58 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, Octobeb SO, 1860. 
wrong in tlie opinion, and we are all of us just as liable 
to wrong ideas and opinions as “A. P. "W. He is tbe 
lucky godfather of Tom Thumb, and the able supporter 
of Tom’s merits. He is also an able penman in our 
calling, to whom many of us are deeply indebted for 
sterling practical instruction founded upon a true scientific 
basis; and as such he deserves our respect even in his 
errors, which have been many of late—and who are with¬ 
out them P 
I did not send my seedling to Heckfield that I am 
aware of, but visitors took cuttings of it to scores of 
places, and probably to Heckfield; and as the kind was 
not named by the raiser, every one who partook of it at 
the time had a right to name it according to his or her 
fancy. And there is nothing more likely than that it 
received the name of Prizefighter in Kent, just as 
“A. P. W.” says ; for it was in Kent at the end of 1843, 
and beyond Blackheath Park, where another good Prize¬ 
fighter was doing it at the time : and Mr. Alexander 
Therkeld, who, I believe, is now a nurseryman near 
Belfast, took it to Kent after nursing it from the seed, 
and after handing over the stock of it to Mr. Cole, his 
successor at Shrubland Park. Mr. Toward, Her Majesty’s 
head factor at Osborne, sent Mr. Therkeld to me from 
Bagshot Park, and with him the King of Scarlets Gera¬ 
nium—then, or in 1840, the best scarlet in Bagshot Park. 
The Crystal Palace plant is of that kingly breed, and for 
all its merits the world is indebted to Mr. Therkeld and 
his successor, Mr. Cole; for your humble servant was 
then so smitten with his friend’s General Tom Thumb, 
that, were it not for these two worthies, you should never 
have heard of this or that prizefighting among seedling 
Geraniums, which it is quite time, now, to give place to a 
more profitable use of our extra steam. 
Six other claimants for the honour of having been the 
first to send that Scarlet to Sydenham are on my books. 
Mr. “A. P. W.” is the seventh—the lucky number; and 
the Messrs. Smith, Nurserymen, Norwood, happened to 
send it there before any of them, as Mr. Gordon, of the 
Crystal Palace, assured me on the Foresters’ day. He 
was at the bedders there from the first start; and that 
Geranium is in the first list of plants ever made in that 
garden and in their garden-book to this day. Mr. Gordon 
has that original book, and Mr. Gordon told the tale to 
me just as I now relate it. He is confident their next- 
door neighbour of the Norwood Nursery first supplied 
that Scarlet. But still “A. P. W.” and every three 
letters in the alphabet may have supplied it also, and 
every trio under a different name; and every one may 
think his batch was in first—but Mr. Gordon can put 
them all right. 
Tbop^olums.—W e are warned in that letter from 
Pilsby Nurseries against a spurious Tropseolum elegans, 
and, I should add, against a spurious Stamfordianum, of 
which I have farther account, wide as the poles asunder ; 
but it is hard of him to wish to take the bread out of my 
mouth. He says, “ Mr. Beaton would have enough to 
do to quiet the grumblers, if they received such a worth¬ 
less thing as I am alluding to”—namely, a bad kind of 
Tropseolum. Why, I would not put down one grumbler 
for all the bedding plants on earth. There is a wonderful 
deal to be learnt from a grumbler. It wa3 from grumblers 
that I learned the absolute secret for enjoying life among 
my fellows—that is, never to grumble myself. Since I 
gave up grumbling I have renewed, as it were, my age, 
my appetite, and my digestion, and I feel as a feather to 
what I used to be. 
But the great difficulty at first was to find room for 
Tropseolum Lobbianum to bloom in winter — not in 
blooming it. The best hit at that time was the one 
which suggested the plant to be turned out in a spent 
border at the back of a greenhouse in April, to train it 
all the season over the whole back of the house, and 
when it was up to the top of the back wall to begin to 
atrip off the bottom leaves, and to go on stripping them 
to near the top of the wall, and make the shoots turn 
back on themselves, to be trained slantingly downwards 
the whole winter, when thousands of flowers could be 
had from an ordinary greenhouse. That ancient way 
would pay now in some quarters, and in Covent Garden. 
But people grumbled at the extent of room and at the 
time taken in doing the work, never at the want of 
flowers. Now, however, a better plan, or a more handy 
means of getting sufficient Lobbianums in winter, is the 
practice of pot culture. The plan of pot-bound all the 
summer, and a shift not over-liberal in the autumn, and 
a plunge into bottom heat till that pot is full of fresh 
roots, with a few degrees warmer than a common green¬ 
house, just as our Pilsby friend directs in his useful com¬ 
munication, seems to obtain the height of our success at 
present for this class of winter bloomers. 
Tropseolum elegans was the first to go by the frost. 
At the Experimental Garden it went before the Helio¬ 
tropes or any other plant in the Garden. Even now 
(October 24th), there is plenty Heliotrope in bloom out 
in the gardens about Surbiton, and I should not wonder 
to see again in London the Dahlias and the Chrysan¬ 
themums in bloom together in the open squares. But I 
have anew contrast with Tropseolum elegans. The large 
plant of it, which gave such trouble to keep it as it should 
be, was in a box on the sill of my “ keeping-room” window, 
and a large Jasminum nudiflorum was round that window 
for years; but this season it is not nudiflorum or any¬ 
thing like that. It was in bloom this season on a north 
aspect a month sooner than usual—by the end of Sep¬ 
tember—and without shedding a leaf; it is now in full leaf 
and in full bloom, with the elegans, also in full bloom 
trained over it—quite a sight for beauty of contrast. And 
I would recommend plants of it to be reared specially for 
such a purpose, for covering the lower parts of any per¬ 
manent climbers or pillar plants ; and the way to manage 
them is well suggested by the practice in the Pilsby 
Nurseries—to get winter bloom, to grow the plants in 
small pots the first season, and to plant them out next 
! year, for this kind of covering, if not against the nudi¬ 
florum like mine. 
A plant or two of the Perilla I would also recommend 
to be used in sill-boxes in front of a window. I had two 
of them this season in that box for the elegans, and they 
were admired more than all the rest. Looking out one 
which had a peculiar rich shade of deep purple from 
them, which is never seen when the Perilla is looked 
down upon as when it is in beds ; and looking in from the 
outside the tint is nearly as rich, the plants being both 
ways about level with the eye. Even now the tint is 
richer than earlier in the season. 
Next year if I am spared I shall have two plants of the 
Purple Orach in the same way, one near each end of the 
box, to be allowed to rise the matter of two feet or so, 
and two other plants of the Perilla to divide the middle 
space of the box—the elegans for a groundwork to the 
picture, so to speak, and to scramble up each side of the 
window, and over the nudiflorum, and over the sides of 
the box. On the garden side of it, as at present, I would 
make no objection to a couple or four plants of my best 
purple Nosegays to fall in between the standard Orach 
and Perilla for a change; but, without them, I calculate 
upon a crack orange, and such as you never saw produced 
yet by stained glass windows. Depend upon it there are 
some good moves yet to be revealed by the use of plants 
which cast rich reflections of shade, in a window between 
the eye and the sky line. Perhaps a new colour alto¬ 
gether may be hit out of such contrivances. 
The most pleasant flower to my eye to look over from 
a sitting-room window is that of the old Unique Geranium, 
but it is not nearly so rich as the leaves of the Perilla in 
the same way. How would it look to elevate Perilla 
plants up into a vase, so as to see through them against 
the clear blue sky ? That I cannot tell; but I can vouch 
for it, that looking through out of a room is as pleasant 
