186 THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY 
of 'which a man of taste would find it difficult to select a 
single specimen that lie could pleasurably put to use. 
Having no sense of propriety these carpentering geniuses 
work by the rule that to be rustic a thing must be ugly —the 
uglier the better. They see beauty in swelled knees and 
cork-screw legs ; they have yet to learn that a few rough 
loppings and gnarled branches are as capable of symmetrical 
arrangement as if they were polished mouldings of satin- 
wood. But the customers are most to blame, for I suppose 
they do find people to admire their zigzags. What is there 
that somebody with more money than wit will not admire? 
But there are exceptions. Now and then we meet with 
genuine rustic work, combining quaintness with design and 
utility with both ; and when one turns into a yard stocked 
with the productions of a man who can enter into the idea 
of rustic work one feels inclined to purchase everything, even 
at the risk of bankruptcy. Eolks who live Tyburn way have 
in their vicinity a man who is a master of this art. His 
name I do not know, but his work I remember to have once 
inspected with a strange consciousness of “ water in the 
mouth.” At Brook Street, Upper Clapton, is another—a 
thorough genius in the construction of arches, fern mounds, 
baskets, summer-houses, garden chairs—splendid things !— 
at least thirty per cent, of them worthy to be engraved as 
examples. His name is Curry. May he live for ever ! 
At the Birmingham Poultry and Cattle Show I saw on the 
stand of the Messrs. Dickson, of Chester, a pair of rustic 
vases of the chastest design and most perfect workmanship. 
They stood some three feet high, and each had in it a 
healthy specimen of Araucaria imbricaia, merely dropped 
in to give effect for the time. Messrs. Dickson thought very 
little about them; but I, as a Londoner, accustomed to the 
abominations of London rusticity, thought a few hundred 
such would meet with a ready sale in the metropolis. If 
any Chester correspondent, or even Messrs. Dickson them¬ 
selves, would send a sketch for The Cottage Gardener it 
would prove to be one good contribution to this neglected 
department of garden ornamentation. 
There is one matter of great importance to every one who 
dabbles in rustic work, and that is a proper choice of wood 
for the purpose. Oak is the leading material with most 
makers. It is gnarled and knotty, picturesque even to the 
last chip; but in my experience I have found it the very 
worst of woods when exposed to the weather. The summer 
sun searches into every fibre, and soon makes a ruin of any 
piece of furniture constructed of it, and it gets worm- 
eaten to such an extent as to resemble the bottom of a colan¬ 
der, and at last falls to pieces. Others may give a dif¬ 
ferent verdict. The Oak I have had has usually come from 
Epping and Hainhault forests, and it really is a most mise¬ 
rable material. For tables and blocks of any kind that are 
required to be ornamental there is nothing better or more 
beautiful than Yew. It may be either varnished or polished, 
and either way its colour and veining are admirable, and it 
lasts for ever. For smaller work, and especially for the pet 
of baskets or other uses Avhere light timber is required to 
come in contact with the soil, there is nothing better than 
the Locust tree, or false Acacia, a wood that proves brittle 
and chippy in all ordinary carpentering, but which never 
parts with its bark, or yields to the influence of moisture. 
For trellises to rustic arbours the crooked loppings of old 
Apple trees are 'especially commendable, and every lover of 
a garden should, at pruning time, see that every suitable 
I stick of waste timber is put aside for such a purpose—if not 
I for his own use, then for that of somebody else who may 
need it. The hatchet makes short work with many a goodly 
pile of picturesque timber that would be inestimable for 
rustic work, but as it is generally somebody’s perquisite 
it goes directly to the fire.— Shirley Hibberd. 
QUERIES AND ANSWERS. 
NOSEGAY GERANIUMS. 
“ At page 383, Vol. XVII., of The Cottage Gardener, I 
find Jackson’s variegated crimson Nosegay Geranium is 
recommended as being one of the best of the variegated kinds 
for bedding. As I am a great admirer of this Nosegay sec¬ 
tion of Geraniums I shall be glad if you can assist me in 
GENTLEMAN’S COMPANION, June 23, 1857. 1 
procuring a plant of it, as well as some of the non-variegated ; 
sorts of this class. The old salmon or pink and crimson j 
Nosegay are the only varieties that I have ever seen. The 
former I have discarded as unworthy a place in my garden.” j 
—R. L. 
[There is no such name as you state in any page of The 
Cottage Gardener. There is no such plant as a crimson 
variegated Nosegay. A plain crimson Nosegay is one of the 
very rarest plants in England we have seen. You may have j 
seen the name in a list (in whose catalogue?), but you did j 
not see the flower in a London nursery that we know of. 
We saw two dozen of seven-year-old plants of Mrs. Verhon 
sold the other day at a sale for thirty shillings. That was 
the second Nosegay seedling for the previous eighty-six 
years certain, and perhaps the only Nosegay but one during 
the last century and the former part of the present century. 
This and Frewer's Nosegay and three Fothergillii are all they 
grow at Shrubland Park, and there is another dark red 
Nosegay at Trentham. These, with Jackson's Variegated 
Nosegay—a, provisional name by the way—are all the Nose¬ 
gays that we know of in the nurseries ; but we cannot 
undertake commissions to procure them, and we know that I 
a superior race of Nosegays is now being proved under J 
competent judges.] 
SPOT IN GERANIUMS.—SPRING FLOWERS IN 
IRELAND. 
“ I beg to inclose a leaf, and pray let me know what has 
come over my Geraniums, as they have many of their lower 
leaves damaged like this one, and, in consequence of their 
having tumbled off, the plants look dreadfully leggy, though 
it has not interfered much with their flowering. 
“ As there has been lately a good deal about spring 
flowers and the cultivation of our indigenous plants in your 
periodical, I think you may, perhaps, like to hear that 
something has been done in that way even in these remote 
districts (Ballymalion). 
“ In the garden of our village doctor there is at present 
as beautiful a bed as any one could wish to see, a moderate¬ 
sized oval, the centre filled with the lovely Veronica cha. 
meedrys , surrounded by a belt of the golden Lotus cornicu- 
latus. Visitors are in raptures with it, and the doctor, who 
is a ’cute fellow, gives the Latin names when asked about the 
making of the bed, but does not let on as to its wild origin, j 
which no one ever thinks of suspecting. 
“ In early spring he had several of the beds in the 
garden surrounded with broad belts of the common Primrose, | 
which he afterwards threw away as other things came in. 
One of these beds was filled in the centre with a very large 
purple Auricula, and one was in concentric rings of the 
wild Violet ancl Primrose. The doctor is a thorough 
gardener heart and soul, and whenever be is not engaged 
in his onerous duties is to be found among his plants. 
“ He is not a florist, and I fear that he would fall 
greatly in the estimation of Mr. Turner if that gentleman | 
heard him descanting on the absurdities of Jloristic re- | 
quisites; but he has a choice collection of native wild I 
flowers : a florist would turn up his nose at them. 
“ I saw last year with him the Bee Orchis quite at home in 
a corner of his rockery, and in a damp, boggy corner of the | 
same, at the foot of a huge gnarled block of bog Oak, a 
mass of Pinguicula , one of the loveliest of our wild flowers, 
but very hard to manage. 
“ I could tell you more about this village Hippocrates; 
about his greenhouse, twelve feet by six feet, and the 
number of beautiful things in it; about his stove and his 
Orchid house, this last only eight feet by six feet; and yet I 
saw in it this day the following plants vigorously grown and 
beautifully flowered :— Aerides odorata , Cattleya violacea, Cy - 
pripedium barb alum , Fpidendruniinversum , Oncidium papilio, . 
O. Jlexuosum , Vanda Jurva , and no end of Gloxinias.”— i 
Italicus. 
[You have the “ spot,” the most destructive malady to 
which Geraniums are subject, and exactly similar to the 
Potato disease in this respect, that no one is able to tell the 
cause of it, or know how to cure it. All kinds of quackery, 
scientific and lumphitic, to coin an expressive term for the 
occasion, have been advanced to cure and tell the cause of ( 
