344 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, March G, I860. 
ports and presses. Whether it was on stove plants, or 
greenhouse plants, or on Cabbage plants, or Cucumbers, 
the circle went as easy as a child’s hoop; and what I 
would hint at is, that some of my friends grumble at the 
slow-coach rate at which another, and a most particular 
friend of mine, gets the “drawback” off the French 
articles from The Cottage Gardener ten years after 
date, by mixing their old wines in his new bottles, and by 
selling it over his bar as new wine up to full forty de¬ 
grees of alcoholic strength, as a make-believe in “recent ” 
French discoveries. Now, as it appears as plain as proof 
wines that Plain and Practical will pay for their keep, 
and for translating them to foreign climes, and also for 
their passage and retranslation on to British soil, it 
stands equally clear that we can never be burdened with 
too many of that breed, or cross breed between plain and 
practical propagation. 
The newest hit on that plan is an experiment, just con¬ 
cluded, at the Experimental Garden, with the seed of 
Perilla Nanlcinensis, that deep purple-leaved plant which 
every one is going to try this season along with variegated 
plants, and plants with white flowers, as the best har¬ 
mony and contrast out of all the flower-garden plants we 
possess. At first they had some difficulty in getting up 
seeds of this plant, even at Iiew and at the Crystal Palace, 
and like ourselves, as is always the way in such cases, the 
seeds and seedsmen were said to be at fault by these big 
gardeners. No wonder, therefore, that we in our ways 
get bad seeds by anticipation, and less to be doubted 
that scores fail in getting up the best seeds in the 
world through their lack of that plain and practical 
knowledge which the French so much admire in our 
garden writings. 
Out of one packet of seeds of this Perilla, six pots wtere 
sown at the beginning of February, to be tried in three 
different ways, to see which way is the best, not only for 
this one kind, but for a great many other kinds of flower- 
garden seeds. Two pots were put into a two-light 
Cucumber-box on a common dung bed, at from 65° to 80° 
of heat all through the month of February. The Cucum¬ 
ber plants were very young, and from the forcing gardens 
of Hampton Court, which the Messrs. Jackson, of King¬ 
ston, rent and manage. Two pots in a one-light box on a 
dung-bed also, which was kept, or tried to be kept, by 
linings up to 50°, and from that to 55°; but the dung 
heat never got over 50°. This box was for hardening off 
seedlings and struck cuttings from a hotter propagation- 
bed ; and two pots of the same seeds, from the very same 
packet, were put into a one-light box, or one-light division 
at the end of one of the ranges of cold pits, which had no 
hear whatever during the month; but there are glazed 
ware pipes to heat that range from a furnace in very 
severe weather. Therefore, although the place was a cold 
pit or box, kept from frost by coverings, it was very dry, 
and dry ashes were put in, on the first of the month, on 
purpose for the more safety of very soft cuttings just 
struck in the 75° pit, and started in the 50° pit, and 
now landed in a perfectly dry, close place from 36° to 60°, 
or 70°, as it happened by the state of the weather. The 
two pots in the 50° place sprouted, so to speak, in eleven 
days, and the young seedlings came up as sober as Ra¬ 
dishes on a south border. On the twenty-fifth day of the 
trial the seeds in the cold, close, dry frame —always re¬ 
member, at this time of the year, a cold frame for young 
seedlings, and for newly-struck-off plants must be as dry 
as a bone, and be kept as close as a Wardian Case ; it can 
never be too hot by sun heat, as in that case the glass 
must be shaded ; therefore, I italicised the cold, close, 
dry frame on purpose, to be kept in remembrance, as the 
most essential thing one has to do with in the spring 
propagation. 
In twenty-five days the seeds in the two pots in the 
close, cold, dry pit began to show up green sprouts, slow 
and sure, and on that day of the experiment, or the after¬ 
noon before I am writing, not a single blade has appeared 
in the hot Cucumber-pit, where the average heat of the 
whole time might be about 70°. 
Of course, this experiment was not on purpose for the 
one kind of seed : all kinds on hand had a trial of it, and 
the trial has convinced me of two things—the one that the 
best gardeners, and myself after them, having ruined ten 
thousand seeds by too much heat and hurry in the spring ; 
and secondly, that the seedsmen have been ten thousand 
times too much ill-used in respect to the faults of our own 
fraternity. Take my word, and depend upon it, that nine 
kinds out of every ten kinds of flower-garden seeds which 
have been sown this spring, stand at this present moment 
in places that are from 10° to 30° too hot for them. Take 
Lilium giganteum as another illustration of the fact, for 
which I wish to open the eyes of the most wide-awakes 
amongst us—the fact of thousands of seeds failing in 
coming up by the application of too much heat. Mr. 
Cunningham, of Comely Bank Nursery, Edinburgh, was 
the hottest nurseryman that ever lived; kept his plants 
and propagation the hottest, I mean (I knew him well) 
and his grounds and houses in their best feather. He 
could no more touch Lilium giganteum than your humble 
servant, with all his heat, nor could his next door neigh¬ 
bour in the Botanic, nor the Messrs. Loddiges, Low, 
Knight, Lee, and Kollison, of London, for the space of 
twenty years to my own knowledge. They, and we, the 
fast and far-seeing of the gardeners, were on the same 
level as those who first tried their luck with the bronzy 
Perilla. “ We could not fix it nohow,” nor did we till de¬ 
spair threw down the seeds on the cold earth, and then 
and there they came up of themselves, so to speak. There, 
then, are an instance and a fair inference that the fact 
was wisely ordained for our use and benefit, by getting 
up our seeds and seedlings at one-half of the heat and 
cost, and, let me say it, one half of the self-imposed 
trouble of first-rate men of understanding. 
There is an experiment recorded, I think in the first 
or second volume of The Cottage Gardener, or at 
least somewhere, of a wall-border I once covered with 
spare lights, with the earth no more than a foot from the 
glass, and a little air, on front and back day and night, 
for a trial for seedlings. Nine or ten kinds of some com¬ 
mon ones were sown on that border in the usual way ; 
and in the daytime I have known them to stand at from 
110° to 120° by the meridian sun of an April day, and to 
fall to below 36° on the following night, and every one 
of them did capitally ; but the extra day heat did not 
seem to push them to sprout earlier, or to draw up 
weakly in the smallest degree, owing to the constant 
current of cold fresh air day and night; but after they 
were fairly up, they grew away much faster than those 
on the same border, and not so covered with glass. 
That shows, equally plain, that there is a strict limit 
to what I said just now about a close, cold, di’y frame ; 
and it is from a thorough knowledge of our plain and 
practical ways, I mean we gardeners, that an amateur 
can never be able to hit off plant-culture as we do. So 
that practice without the reason is like pork without salt— 
it will not keep long in the head, or on the hooks, because 
it is constantly involving itself in apparent contradictions. 
For what can be more contrary than to hear a man call¬ 
ing on you to keep the coldest place on your premises as 
close as a Wardian Case, and as dry as a bone, and yet 
goes on to speak of the great advantage of admitting air 
freely as in a windmill ? It is, therefore, essential to know 
how that should be, and the three different frames or 
boxes which are now at work in the Experimental Garden 
will assist us in clearing up the point. In the hottest 
box, which is from G5° to 80°, all spring cuttings of what¬ 
ever kind will root fast enough, and the seeds of all stove 
plants will vegetate there also; but it is too hot for 
many of the flower-garden seeds even to vegetate, as we 
have seen to be the case with Lilium giganteum, and this 
purple Perilla. Therefore, a cooler place is essential for 
such, and the box with only 50° for the average tempera- 
