THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, October 20,1857. 43 
moveable, might be continued over your four, five, or six feet 
wide borders. The first will answer well enough, and will 
give you more room in the house. Suppose you had a shelf 
at each side eighteen inches wide, a pathway on each side 
three feet wide, you would have a platform in the centre 
seven feet wide. 
With the heat at your command we do not think you 
could do anything with early Melons or Cucumbers, or early 
Vines either, and after the first year there would be no room 
for them. You might manage a pot or two of Melons or 
Cucumbers after April, but so you could in a common hot¬ 
bed, and escape the risk of those insects that are more apt 
to attack Melons, &c., than Vines. With your heating and 
plants together you could only expect to forward your Vines 
after they broke with the natural heat of the sun. 
In a similar house a friend of ours grows Vines, Melons, 
and Cucumbers pretty successfully, but it is divided into two 
parts, one for Vines, and one side of the other for Melons, 
and the other for Cucumbers. He has pipes the same as 
you for bottom heat, and as much more for top heat. Along 
the sides are narrow beds over the bottom pipes, prepared 
much as we have mentioned above. After these things are 
started the plants in the house are those that require stove 
treatment. In your circumstances we would discard all idea 
of Melons and Cucumbers. 
We have no fears of Thomson’s boiler answering, but of 
course it should be filled and some pressure applied before 
fixing, and this should be done with all boilers. We have 
seen them at work, and heard nothing in the shape of a com¬ 
plaint ; but we do not feel it to be our place to recommend 
any one in preference to others, believing that the simpler 
they are, in general, the better they are, and that much of 
the economy of all depends greatly on the fireman regu¬ 
lating his dampers and keeping the ash-pit doors shut. Any 
small saddle-back or conical boiler would heat your house. 
The smallest or amateur retort of Thomson’s would do, but 
if you contemplate anything like forcing, one larger than the 
smallest amateur’s one would be advisable.] 
PRUNING CLIMBING ROSES. 
“ Will you inform me if a Williams’s evergreen Rose which 
has been planted three years, and never bloomed during 
that time, ought to be cut down, and how near the ground ? 
It has made some fine shoots this season, and is from eight 
to ten feet high, running up a larch pole. Ought there to 
be any other running with it? If so, what would you re¬ 
commend ? Is Williams’s evergreen a white Rose? I have 
not seen one in bloom. Will Gloire de Dijon stand the 
winter without protection ? also Gloire de France and General 
Jacqueminot!- ”—A Constant Purchaser op the Cottage 
Gardener. 
[All climbing Roses should be cut down very low each year 
at tbe end of October for three years after planting. A 
climber may be thirty feet long in as many months, and be 
ten times farther from flowering than one of the same kind 
just thirty inches long at the end of the third season’s 
pruning. To keep all Rose climbers and many others from 
blooming for an indefinite time all that is necessary is not 
to prune more than the points of the green unripe shoots. 
At present your Rose climber, and ten thousand like it, 
ought to be pruned exactly like a Raspberry bush; that is, 
cut out close to the ground all the wood that is more than a 
year old ; thin the sucker-like shoots to three or four of the 
strongest; and last of all cut them back according to their 
strength, four feet being the longest. Gloire de Dijon would 
be killed in October if it was left out one night in some 
parts of the world, but all store plants live out of doors 
somewhere, and you live somewhere else, but we do not 
know your climate.] 
WINTERING A CAMELLIA OUT OF DOORS. 
“ ‘ S. A.’ will feel extremely obliged by directions how she 
can protect a large single red Camellia during the winter 
planted in a warm border out of doors in the north of Scot¬ 
land. The plant has become so large that she cannot keep 
it in the greenhouse. It has been planted so that it is pro¬ 
tected from the north by a high stone wall. On two sides it 
has the protection of Apple trees about the height of itself. 
‘ S. A.’ wants to know if she should have a frame of any 
kind put round it, or have it mulched up, or, in short, how 
she had best proceed to save the plant—a very fine one—if 
possible.” 
[If the “ warm border ” is on the safe side of the bridge 
of Alness, or that over the Conon, near Dingwall at least, no 
harm will come of the single red Camellia from an ordinary 
winter after it is once established; but for this next and the ; 
following winters protect it as they do the Araucarias at the 
Crystal Palace Gardens, and as we explained last spring, 
or thus :—Stick a circle of poles round it; let them be very 
firm in the ground, be as stout as a man’s wrist at the bot¬ 
tom, stand quite upright, and not less than eighteen inches 
from the extremities of the shoots inside this circle; place 
six inches deep of dry moss for a mulching, and wattle, 
heather, or birch branches, or thatch in broom among the 
stakes, but not very closely. The top may be thatched, j 
however, as closely as a barn, and a little conical to throw 
off the wet. Any Highlander could do it, and in the High¬ 
lands he would make the top flat, and put a cone of Ferns 
over all. For English readers it may be necessary to say 
that in the north of Scotland they thatch their barns, byres 
(cow-houses), and stacks (corn ricks), with the young 
branches of the common Broom ( Cytisus scoparius, alias 
Spartium, and alias Genista scoparia). If the wall is near it 
and higher the poles might rest against the wall.] 
BAY TREES LAST WINTER.—DERIVATION OF 
CATSUP. 
“ The last winter destroyed the foliage of all the Bay 
trees round this neighbourhood, which I never observed to 
haj)pen before. Was it generally so in other places, and 
would you cut down the trees? They appear not to be 
dead at the root or for some distance up the stem. 
“ What is the etymology and proper name of the prepara¬ 
tion from Mushrooms sometimes called catsup, and some¬ 
times catchup or ketchup ?”—T. M. W. 
[Last winter was very destructive to the Bay tree. It is 
a native of the south of Europe, and not capable of enduring 
such a lengthened period of intense cold as occurred last 
winter. Those which have suffered should have been cut 
down last April. As they have been neglected leave them 
until next April, and then cut them down to the living 
portion. 
The derivation of the name catsup has been disputed. It 
is a word introduced late in the first half of the last century, 
for it is not in the edition of “ Bailey’s Dictionary ” of the 
date 1735; and Swift, writing about that time, alluding to 
novelties substituted for old preparations in our kitchen, 
says— 
“ And for our home-bred British cheer, 
Botargo, catsup, and cavier.” 
We have very little doubt but that it is a mode of spelling 
the name of an inferior kind of soy prepared in China, and 
called there kitjap. This was introduced in the early part of 
the last century, and the spiced juice of the Mushroom 
somewhat resembles it. The following relative particulars 
we extract from the last number of Mr. Hogg’s most excel¬ 
lent “ Natural History of the Vegetable Kingdom : ”— 
“ From Soja hispida, a native of Japan and various other 
parts of the East, the substance known as soy is obtained. 
It grows to the height of four feet, and has leaves like the 
common Kidney Bean, and is called dai/cser by the Japanese. 
The seeds are usually put into soups, and are the most 
common dish there, insomuch that the Japanese frequently 
eat them three times a day. Koempfer states that, pounded 
and taken inwardly, they afford relief in asthma. From 
them a substance called miso is obtained, that is used as 
butter, and likewise a celebrated pickle, called soy. Miso 
is made by boiling the seeds, which are called mame , for a 
considerable time in water till they are soft; and then they 
are beaten to a pulp along with a large quantity of salt. A 
certain proportion of rice is then added, and, having worked j 
the whole up together, it is then removed into a wooden 
vessel, which previously contained common ale, and in two 
months it is fit for use. Soy is made by taking equal quan¬ 
tities of the seeds, boiled to a certain degree of softness; 
