THIS COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, December 20, 1850. 
spotted with brown and streaked with black (something like the 
egg of a Chaffinch, but larger). If taken from the nest they may 
be brought up so tame as to follow their feeder about. 
In confinement Canary-seed seems best adapted to them for 
their general food, with an occasional change of millet, oats, or 
buckwheat. Apple-pips, kernels of stone fruit, or nuts, or even a 
few grains of hemp-seed, may now and then be offered as a treat 
to tame them, and induce them to peck from the hand. 
Bechstein observes that, although contrary to the habits of 
other birds of this genus, he has seen them fiy after the cock¬ 
chafers, catch them in the air, and eat them on the top of a tree; 
thus showing the Hawfiuch does even some good to the agri¬ 
culturist.— B. P. Brent. 
A FAILURE IN PEACII-GROWING AND ITS 
CAUSE. 
I iiate enclosed a couple of the roots which I have taken 
from the trees, that you might be the better enabled to judge of 
the state those trees were in which wore not en¬ 
tirely dead. I can assure you, was the reply to a 
question several times repeated during this last 
summer, that this border was prepared, and received 
the approbation of many who thought themselves 
good judges of the soil best suited to those trees; 
but as soon as any person who really was a judge 
saw them, ho could see at a glance that there was 
something gnawing at their roots which was sure 
to prove fatal to them. Within the last six years 
this border has been twice planted with Peaches 
and Nectarines ; and it appears that, if they had 
had the gallopping consumption, it would even 
then have been impossible for them to have gone 
off more quickly. If I had had to pay for them 
I should have thought it something worse than a 
pocket consumption. 
This is often the case with Peach-borders, al¬ 
though the trees do not always go off in such a 
steeplechase manner as those above described. In 
too many cases it is the proprietor’s own fault; 
for it is too often the case now-a-days for a gentle¬ 
man when choosing a gardener to choose a man 
who has been working at some large establishment, 
where, generally speaking, every man is confined 
to different parts of the business, having the same 
particular kind of work to follow very little short 
of the whole year through : therefore such men 
must be totally unacquainted with the other prac¬ 
tical parts of the science of gardening. Never¬ 
theless, this is a truth; and such men as these 
are installed in small places, and in many instances 
with nothing more for a recommendation than 
that they have worked for my lord or lady so-and- 
so for so long. Some of them are entirely un¬ 
educated ; while others have a little knowledge of 
reading and writing—but the names of their plants on the labels 
are spelled in that manner that, if you did not know it to be 
different, you would be led by the names attached to believe that 
you had all the new plants of the class you were looking at 
that were then known under your eye, if such might be called 
plants. Then what is the result in the long run ? Why, 
the old adage is learned; for there is a great deal more ex¬ 
perience bought than i3 looked upon with a pleasant eye by 
the different proprietors; and many are led to say that they 
will give it one more trial, and if that do not answer they will 
give it up altogether. 
But this seems getting away from my Peach-border, or rather 
a roundabout way of getting at it. The so-called prepared border 
wa 3 no more fit for the roots of the Peach and Nectarine than 
the self-called gardeners above described are to manage them ; 
for if this border had been collected from all the worst soils 
known, it would have been an impossibility to have had a worse 
mass accumulated together for a border for any kind of fruits : it 
was a mixture of lime rubbish, blue clay, and a coarse heavy 
soil, with Ihe exception of about a couple of wheelbarrowfuls of 
new loam to each tree, which was far too deep for any of their 
roots ever to reach. Some of the old jobbing-gardeners in this 
town told me that neither Peaches p or Nectarines would grow in 
179 
this neighbourhood, and pointed me out several gardens where 
they said they never had and never would. And why is it? 
Because they are planted in low, cold, damp, undrained borders, 
which have been receiving nothing in the shape of soils for the 
last twenty years, but have had their yearly allowance of stable 
manure, which has lent a helping hand towards their destruction. 
This was just the case with my border. Had the border been 
planted a hundred times following, the trees would all have died 
if they had been again planted in the same soil and received the 
same treatment the others had before them; for, in the first place, 
they were planted nearly a foot too deep, and, in the second, they 
had every winter a lot of stable manure dug in around their 
roots. Either the deep planting or the stable manure would 
soonsr or later prove fatal in almost any soil; but when the bad 
soil, deep planting, and the stable manure are combined, they 
are as sure of proving fatal to the trees that are planted in such 
soil as a small dose of poison administered once a-week would to 
a human being. 
It matters not in what department of a garden a failure is, or 
whether it is on fruit or flowers. What a number of opinions 
you are sure to hear from those who see it; and some of them so 
ridiculous and so entirely against Nature, that it is scarcely 
possible to refrain from laughing at some of the absurd remarks. 
Some seven or eight years ago this wall was covered with Plum 
and Pear trees, which were just grubbed out, leaving all the old 
roots in. When the Peach trees were planted there seems to 
have been a semicircular hole dug, extending about a yard from the 
wall to a depth of about thirty inches where the new loam was 
put; then some manure; and then the trees, with the greater 
part of their roots fully twenty inches under ground, without the 
least drainage. Supposing they had been planted without the 
manure, they could not even then have survived when the roots 
reached the old mould; hut that they never did, as appears to 
have been expected. As it was, sudden death, I might almost 
term it, has grasped hold of them twice following ; and now the 
question is, Will it again ? Some of the old hands think it will; 
but either they or I in a very short space of time will bo doomed 
to disappointment. 
At the lower end of my border is a large sewage-drain, which 
runs right through the garden from the house; and at the front 
of my border, or where it terminates—that is, against the walk, 
I have put in a drain which leads into the main drain. From 
this drain to the wall I have put in some broken bricks and 
rubble; and immediately on the rubble underneath each tree, 
about four inches below the roots of the trees, I have placed some 
well perforated slate-tiles to prevent any roots from running 
deeper until they extend further than the tiles, which are about 
thirty inches each way. Then the whole of my border is filled 
up with rich, unctuous, slightly sanded maiden mould, which was 
taken from a field that had been laid down for forty years. 
What I have used was the top spit, which was taken off about 
two years ago, and has been lying fully exposed to the atmosphere 
until now. About five years ago I planted a small Peach-border 
at the west end of this same county (Wilts), and about the 
same distance from the river Avon as this one is situated. Now 
the trees are in a very healthy and fruit-bearing state, the border 
prepared similar to the one above described. The trees ripen 
their wood very early in the season ; and when that is the case it 
is very seldom the spring frosts tell on them as they do on those 
which have not well ripened their wood, which is often the case 
unless the borders are composed of the right material and the 
drainage thoroughly attended to.—A. J. Ashman. 
FRUITS ADAPTED TO THE VARIOUS 
LOCALITIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
(Continued from , page 165.) 
PEARS. 
Philippe Delfosse. See Dearre DeJfosse. 
Philippe de Paques. See Easter Benrre. 
Pickering Pear. See Uvedale’s St. Germain. 
Pickering’s Warden. See Uvedale’s St. Germain. 
Pine. See White Doyenne. 
Piper. See Uvedale’s St. Germain. 
Piquery. See Urbaniste. 
Pitt’s Calabasse. See Calcbasse , 
