperly described from an 
ill-preserved dead specimen, and that, in consequence, 
it bad been referred to a wrong part of a system or 
family, then is it only right and proper to change its 
place, or even its name, when the mistake is most 
manifest, but that is different altogether from a per¬ 
son rising up to-morrow to convince the world that 
we have been all wrong about our roses, for instance, 
and that instead of one family they consist of ten 
families. Of course lie would give them ten family 
names to put us right, but would they not be all roses 
still? D. Beaton. 
1IOTHOUSE DEPARTMENT. 
Vinks. —There is so much of the poetical olden- 
time-remincling, sunny eastern-clime inspiring, and 
civilization and social-progress-marking, connected 
with the culture of the luscious grape, that many of 
the subscribers to this periodical would consider 
themselves enduring something like a deprivation if, 
in some favourite spot, they could not sit under 
their own vine, there to give fancy free roamings 
amid the events and circumstances with which its 
history is associated, or indulge in splendid, dreamy, 
airy castle building, which, although the practice 
may bo sneered at by the stern utilitarians, is yet 
capable of conferring a measure of enjoyment, while 
it interferes with the rights and properties of none 
whatever. If, for the possession of such a plant, or, 
where that is not permitted, the mere pleasure of 
beholding it, there should be feelings approaching 
the precincts of enthusiasm, there are abundance of 
apologies, thong'll even one is not required, as, with¬ 
out possessing a fair dash of enthusiasm in his 
subject, no man ever accomplished much of the 
great and good in any sphere of life. From having 
no copious account of antediluvian times, we may 
fancy, though we cannot detail, how the bowers of 
Eden were festooned with clusters of the vine ; but 
we do know with certainty that, after the most won¬ 
drous event connected with man’s era of the earth’s 
existence, not the first act of our great and good 
post-diluvian progenitor—for that was one of grati¬ 
tude and homage to the Great Being who had saved 
him and his amid the deluge of waters—but the 
second act recorded, has reference to his becoming a 
husbandman, and planting a vineyard. From that 
day to this—-whether for making into wine that 
“ cheeretli the heart,” (and the propriety of doing 
which it is not our province here to determine,) or 
for placing at the festive board, and there in its 
tempting clusters forming a richer crowning termi¬ 
nation of the feast than even the vaunted apples of 
the ancient Romans—the vine has ever been an 
object of more than classic interest; whether man¬ 
tling the sides of the peasant’s cottage, and by its 
appearance affording an inlet to the character of its 
inmates; occupying a part of the amateur’s solitary 
glass-house, not the less beautiful when blended and 
contrasted with other plants of all habits, scents, 
and tints ; or when asserting for itself alone a proud 
position in the forcing departments of the high in 
rank and rich in wealth. Leaving the treatment of 
the vine out-of-doors in the best possible hands, we 
shall at times have something to say about its 
management within; but even here 1 am much 
more troubled than my friend Mr. Beaton (whose 
hints shall be duly attended to), for, in addition to 
not knowing where or how to end, I can scarcely 
divine where to begin. I would join him in advising 
all new houses and pits to be set about without 
delay, that they may be well seasoned before winter, 
as new damp houses exert upon many plants a simi¬ 
lar influence to that which they exercise upon their 
cultivators. And here, though a matter frequently 
little thought of, it is of importance to decide in all 
cases, and more especially in vineries and other 
forcing houses, what period you would wish the fruit 
to ripen, as at that time, other things being equal, it 
is desirable that the rays of the sun should strike 
the sloping glass-roof very perpendicularly. This be¬ 
comes a matter of greater importance when the glass 
consists of the sloping roof alone; when there are 
upright front sashes a yard or two in depth, the 
inclination of the roof, if somewhat flat, is a matter 
of much less moment, because during winter and 
early spring the rays of light will be perpendicular 
to the upright glass in front. We will not now 
enter upon the consideration of curvilinear, or span, 
or ridge and furrow roofing, in connexion with up¬ 
right sashes in front, which possess for many pur¬ 
poses great advantages, farther than to say that if 
you can have glass on all sides, and heating power 
in proportion, so much the better. 
A span-roofed house for forcing should stand with 
its ends north and south, that its sides may face the 
east and west. Our remarks, however, have more 
reference to lean-to houses possessing brick back 
walls. The influence of the sun’s rays, as respects 
