308 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, February 19, 1861. 
Pruning Old Black Currants (F. M .).—'The proper way of pruning 
all oid Black Currant bushes, and bushes of Black Currants o'f all ages, is 
to get rid of as much old -wood as you can replace with young wood ; and 
you need cut but the very top parts from the strongest young shoots, unless 
it be on purpose to furnish young wood for the next season. 
Liliput Dahlias ( L. T. P.). —These differ nothing in their culture from 
the Zelinda and other dwarf sorts. But surely you would not put such 
common plants into a conservatory till October—not that these Liliputs are 
common, yet they are Dahlias, and Dahlias are not house plants till the 
frost comes. 
Double Dahlias becoming Single ( A Constant Stibscriber.)- Your 
best Dahlias are evidently worn out. and even if they were only arriving 
at manhood, so to speak, it is not worth your pains to plant them, or any 
of them, if you are desirous to have a fair show of flowers. There are so 
many good kinds of Dahlias now in thi market, and plants of them are sold 
cheaper than second-rate bedding plants, so that in reality to have single 
Dahlias, and half-single and lop-eared flowers in one’s garden, is a slur on 
our taste. So destroy' the whole lot of them, as they are not worth giving 
away, and procure, by degrees, a first-rate collection, for which you will 
be thankful when you see the difference. 
Trop;eolum azureum (Idem ).—This blue, climbing, bulbous Tropoeolum 
ought to have been at work for some months past, like all its kindred. 
But have you got such a thing at rest ? They should all be potted in nice 
light loam and peat in October and November or very early in the spring ; 
hut, like pot Tulips, the sooner they are potted and the slower they are 
growing, the easier they are managed and the better for their future health. 
Tank-heating ( J. Viner). —"We demur first of all to the relative expense; 
we demur again to a large boiler for such a purpose; and we demur a 
third time to your proposed arrangement. With a double tank at the 
farther end, above which y T our Pines are to be as according to your plan, 
we do not see how you can heat that division separately without heating 
“I? other divisions first. Your plan shows no division in your tank. 
Witn these divisions, it would have suited best to have the Pines nearest 
the boiler, then Cucumbers, then Melons. The plan you propose will do 
well enough if all divisions are to be heated ; but a tank right round would 
do that without making two connections with the boiler. Under your 
arrangement we see no use for valves, as you must keep heat at the farther 
end most of the year. In No. 537, to which you refer, the tank goes and 
returns in the centre of the house, and the house is divided longitudinally, 
not across. You do not say 7 the width of your tank—two feet we suppose; 
t la ^ T our sluices or valves, if you use them, must be of the 
w idth of the tank, or the circulation will be arrested. Your plan will give 
you enough heat. See articles on “ Forcing,” “ Tanks.” 
Cineraria maritima—Heating a Three-light Frame (T T)— This 
Cineraria will not be forgotten : jneantime, if you have any plants cut 
them down to wituin an inch or so of the soil, and try the tops for cuttings 
it you like. We want you to keep the bottoms not dry nor yet soaked until 
they push afresh, and by that time we shall he all right to go ahead, 
the only objection we have to your plan of heating by a stove inside the 
frame, and which you would find noticed by Mr. Fish, is that all such 
stoves tike a vertical or upright pipe to secure a good draught at first. 
Even your upright chimney at the end will not compensate for that upright 
pipe from the fire, though it will help to do so. To gain an upright pipe 
ot a yard or so, you would have to sink your stove considerably. It might 
do on the level, but we do not think it will do well. The sheet-iron pipes 
wou.d require to be well luted at the joints, or smoke would escape at the 
openings. If the pipes are not more than three or fourinches in diameter, 
and the best coke is not used, they would get encrusted w ; th soot, and the 
soot and the damp together would eat them through by the second year. 
Metal pipes would be better, but they would be dearer. The chief advan¬ 
tage of your iron stove is its portability; otherwise a small brick furnace, 
inches wide, 14 long, and 15 deep, would answer better and be cheaper 
than the iron stove. And if you took a flue of brick—say 6 inches wide 
and 6 inches deep for a couple of feet or so from the mouth of the furnace, 
you could join that with glazed earthenware pipes 6 or 7 inches in 
diameter filling the joints with mortar ; and if you bedded the length next 
the fireplace in clinkers and covered with ashes, that would give bottom 
heat, and the other half could be exposed for top heat. We thir.k this 
would be cheaper than 7 our iron pipes, but not so portable ; but you would 
get a more regular and genial heat. To avoid a chimney, either a plate- 
iron pipe or an earthenware one would do for the purpose. To save fuel 
and msiire draught, the bars of the grate must be 15 inches nearly below 
the bottom ot the flue. This and as small a furnace as you could well have 
would heat nine lights instead of three. If you try your own plan let Us 
know the. result. We are chiefly afraid of the pipes going horizontally 
irom the iron stove. A very few bricks would make a little furnace: and 
all but the feeding-door and ash-pit, &c., should be in the frame. 
Roses Injured bv the Frost (E. C.)— The middle of April is soon 
enough to prune, or cut, or touch any Rose, or any other woody plant that 
has been severely hurt, but not killed, by the frost. The topmost buds in 
oui plants of the Malmaison Rose are quite safe, and are now pushing after 
being removed, and well cut in at the roots in October. At a mile’s 
mstaiKie from us, as the crow flies, beds of this Rose have been mostly killed 
to the ground ; and Mr. Donald, from Hampton Court Gardens, who came 
to see us and ours, says his celebrated beds ot Devoniensis on their own 
roots are quite killed into the ground, but he shall not lose a plant of them 
as they are already showing eyes and swellings on the crown of the roots ’ 
and to touch them or disturb them in the least for a long time he would 
consider daft indeed. He, too, has saved many more hundreds of very 
young Roses from cuttings this winter, and he is getting all his dwarf 
bedding Roses on their own roots, so that frost will not kill them outright 
hut, like his Devomensis-beds—the finest Rose-beds in England certainly— 
they may have their branches and stems frosted occasionally, but they will 
push up from the roots such Roses ! and all tender Roses are constantly lost 
in suen winters as this when they are all above ground—that is, are worked 
plants, v,e are always sorry to hear of losses by such winters; but some 
people give no commiseration in the case of loss of Roses, for they sav 
that can only occur to worked plants.” The Dahlia-beds at Hampton 
Court have proved how easily Rose-beds might have been saved if we had 
known in time. Several of those Dahlia-teds under the Yew treeTwere 
S 0Ve M d leaves > read y to be trenched in by-and-by, and in the mean- 
tune the frost came, the old Dahlia roots, not being wanted, were left in 
the beds, and now they are all as fresh and free from frost as they were 
mst August. Mr. Donald was not the least surprised to see our Rosesouite 
safe under the circumstances, and said most of his neutral flower-bpds 
would be made shortly with the same description of Roses—that is with 
a selection of sorts entirely on their own roots.—D. B. ’ 
leaved^trm ^ T ^~f or carl y use > none surpasses the true Asl 
FinW, ney ’ for sei::onii early Rylott’s Flourball, and for latest ir 
Flukes. Buy our “ Gardeners’ Manualit embraces the kitchen frui 
you fn cwvryway. 13 - iha11 S00n P ublish a ™rk, *hich will ™ 
Pine Apples (H. Watson. Altringham).—Vfe do not know the Prince 
Albert Pine. There are two varieties of Cayenne—the Prickly and Smooth¬ 
leaved. The latter is the best. It is very large, pyramidal, and of a dark 
orange colour, richly flavoured, and a valuable sort. It sometimes weighs 
7 lbs. 
Name of Plant [O. S. M .)—Your plant, which, as far as we can see, has 
red flowers, appears to be Thunbergia coccinea. T. Harrisii has different 
leaves without angular lobes, and very much larger blue flowers. 
POULTRY AND BEE-KEEPER’S CHRONICLE. 
POULTRY SHOWS. 
March 6th and 7th. Preston. Sec., Mr. II. P. Watson, Glover Street, 
Preston. 
March 13th and 14th. Plvmouth. Sec., Mr. W. R. Elliott, 5, Windsor 
Villas. Entries close March 1. 
April 1st and 2nd. Sunderland. See., John Littlefair, 6, Bridge Street. 
Entries Close March 19th. 
May 21st, 22nd, and 23rd. Chesterfield and Scarsdale. Ron. Sec., 
Thos. P. Wood, jun. 
May 22nd and 23rd. Beverley. Ron. Sec., H. Adams. Entries close 
May 4th. 
June 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th. Bath and West of England. 
July 2nd and 3rd. Blackpool. Sec., E. Fowler, jun. 
N.B.— Secretaries will oblige us by sending early copies of their lists. 
LIVERPOOL POULTRY SHOW. 
In common witli most other people, we like Thackeray’s 
writings, and therefore read the “ Cornhill Magazine.” We 
were wending our way, we were going to say, to the “ Queen of 
the Mersey,” or the “ abode of the merchant princes,” or some 
such fine place, when all at once we thought of the article in 
the “ Cornhill Magazine ” on “ samples of fine English.” Fine 
names wo’n’t do. Boileau had the same objection to them. 
“ J’appelle un chat, un chat, et Roland, un fripon.” 
We are not going to write a “ Roundabout ” paper ; we wish 
we could. While all this was passing through our minds we 
said, “plain Liverpool!” and then asked ourselves whence 
such was derived, and what it signified. We recollected on our 
first visit we horrified our kind cicerone by asking him why 
Storks were such common shop signs in the town, and he told us 
with suppressed indignation and pity, they were not Storks, they 
were the Liver. We ventured one more question, and received 
for answer that formerly there was a pool to which the Liver 
(like the Phoenix, it has no plural) resorted. So we had a sort 
of conversational charade, and “ the whole word ” was “ Liver¬ 
pool.” Well, we asked no more questions of our friend; but 
having been somewhat of ornithologists from father to son for 
many years, and never having heard of the “ Liver,” we felt 
as the man felt who fished off London Bridge for gudgeons for 
fifteen years, and having unsuccessfully exhausted all the baits 
and all the most approved appliances for taking them, he boldly 
denied the existence of such a fish. Having been asked in the 
afternoon to join a few friends, we looked at all till we espied 
one who, like the “portly canon,” had a “merry eye,” and 
having made the approaches in due and proper form, we again 
asked the question as to the origin of the name. “ Sir,” he said, 
“ it is enveloped in mystery. The same was asked by the pre¬ 
siding Judge at the Assizes some years ago, and no one attempted 
to answer but Serjeant Wilkins, who said, on his way to court 
he thought he had solved the enigma ; for, passing the gasworks, 
he read thereon, ‘ Ex fumo dare lucem.’ Above stood the 
Liver, and thereupon he made hold to say the signification was 
‘ Liver and lights.’ ” 
What’s in a name ? Let us turn from that to facts. This 
is the eighth annual Poultry Show. All have been successful, 
and all have been well conducted. They come at the end of 
the exhibition season ; and the birds that have been winning for 
months here try their last conclusions, and return to their 
walks either greater than ever, or shorn of some of their glory. 
A first prize at Liverpool is an exploit. It is true the number of 
competitors are hot so great as at some places ; but then, on the 
