210 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, January o, 1858. 
i 
aspect. Photographic art is at present in its in¬ 
fancy ; there is much room for improvement; and 
those of our friends who have leisure for experi¬ 
menting, will find that the juices of many flowers 
and vegetables expressed in alcohol form an ex¬ 
ceedingly sensitive surface when applied to paper. 
“ It seems that this photographic influence per¬ 
vades all Nature; nor can we say where it stops. 
We do not know hut it may imprint upon the 
world around us our features as they are modified 
by various passions, and thus fill Nature with 
daguerreotype impressions of all our actions that 
are performed in daylight. It may be, too, that 
there are tests by which Nature, more skilfully 
than any human photographist, can bring out and 
fix those portraits, so that acuter senses than ours 
shall see them, as on a great canvass, spread over 
the material universe. Perhaps, too, they may 
never fade from that canvass, but become specimens 
in the great picture-gallery of eternity. 
"How does this principle strew the path of 
eternity with flowers to that man who, in this 
world, finds his highest pleasure in doing good ! ” 
HIGHGATE NURSERIES, NEAR LONDON. 
From witnessing the public spirit and success of Mr. 
W. Cutbush, at the different shows round London ; 
and more especially his decided improvement in the 
cultivation and forcing of Hyacinths; for the last few 
years, I had him in my view as a very likely man to 
afford a new leaf out of his book : so I booked him, and 
threatened to visit him in my rounds for ever so long. 
And when he made known, the other day, (page 163) 
that it was better and more profitable to grow the 
variegated and fancy kinds of Hollies from cuttings, 
than by the usual modes of budding and grafting, I 
took up my book, and went over to see him at once. 
Well, sure enough, he does grow these Hollies most 
beautifully from cuttings; and the plants are three 
times better that way, for amateurs, than wrought 
plants on the common green Holly, as stocks ; for this 
reason, that they, the variegated Hollies, never make 
green suckers, and give no bother that way ; they are 
better rooted, and root nearer the surface than seed¬ 
lings ; and when you get tired of seeing them as little 
broad-headed bushes along the front of a shrubbery, 
all you have to do, will be to cut so many of them 
down to the ground, about the end of March, and they 
will push up two, or three, or half-a-dozen sucker-like 
shoots, “ from the collar,” as we say. Then, by select¬ 
ing the strongest of these, and cutting back the rest, 
the plants will make stems enough for standards in one 
season, or at most in two growths. See the advantage 
of having all these kinds, like standard Myrtles, or 
standard Rhododendrons, and other fancy standards 
for the terrace garden. I firmly believe this move to 
be the greatest improvement that has been effected 
in my time for the decoration of terrace and geometric 
gardens. At the beginning of The Cottage Gardener 
| I cried out for standards to be made of all the shrubs 
in cultivation, for this very purpose ; and see how the 
tune lias been whistling and swelling on the ear, and 
mellowing to the understanding of taste and judgment 
ever since ; while the whole power, force, and strength 
of the silly old Horticultural Society were set against 
the move altogether, as Mr. Appleby can tell to his 
cost: the old “ hissy,” as they would say about Riccar- 
ton, having swamped his maiden standards of JDeutzia 
gracilis the very first time they were exhibited at 
Chiswick. 
When one has enough of standard Hollies of all the 
kinds, let the rest be encouraged to make trees as high 
as they will grow. Mr. Cutbush recommends the 
f 1- wop;* kinds as the best for making standards: — 
a area, tiie best yellow; flava, next best yellow ; then 
ferox , albo-marginata, echinata, picta, and heteropTiylla 
out of the variegated sorts ; and Cunning It amii, cor- 
nuta , balearica, and canariensis as the best of the 
green kinds. Cunninghamii is a beautiful green Holly 
that is very little known about London, but seems as 
hardy as the common Holly. 
Mr. Cutbush has another new scheme in contem¬ 
plation, by which he will be able to undersell the 
French growers of standard Siveet Bays , such as those 
which every lover of gardening admires so much at the 
CrystalPalace. I never saw such quantities of fine Sweet 
Bays in any nursery. He takes them all from layers 
which are tongued on the upper side. His old stools, 
ten in number, produce from three hundred to five 
hundred shoots in a season ready for layers, and from j 
twenty inches to four feet long. His plan for making 
standards of them is ten times better than the foreign i 
mode. Mr. Cutbush’s Bay standards will never throw j 
up one single sucker in a thousand years; while the 
suckers alone, on a double row of them which I could 
mention, are as troublesome to keep down as a bed of 
nettles. 
His Boses, again, are most beautifully grown as 
standards; but lie only keeps the very best kinds of j 
them, as his land is too valuable to be taken up with j 
common kinds ; which, if any of his customers ask for, 
he can procure from the country cheaper than he can 
grow them so near London. He also believes there 
is no better mode of growing dwarf Roses than on 
their own roots : and he is right. But he says that it J 
is not always in the power of the trade to get the 
cuttings at the right time. They must not prune their | 
Roses till the time for transplanting them expires in 
the spring; as their customers would purchase them 
if the plants were pruned before they bought them. 
To this I would add, for a set-off, that when I was in 
Edinburgh, “ Peacock’s ” nursery there was then 
reckoned the best Rose nursery in Scotland; and 
the foreman told me that one-eighth of an acre of 
dwarf Roses on their own roots—as all dwarf Roses 
were at that time—would produce a sufficient number 
of plants to plant four acres every second year, by 
merely dividing the side-suckers with full roots from 
the old plants; and that, when he had to take up a 
hundred dwarf Roses to supply an order, he generally 
got from two hundred to lour hundred young rooted 
suckers from them for himself. A large Pear tree in 
the Rose beds was then layered every year, just after 
the Roses. The ends of the boughs all round touched 
the ground; so that Pears and Roses, on their own 
roots, could be had from that nursery, if that were an 
advantage. 
In reviewing a good nursery, with such an intelligent 
guide as Mr. Cutbush is, all these things come into 
one’s head; and is it not much better to “ out with it,” 
than run over twenty acres, or twenty houses, and ! 
merely report the contents, as one would so many red 
herrings, or black rooks shot at one bang P To be sure 
it is : and it is for that very reason that The Cottage 
Gardener is taken as the best authority for trade 
reports in this country, as any nurseryman in America 
can vouch for. 
What would one say to 800 Evergreen Oalcs, 
from three to eight feet high, and all growing in 
No. 1 and No. 2 pots, so that they can be removed 
quite safely any day in the year ? Mr. Cutbush took 
