THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, .Tttt.t 5, 1859. 
191 
attract it before the sun heat exhales it; but in winter, 
or cold, weather, the morning is the most proper time, 
that the superfluous moisture may be evaporated, ere the 
cold nights overtake you, and chill, perhaps kill, a tender i 
plant.” To water by “ filtration ” is a most excellent 
system in summer, and will, probably, be quite new to 
some thousands of our readers :—“A plant that delights 
in moisture, or a drooping plant that you think water 
will preserve, may be watered by filtration— i. e. set an 
earthen or wooden vessel full of water on a brick near 
your plant, that all the water may be higher than the 
earth. Wet a thick woollen list. Put one end of it, 
with a stone or bit of lead, into the water, that it may 
keep to the bottom. Lay the other end on the ground 
near the root of your plant, and the water will distil out 
of the bowl, or pot, through the list; because that part 
of it out of the water hangs lower than that within.” 
And that is watering by filtration ; which was also a 
common practice in my younger days for some rockwork 
plants, for the large scarlet Lobelias, and for a great 
number of mothers of crossed flowers. While they are 
bearing the seeds a bit of worsted thread will do. 
In 1832 I saw a large common watering-pot by the 
side of a plant, with a hole near the bottom not bigger 
than the point of a pin could enter ; and that small hole 
drained the pot in twenty-four or thirty hours, I forget 
which ; and the pot was filled daily for months. I forget 
the plant, but it was in a lovely garden belonging to a 
worthy clergyman near Maidenhead—the Rev. Mr. 
Wiiately ; and Mr. Hods, sen., the father of Sir .1. Cath- 
cart’s gardener, was with me at the time. I have often 
thought how much labour might be saved to amateurs by 
some such slight and effectual contrivances as these ; but 
I would not encourage anything that would deface the 
effect of plants or plant-beds. Every plan of the kind 
should be so contrived as to be entirely out of sight; but 
there is not the slightest difficulty in supplying a constant 
and a certain quantity of water to any plant in the garden 
every day and night throughout the summer, or to a 
certain bed, or to all the beds, and nothing of the arrange¬ 
ment to be seen. 
But, was there no philosophy in flowers and gardening 
in olden times P That there was, and the best sort of 
philosophy—as, for instance, in getting double flowers 
and improved races, Gilbert’s “ Vade Mecum ” is just on 
a perfect level with Lindley’s “ Theory of Horticulture ” 
in that one branch. “Experience gives us this truth, 
that such flowers as differ in number of leaves [petals], in 
shape, in colours, the seeds of such will produce flowers 
much different from the ordinary kind of flowers ; a par¬ 
ticular flower among many others of one plant shall bring 
more double ones than twenty others that are not qualified 
as itand he instances the Stock Gilliflower, our own 
favourite example for explaining how double flowers are 
got from the seeds of such flowers as have more than four 
petals—the common number. But, “ if you be curious, as 
florists ought to be, you may observe the same rule in 
several other flowers that have no stamens in the middle 
-—as Auriculas, Primroses, Campions, Wallflowers, &c. 
When you find one or more leaves [petals] than your 
ordinary number, you may conclude their nature hath set 
one step forward in altering from the ordinary kind. 
Exactly the same explanation as physiology offers at the 
present day. “ There a lover of plants should be diligent; 
and whensoever you see your mistress Nature step out of 
door, wait upon her to her journey’s end, for ’tis on the 
diligent she bestows her favours. Those flowers, also, 
which bear seeds when double as the Gilliflower [Carna¬ 
tions] ; Africans, &c. [Marygolds]; sowing the seeds of 
such double flowers, they will bring you more and better 
flowers a hundred to one than single ones. Gilliflowers 
[Carnations], have, also, their sign which will bear seed 
and which will not. Those that will bring seed have 
their horns in the middle of the flower.” The horns are 
the divisions of the style, or female part of the flower, and 
the quotation settles the doubt about what the true Gilli¬ 
flower really was. The true Gilly, or Gilliflower, is the 
Carnation; the Queen’s Gilliflowers are the “ Hesperis 
Viola Matronalis, orDame’s Violet; or our Rocket, double¬ 
white, double-purple, and double-striped, being great 
favourites in Gilbert’s time ; and the Stock Gilliflower is 
the common Stock, or Ten-week Stock, of the present 
day ; and these were all the Gilliflowers, or .Tuly-flowers 
as Gilbert indifferently calls them. 
Gilbert says, that these double Rockets should be pro¬ 
pagated in the spring, after reserving some of the youngest 
and weakest of the plants of the previous summer from 
throwing up their flower-stalkg. Very probably the best 
plan in all our books for propagating double Rockefs. 
Propagate them under hand-glasses in April, from slips 
rising in a tuft from the crown of the old roots ; and when 
the plants “ throw r up ” for bloom, stop a few of them, the 
weakest, to provide spring cuttings next year. “ The 
double-striped Queen’s Gilliflower i3 the same as the 
double-purple, but that the flowers are finely striped with 
white, and most esteemed.” They are “ easily raised 
from any slip or branch, which, set in the ground at 
spring, shaded and watered, will grow ; but neglect not to 
nip off the buds [of your under-set plants'] as soon as they 
appear for flowers, otherwise they will blow and assuredly 
die.” All the italics are mine, and this last is the most 
curious thing I have yet met with in an old author. You 
see he does not mean to stop the “ under-set plants ” by 
nipping off the whole flower-stalk at once, only the flower- 
buds on the stalk as fast as they appear; and you may 
depend on it, that Gilbert knew that to be a better way 
for those particular Rockets than by a less effort to get 
rid of the buds and stalks all at once. Some people find 
no difficulty with double Rockets, and some can never do 
them well, but they are of the class which is fastidious 
about soils. Other’s, again, can never propagate a double 
Rocket, and some there are who propagate them as fast 
as Bachelor’s Buttons. Those who succeed need no rival 
teaching ; and those that would if they could will be glad 
to try Gilbert’s plan. I think myself it is the very best 
after all, and if we could but bloom the old double-yellow 
Rose itself only out of Gilbert’s “ Vade Mecum;” and I 
have a great faith in that plan also. The rev. gentleman 
who lent me the book from a distance will excuse me for 
having kept it so long. JI. Beaton. 
PROFESSIONAL ECONOMICS. 
POSITION AND PROSPECTS OF GARDENERS, 
That gardening, both as a science and an art, is rising 
to its culminating point the pages of our current lite¬ 
rature, and the exhibition-tables of our metropolitan and 
country horticultural societies, sufficiently attest. With 
the exception, however, of some striking instances—as in 
our Paxtons and Flemings — we look in vain for the 
manifestation of general practical sympathy with the 
practisers of an art, who, by their intelligence, energy, 
perseverance, and refined taste, have congregated the 
highest, the noblest, and the most beautiful in the land, 
to gaze with admiration upon the results, of their un¬ 
wearied skill. We fear that, as a whole just now, the 
workers in gardening are much in the same position as 
has often been exemplified at times in the case of great 
improvements in arts and manufactures, where the 
capitalist, and the public in general, reaped advantage, 
even to the detriment, at least for a time, of the work¬ 
men employed. 
It is perfectly true that if honeyed words and com¬ 
mendatory phrases on public occasions would impart 
honour and domestic comfort, then the gardener must be 
the happiest and most comfortable man living. At such 
times we find the highest in rank, the most renowned in 
science, the most successful in literature, so enthusiastic 
in their praises of gardening as only to be exceeded in 
