THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, AUGUST 16, 1859. 
293 
first began to grow them—that is to say, some out of the lot 
will not bloom at all next year, nor look as if they intended to 
make any attempt of the kind. The way we used to get out of 
the ridicule of some next-door neighbours for failing to bloom 
all our Hydrangeas was this—“ Stop till the end of April, and 
you shall see what you never saw before; and as to their not 
flowering, why, their mothers did so before them.” Between 
the middle and end of April, all those'that did not show bloom, 
or had not the hard bloom-knot which could be felt on the 
points, we used to cut back to the pair of buds next the pot. 
When these two buds made each two leaves, we shook the plants 
out of the pots entirely, and began again as w'e did the year 
before, after the cuttings were struck. Our rooted cuttings 
being just one year or fifteen months old. We left on all the 
roots, put them into small pots, and we only kept the stronger of 
the two shoots ; and, if you believe it, the heads which such treated 
plants used to bloom were enormous; they said “ prodigious,” 
in those days, after Baillie Nicol Jarvey. Since then, however, 
people found out a faster way for getting these “prodigious” heads. 
They take the cuttings from old, strong plants in September, 
with the top knot, the sign for bloom, on them. One cutting is 
planted in each small pot, they are rooted quickly in a hotbed, 
kept all the winter in the small pots, and in spring, when the 
bloom is budded, a larger shift is given, and so heads are ob¬ 
tained according to good or bad luck.] 
ASH TREE INJURED BY THE CATERPILLARS OF 
A GOAT MOTH. 
“ I have sent you two caterpillars out of fifty I found in an 
Ash tree. The tree is twenty-five feet in height and two feet six 
inches in circumference round the stem or stock, and quite a 
young tree. These caterpillars have made ten large wounds in 
the tree, and have runs or holes in the cent re from one wound 
to the other. I think it must be the caterpillar of the Goat 
Moth ; but would be obliged for the name of it. If so, it is quite 
as destructive as Scolytus mentioned the other day by Mr. 
Bailey, as I have little doubt the tree in question will die.”—T.H. 
[The caterpillars are those of the Goat Moth, Cossus ligni- 
perdu. We have given a description of the moth and cater¬ 
pillar in the next column from Stainton’s “ Manual of British 
Butterflies and Moths.” We will only add, as a further illustra¬ 
tion of the wood-boring power of these caterpillars, that we 
have heard of one being placed inadvertently on the slab of a 
mahogany sideboard, and left there all night under a glass. In 
the morning the caterpillar was gone, having pierced through 
the slab.] 
DELPHINIUM FORMOSUM CULTURE — 
CALCEOLARIA FAILURES. 
“ Oblige me by giving some hints relative to the culture of that 
most brilliant and beautiful plant the Delphinium formosum. 
Some seed was given me last October, with instructions to sow 
a part at once for blooming in June, and more in March for 
autumn blooming. I did so. My early plants did not bloom 
till July, and soon went over; so that, as the later ones are not 
yet even showing blossom, my bed is quite dull. I am now told 
the plant is a hardy perennial. Shull I be more likely to have 
a succession of bloom by treating it as such, or as an annual ? 
“ Perhaps some of those who recently complained so much of 
the Calceolaria failure may be glad to know that by far the easiest 
and most certain way of having a good supply of these pretty 
plants is to raise them from seed, which should be sown as soon 
as ripe. The pot filled with good mould within tw o inches of the | 
rim ; then a layer of sand, well pressed down, and the seed 
scattered lightly, not covered with sand or mould, but a piece of 
; glass put over the top of the pot. The young plants must bo j 
thinned out as soon as they can be well seen ; pricked oil'into 
thimble-pots when they have about six leaves; and constantly 
shifted until bedded out.”—A Subscriber. 
[The same treatment which you give to any of the common 
perennial Larkspurs will do for Delphinium formosum. Some 
plants of it have shed their seeds in our own borders, and the 
seedlings are now up as thick as grass. If we follow these seedlings 
till they bloom, you may learn the rest from what Mr. Beaton 
wrote lately on this as a bedding-plant. We shall leave our 
seedlings as they stand till they begin to show some growth. 
In the spring we shall then transplant them in the kitchen 
garden six inches apart and one foot between the rows. There 
they shall remain all next summer, and in the autumn some of 
them will bloom, and most of them will be strong enough to be 
removed where they are to remain ; and any time during the 
winter, when the weather is mild, will do to transplant them. 
As for soil, the whole family is much like the Cabbage tribe— 
we cannot have the ground too good for them. Seeds, also, sown 
in the open air up to the middle of September will stand the 
winter, and be nearly as forward as our seedlings. Any time 
in March and April would do to sow these seeds; but in spring 
you should sow them very thin, as the seedlings ought to stand 
all that summer in the same beds. Gardeners could sow their 
seeds now in pots, and keep them green and growing all through 
the winter and spring. Give each plant a single pot in March, 
and plant them out in May to bloom the following autumn. 
"When this Delphinium is bedded, the great secret is to keep the 
roots young, like Dahlias, by dividing them a3 soon as the bloom 
is over, and by well nursing the young, or newly-divided stock, 
all that autumn, and to plant them rather thick in the flower¬ 
beds in the spring. None of this section should be left to bloom 
from the same roots in the shrubberies more than three years. 
But the grand point is to have them divided early in August 
every year, and to give them rich, fresh soil every spring. 
Bedding Calceolarias do no good from seed in the way you 
mention. Your plan is only for the herbaceous kinds.] 
NEW BOOKS. 
British Moths and Butterflies.* —“ The object of this 
work is to supply, in a small compass and for a low price, the 
greatest possible amount of information likely to be useful to 
beginners in the pursuit of butterflies and moths.” So announces 
the preface, and we assure our readers that the author has fully 
attained that object. The two volumes are very pocketable; give 
such descriptions as enable the uninformed to identify both the 
caterpillars and the winged parents ; tell when and where to search 
for them; and are illustrated by many excellently executed 
woodcuts. We will extract one of the briefest descriptions as a 
specimen ; but before doing so must express a hope that in a 
future edition an alphabetical index may be added. Such works 
are greatly ini paired in usefulness if without this aid to prompt 
reference. 
“ Cossus.—Antenna) of the male pectinated at the tip, of the 
female dentate ; wings large and broad ; abdomen stout. 
“ C. ligniperda (Goat). 2 inches 10 lines by 3 inches 9 lines. 
Fore wings pale brown, clouded with whitish, and marked with 
short, irregular, wavy, transverse lines; hind wings pale smoky, 
with similar but indistinct markings. June, July. 
Larva dirty-yellowish or flesh-colour, reddiBh-black on the 
back; head black ( Ochsenheimer ). In the wood of Willows, 
Poplars, Oaks, &c. Aug. to Oct. 
“Common in most places; less frequent in the North. The 
feetid odour of the larva enables us to recognise its presence by 
the smell it imparts to the ground over which it lias crawled.” 
THE SCIENCE OF GARDENING. 
(i Continued frontpage 273.) 
Manures are also of benefit to plants by affording some of the 
gases of the atmosphere to their roots in a concentrated form. A 
soil, when first turned up by the spade or plough, has generally 
a red tint, of various intensity, which, by a few hours’ exposure 
to the air, subsides into a grey or black hue. The first colour 
appears to arise from the oxide ol iron, which all soils contain, 
being in the state of the red or protoxide ; by absorbing more 
oxygen during the exposure it is converted into the black or 
peroxide. Hence one of the benefits of frequently stirring soils : 
the roots of incumbent plants abstract the extra dose of oxygen, 
and reconvert it to the protoxide. Coal ashes, in common with 
all carbonaceous matters, have the power of strongly attracting 
oxygen. Every gardener may have observed how rapidly a 
bright spade of iron left foul with coal ashes becomes covered 
with rust, or red oxide. All animal and vegetable manures 
absorb oxygen from the air during putrefaction. If it be in- 
* A Manual of British Butterflies and Moths . ByH.T. Stainton. Two 
vole. London : J. Van Voovst. 
