206 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, January 31, 1860. 
to put up at tlie lialf-way liouse every time tlie journey is 
made, or as often as the sun comes round to that point 
at which the Lord Mayor of London could read his own 
writing by the light of the glooming at half-past five 
o’clock in the evening ; and when the Lord Provost of 
Inverness could do the like on Clach na Cuden, just one 
half-hour later on the same day with more ease to himself. 
The first of the three to arrive in my time was the 
agent of the procrastinationists, and he was generally the 
best loaded for the journey ; all his people forgot to make 
the necessary memoranda last autumn, or delayed to 
make their hay while the sun shined, or till the unaccount¬ 
able early and severe frost killed their plants, or the best 
of them, ere they had given a thought on the morrow. 
The second agent used to be in such a feverish hurry, 
as if he could swallow his supper before he had rung 
the bell to order it. His people were of the true blue, 
the clear scarlet, and the bright yellow colours which 
never yet failed ; but that early frost drove them to the 
exchange at last in the person of the fidgetty little agent 
aforesaid, who is authorised to make the earliest possible 
arrangements for planting with the least possible outlay 
of time and money. 
And the third and last on the list of annual customers 
at that half-way house was the agent for the honeymooners 
and moonshiners, or of those who married since the last 
fall, and such as are willing to try the luck of genteel 
gardening for the first time, and without knowing one 
plant from another. 
Of all the fellow travellers I ever yet fell in with, this 
third agent to that half-way house was the most luxuri¬ 
antly agreeable. There was no moony or spoony agency 
about him : he would “ call,” or ring, for everything of 
the best, pay the best, tell the best tales, crack the best 
jokes, poke the best fun ; and with it all, he was as kind- 
hearted as a minister of the kirk, and his creed would 
reach to the back row of a ribbon-border; although, like 
those who sent him, he hardly knows one flower from 
another. 
But what about the habits of the first agent ? Why, 
they are described already in a Scottish novel called 
“ Mrs. Glashen,” or some such name. That Mrs. might be, 
or have been, the wife of that very agent; and if so, you 
will never hear of them wanting to break the holy banns 
asunder, for they agree on every point and subject, ancl 
that amounts to the pleasure of being “ time enough yet,” 
for every mortal thing under the sun. Time enough yet 
to get the one load of dung from the livery stables to 
make the first seed and cutting-bed with. Time enough 
yet to order seeds, roots, plants, bulbs, and bedding stuff. 
Time enough yet to make out the plan for planting one’s 
flower-beds. Time enough to consider the best, the 
cheapest, or tbe most expeditious method of striking 
cuttings. But, bless you, there is no earthly reason for 
expedition yet. He is going to order a Waltonian Case. 
He sent for one last year, but Mr. West sent word back 
that the propagation season was then over. Of course, that 
cannot happen again : still there need be no hurry about 
it, or dropping this conversation between him and Mr. 
Moony, as we used to call our facetious friend, who was 
keeping up this artillery on purpose to tease the little 
man of fidgets, who seemed as if made of facts and 
figures from tbe cradle ; and who, also, strangely enough 
regarded the exchange, the mart of facts and figures, as 
entirely out of his element. He never went there 
except on rare occasions like this, w r hich was entirely 
owing to that sudden and severe frost in October. His 
people were always in time and in tune, they went by 
the seasons more than others ; the most conventional of 
their customs was to put up the first propagating-bed, or 
apply the bottom-heat pipes to cuttings for the first 
time just when Parliament first met after the new year. 
Everything was of their own rearing, and everything they 
reared was the best of its kind, and the best was made of 
it at the best time, February was, therefore, out of their 
element; they went to shop in May and June, and again 
in October, after seeing the season out; and it was only 
that frost which thus broke on their fixed rules and 
habits, and it might never happen again. But, instead 
of being “time enough,” he learns, to his turn of the 
fidgets, that it is one month behind already—that neither 
love nor money can now procure an old-established plant 
of any small kind of Lobelia, or of Anagallis, or hardly 
of a Cherry-pie, and half a score of other things he had 
lost in October, or in consequence of its severity; and 
little morsels of tiny cuttings just rooted, and feeling 
their way to the sides of thumb-pots, were out of the 
question in such places as he represented, where all such 
things are needed by the hundreds and thousands. The 
only consolation under the circumstances was, that they 
sent him instead of their orders to the distant mart, and 
thus saved the heartburnings of all his constituents— 
saved them from the awful reality of an early spring con¬ 
signment for the flow'er garden, in which tens and twelves 
of newly-struck things would be stuck into the barrel of 
a quill pen, for safe transport like the “ eggs of cater¬ 
pillars,” as Peggy would say. 
The above is the first practical point at which the 
doings at the half-way house, or the necessities of the early 
part of February, in such a year as this, will be of most 
value to our own people. If they will only bear in mind 
that plants were killed by that frost as well and as com¬ 
pletely in the neighbourhood of Dublin and Edinburgh 
as in the vicinity of London, and that the same effects 
were produced by the same cause round every city and 
town in the three kingdoms, they or our own country 
readers may rest assured that nursery stock was not 
exempt from the visitation in any part of the kingdom ; 
and that, in consequence, the said nurseries can ill afford 
to send out large plants for bedding in early spring at 
the reduced prices at which they are generally sold later 
in the season. It even ought to be understood in the 
country at all times that the trade could never, and seldom 
ever did, afford to sell old bedding-plants in February 
strong enough to get a dozen or a score of cuttings from 
the moment they were unpacked. I say, for avoiding the 
heartburn, from which I have suffered for many years, 
that a better understanding ought to exist between the 
trade and the customers. In a few weeks we shall hear 
of bedding plants as low as one penny each. But is it 
not the smallest figure for the tiniest morsel of cutting 
just then rooted or about to root P People who go seldom 
to market, like our fidgetty little friend, expect when 
you speak of h fowl you mean the old hen—the mother 
of the chicks or chickens—instead of the smallest of that 
brood. They wonder at the low figure you ask : it must 
be a great bargain, it must indeed ; and they must order 
a sample, and that sample is after the bandy-legged 
things spoken of by Mr. Errington, with this difference— 
that half the legs are broken in the carriage, and the 
other half no legs to stand on, till after another month’s 
nursing at home in some warm and sheltered quarters. 
The end of it is a burning in the region of the windpipe, 
which no wind can assuage—that season at least, for there 
is no chance of their meeting and having it cooled down 
with a blowing up, and be done with it. 
The same with packets of seeds. What is a packet of 
seeds ? Any mortal thing dead, dying, or in life, which 
a man or woman chooses to put in and call so. But 
what is more strange still, every packet of seeds, and of 
the very same kind of seeds which have been sold in 
England since the time of the passing of the Emancipa¬ 
tion Bill in 1829 were sold at the same relative price, 
and yet one was sold at 6d., and another of the same 
kind at 2s. Qd. the same year, if you can understand that. 
But the difference was in the different quantities which 
each packet contained; and, oftener than not, the half-a- 
crown packet was the cheaper of the two. That was the 
reason why I asked Mr. Marcham to state the number of 
the seeds he put into the different priced packets of his 
