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THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, January 17, I 860 . 
the proprietor of the Mount Camel Nurseries, near this city, 
and he has had such labels in use for many years with the most 
perfect success, we think his plan must be valuable. Take for 
the label small slips of zinc (if it has been exposed to the weather 
some time it will be so much the better), and write the names 
upon them with a common black lead pencil, then fasten them 
to the trees with line copper wire, always giving sufficient space 
in the loop for the tree to grow. Such labels will for years be 
plainly readable .—(Scientific Artisan.) 
WEED, SEED, AND ANT-KILLER, FOR 
GRAYED WALKS AND ROADS. 
The present usual management of gravel walks and roads is 
very expensive and radically wrong in principle, and is, in fact, a 
species of cultivation not unlike that of putting in a crop for 
future growth. First hoeing, then raking, then rolling. First 
loosening the surface, then raking in the innumerable seeds 
lodged on the surface, then covering and setting them in with 
the roller, for a second crop. This is tolerably good culture. 
If we could regulate the rains to our gravel walks the repeated 
use of the roller would keep down the weeds and the ant-hillocks 
to some extent; but it is not often that we can have them in 
just the light degree of consistency to be benefited much by the 
roller. Sometimes a month of wet weather, or two months of 
dry weather, will render the roller useless, and inoperative, and, 
meanwhile, weeds, scattered seeds, and insects, are accumulating. 
It is next to impossible to keep a walk clean that is not con¬ 
stantly travelled and trampled; and the true principle seems to 
me to be this—the surface must never be disturbed. Starting 
upon this presumption several years since, I conceived the use 
of fire; and after trying a red-hot roller, and a roller with a fire 
inside it to no purpose, I arrived at the use of fire direct by 
means of the machine here illustrated. 
A is an iron box with a fire-grating at the bottom; B is a 
double-acting bellows with a wind-chest. In the upper part of 
box A is a diaphragm a through which air is supplied to the fire 
below; the diaphragm and cover of the box on which the 
bellows rest being removeable for the introduction of fuel. The 
blast-pipe l passes from the wind-chest, through a bole in the 
cover. As soon as the fire is kindled by the action of the bellows, 
the driver moves forward with the machine, all the while working 
the bellows with one hand; and the flame, issuing from below, con¬ 
sumes the weeds, seeds, and insects, leaving a clear track behind 
it. Various kinds of fuel will answer, but those giving much 
smoke are objectionable. A fan-blower geared from the driving- 
wheel would be a good substitute for the bellows, but for one 
objection — where it is desired to move slowly, or perhaps to 
pause over large weeds, the blower would cease to act, and 
would require other means and extra machinery to keep up the 
action ; I have not, therefore, yet tried it on this account. In 
large machines to be worked by a horse, the fan-blower might 
be preferred to, and cheaper than, the bellows. This machine 
does not dispense with rolling altogether, though when a road or 
walk has been purged by fire, instead of disturbing by the 
usual treatment, it is obvious that but little rolling will be 
necessary compared with that ordinarily required. I have tried 
the machine upon a small scale, and taking a dry time when the 
surface was covered with little weeds, just starting from the 
earth, the fire made a clean sweep so that not even a cinder 
could be observed. It can be carried very close to the surface; 
and by having guards on either end of the fire-box, it may be 
run close to box edgings without injui'y.— Charles G. Page, 
Washington, I). C.—(American Gardeners' Monthly.) 
MYRTLES OUT OF DOORS IN SCOTLAND. 
“ G. D.” will feel extremely obliged if the Editor will say 
whether Myrtles grow in the open air all the year without pro¬ 
tection in any part of Scotland. 
[About Rothsay and many other places in the Frith of Clyde, 
Myrtles and Fuchsias stand out all the winter; but we doubt if 
such is the case in Ross-sliire.] 
BEDDING OUT IN SMALL GARDENS. 
As it is but seldom that we have a description in your pages 
of the bedding out or planting of small places, I hope that the 
few remarks which I shall hereafter make will not be altogether 
thrown away on many of the readers of this paper; for small 
places are not the localities for the eyes or minds of most of 
your experienced and scientific contributors to wander in, any 
more than it would be usual for a now-wealthy gentleman to 
give you a description of his onee-poorer days. 
Small places might oftentimes be compared to small puddings. 
The first glimpse does not satisfy the eye any more than the first 
cut does the appetite:—this is where the eye cannot scan the 
whole from one particular spot. Now reverse the picture and 
take a survey of others, and they will at once present you with 
a very curious sensation:—the beds are planted (it is almost 
impossible to tell how), without the least approach to regularity, 
the combination of colours not studied at all, and often out of 
character with the place altogether. This is too often the case ; 
and when it is, let the plants be what they will, they will appear 
nothing more or less than odds and ends. 
Did the proprietors or the gardeners of these places read the 
pages of The Cottage Gardener weekly until bedding-out 
time this ensuing spring, they would by that time have gleaned 
such a mass of information that they would be enabled to make 
their places wear a different appearance to what they did before, 
and they themselves would be almost electrified. Even then mixed 
gardens could not be expected to wear that beautiful peacock¬ 
like plumage which Mr. Fish has so enthusiastically pourtrayed 
in a late number, and which the flower gardens at Linton Park 
wore this past summer ; for there are several impediments which 
present themselves to the managers of small places when attempt¬ 
ing to imitate the larger ones, the description of some one or 
other of which we get most weeks. In many instances the space 
that is allowed for everything together fulls far short of the space 
that is appropriated to flowers alone in many of the large esta¬ 
blishments. Then there are the pocket of the proprietor, and 
the labour the gardener is allowed to help him to carry out his 
designs, and then the skill of the gardener himself—all of which 
prove themselves to a certain extent to be impediments. 
Casting these aside, let us see how near w r e can approach on a 
miniature scale some of those large and most magnificently laid- 
out places, where myriads of those floral beauties are arranged 
and planted out yearly in that easy, graceful manner which seems 
to add new life and vigour to all who gaze on them. As Roses 
still stand unrivalled amongst out-door flowers, they cannot be 
dispensed with in a small any more than in an extensive place ; 
but instead of a large rosery of, perhaps, seven or eight hundred, 
people are oftentimes obliged to be contented with a couple of 
circle-beds, say about twelve feet in diameter, and in many places 
with only one. Here I have only one, but I hope very soon to 
have another. The one that I had last summer appeared at a 
few yards’ distance a gigantic bouquet—rather an uncommon 
sight in a small place. For a rose-bed to wear this appearance 
it must not be planted, as many are, with about a dozen or two 
dozen of half-standards and standards, and underneath them a 
lot of bedding stuff planted : I think I may call it higgledy- 
piggledy. It is impossible for a bed of this description to wear a 
natty appearance at any season of the year; rather than that, it 
