393 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, March 30, 1858. 
I may, however, finish with a few general remarks. 
All these appliances, without freedom from insects, are 
ineffectual. I may here repeat, that the sulphur paint 
is thus made by me :—Soft soap (three ounces to the 
I gallon) is beat up in tepid water, and this is thickened 
with clay until a paint; sulphur is then added most 
liberally (about four handsful to a gallon of the afore¬ 
said), and the whole well beat up until a thick paint. 
This is plastered on all portions accessible between the 
branches. In order to subdue the bright colour, I use 
soot, and the mixture is tested before using. As to 
thinning out the young spray, it should be completed, 
in my opinion, by the end of June, or beginning of 
Juty- R. Errikgton. 
l 
WELLINGTON ROAD NURSERY. 
MESSRS. E. G. HENDERSON AND SON. 
To see a great nursery like this, in the midst of the spring- 
propagating bustle, is a grand sight indeed, but to see the 
packers at full work, and to see the ease and regularity of 
motion, by which the whole establishment is governed, is a 
better sight. If we, of the Horticultural Society, had lost 
“ admirable judgment and practical good sense,” we might 
have found them again, in such places as this. 
Rut to the point. Let us begin with 300 yards of Cycla¬ 
men Persicum in full bloom, and 350 yards of Cyclamen 
Coum , Atkinsii , and their intermediate hybrids ; all in one 
blaze of bloom, and that, indeed, was a “ sight.” The Per¬ 
sicum has been more than 200 years a favourite pot plant, and 
spring flower, and its merits were sung at the last March 
Meeting of the Horticultural Society, just as if it were a new 
plant. The thousands of the new race of Cyclamens, are ten 
times more useful, however, than even the tribe of Cyclamen 
Persicum , as they are quite hardy, and never fail to bloom 
every spring, in March and April; but I shall write a paper 
on all their ways shortly, and go on to say, that all the new 
kinds are to be had here by the hundred, or thousand, or by 
the dozen, or singly, as cheap as the old kinds. Atkinsii is 
the first cross we ever had, between the hardy and greenhouse 
Cyclamens; between the scarlet Coum and the white Per¬ 
sicum, and by breeding in-and-in—the grand secret in im¬ 
proving the vegetable kingdom—this new race is now as 
diversified in the flowers as the Cineraria. Some are deeper, 
much deeper - coloured than Coum , reaching to purplish 
crimson, and just like the Rose, every other shade of colour 
up to marble whiteness, without one particle of difference in 
their style of growth. Here, then, is the first bedding plant 
of which we can make the first perfectly -shaded bed, begin¬ 
ning with dark crimson in the centre, and ending with a row 
of pure white round the outside, and every leaf and flower- 
i stalk in the bed to be exactly of the same size and style of 
| growth. The bed to last full two months in bloom; outside, 
and just opposite the parlour window, in March and April; 
and fourteen degrees of frost will not hurt a bloom on it. 
There is a whole “cradle” of them here, covered only by a 
single mat, or, say about 5000 plants, and each plant had, on 
the average, ten open flowers during the late hard frost, and 
not a single bloom out of the 50,000 could I see hurt in the 
slightest degree. But, as I have just said, I must probe this 
new race to the very core, and before I have done with them 
every lady in the land will be in love with them, of that I am 
i quite certain, because I can tell such things from what I feel 
in my own blood. 
Farfugium grande , which was sold last autumn above 
twenty guineas the dozen, we shall have sufficiently cheap in 
another year, to enable us to try it as a new style of varie¬ 
gated plant for an edging to some of the flower-beds. Here 
the Messrs. Henderson have it already on sale by the score, 
and for the next three or four years it will be one of the best 
trade plants in England. Although the Messrs. Lobb have 
been successful in getting home novelties, strange to say, very 
few of their plants make good trade articles. Fortune’s 
plants, on the other hand, are household words, and this 
I Farfugium grande he got in the north of China, by the 
merest chance. An old woman, or priest, or somebody, 
' having kept him longer than he wished, he made the nearest 
“ cut ” to the next town, and saw this grande grooving by 
a little florist in a back street; and it will reach as far and 
fast as his Dielytra spectabilis , and neither of them will 
ever get out of cultivation. 
Monochceium ensiferum , the dark rosy flower I s|)oke of at 
the Meeting of the Horticultural Society, gets the same treat¬ 
ment as Pleroma elegans. The two plants are OH a par, which 
is the best character fof ensiferum , only that Pit? oma i s a 
much stronger plant; and here are many beautiful u v0U11 8 
specimens of it, particularly in one low span house, wnjL 
runs north and south, hall across the Nursery,' with a walk 
down the centre, which is edged the whole length: with pots 
of Cyclamen in bloom, besides a row on the dwarf walls, on 
which the slopes rest, making four rows of Cyclamens in full 
bloom ; and, in addition, there are two banks of Cyclamens 
just as you enter, occupying five or six feet of the whole 
house, right and left. From these banks run down specimens 
of fine greenhouse plants, placed three to four feet apart, on 
inverted pots, and Pleroma elegans is the principal among 
them. The rest of the stages are covered with the very youngest 
of the most choice greenhouse hard-wooded plants, and the 
stages themselves are beds of rubble, covered with very fine 
cinder-ashes. It is a principle here, to have every pit and frame, 
and house, or parts of pits and houses, covered with sifted 
ashes, or sand, or tan, or anything cool and moist , to-set the 
pots on, in preference to wooden or slate stages. Also, to 
have all houses and pits, of which there is no end here, on 
the span-roofed plan, and to be able to have bottom heat in¬ 
dependently of top, and top heat the same. 
A new propagating pit, or low span-roofed house, 126 feet 
long, and eight feet wide, with a path in the middle, and top 
and bottom heat at will, should be asked about, and be seen 
and examined by all our country cousins who visit here, as a 
perfect model for all kinds and all sizes of forcing-houses, for 
winter work, and for economy to the bargain; that is, 
economy of construction. There is no front putty in all this 
glass, the squares are bedded in putty, and a zinc, or tin, or 
copper brad holds down each square firmer than putty, and 
one coat of paint every summer is found to be much better, 
for all plant structures, than two coats every other year, or 
three coats once in five years. All the lights on this model 
pit-house, and most of them all over the Nursery, are hinged 
at the top, in a simple way, which is very seldom used, and 
which kills two birds, for it makes the light stronger than 
usual, and easier to handle at the same time. An angle 
piece or half T of iron, of the breadth of a common iron 
hoop, embraces the two top corners of the light with screws, 
and the top of the angle is formed into a broad hook, and 
two knuckle “joints,” or hinges fastened to the ridge piece, 
receive these in the way of “ hook and eye.” All these lights 
hook and unhook as easily as the top kook in a lady’s dress ; 
no wind can blow them off, and by lifting up the bottom of 
the light, and supporting it, you can work or examine among 
the plants inside as easily as if you were inside yourself, and 
the giving and taking off air is so much more safely done. 
But with all our improvements in hothouse building, if I am 
not mistaken, the Chinese carpenters have beaten us in the 
make of Wardian cases; at all events, any one who is about 
London, and is going to send new Geraniums to Melbourne, 
should send his carpenter to see the Chinese Wardian cases 
now at this Nursery, for in them many kinds of new Camel¬ 
lias, and other plants from China, have come over just in as 
good condition as if they were in a little London greenhouse 
all the time; but he, the carpenter, must go soon, for the 
cases are to be filled and sent back to China for another load. 
It is more easy now to get plants from China in these cases, 
than it was to get them from Edinburgh to London the first 
time I came up. 
Isabella Grey , the new Tea-scented Rose from America, 
which was exhibited by Mr. Low before the Horticultural 
Society last spring, was bought by this firm, and it lias had a 
great run since last autumn. I saw it being propagated in a 
way that would astonish some of us, a few years back ; strong 
plants of it being got up in a few weeks, ready for sale, by 
grafting single buds of it with a heel, low down, on stocks of 
the Manetti Rose, in pots. These buds start immediately in 
moist, close heat, and make shoots from a foot to eighteen or 
twenty inches long, which are then fit for market. The stock 
is cut square off three inches from the pot, and the heel of 
