THE COTTAGE GAEDENEE AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, March 6, 1860. 
SWEDE TURNIPS. 
These grow equally well (perhaps better), on a chalky 
soil as on a clayey one, and often produce good crops; 
but instead of being sown in drills as on the stiff land, 
they ought to be sown broadcast here, and hoed out 
the requisite distance apart. Good well-rotted manure 
is also necessary here; and if a little salt were added to 
it or sown over the ground at digging time it would do 
good. The crop stands the winter better here than on a 
stiffer soil, and some go* the length to say that the roots 
are more nutritious : be this as it may, certainly good 
crops of Turnips are often seen on such lands—the 
greatest drawback being the attack of mildew about 
September (if the season is dry), which can only be 
partially prevented by throwing a little salt on the ground 
at the last digging before sowing the seed. The roots 
ought to be taken up and stored away before severe 
weather sets in, as directed in a former chapter. 
(To ~be continued.) J. Eobson. 
VARIETIES. 
Ceylon : A Nice Place for Nervous People. —The air, 
the earth, the waters, the jungle, the forest, the rock, the 
vegetation of every kind, and the very house you inhabit, are 
alive with infinite forms of vitality, that render existence a con¬ 
tinued conflict of attack and defence. Myriads of butterflies, 
wasps, bees, and beetles boom and clatter through the air 
wherever you move; the forest is a tremendous orchestra, at 
which every kind of instrument assists, from the tattoo of the 
cicada to the shriek of the squirrel; the earth teems with 
insects in a state of perpetual motion; wherever there is the 
presence of humidity frogs of frightful dimensions keep up an 
eternal serenade in that dismal kind of music of which they 
possess the exclusive copyright, and mosquitos thicken the 
atmosphere, with results that are familiar to all readers of books 
of Eastern travel. If you happen to shake a bough overhead 
as you ride through the jungle you bring down showers of ticks 
on your ears, eyelids, and neck. Plowever cautiously you may 
proceed, centipedes, sometimes nearly a foot in length, will 
insinuate themselves into the creases of your sleeve, and crawl 
over your skin; and when you travel in the lower ranges of the 
hill country cohorts of land-leeclies will attack your horse's fet¬ 
locks, hanging to them in “ bloody tassels,” while others, rearing 
themselves on the tips of their tails in the manner of a cobra, 
will dart upon your ankle and ascend your leg, sometimes 
mounting to your throat, till they find a convenient place to 
strike. These are discomforts. It is true you are in a country 
where you may study natural history under extraordinary ad¬ 
vantages ; where there are oysters almost a foot long; marine 
musicians (species unknown) whose choruses from the bottom 
of the sea are infinitely more marvellous than the songs of the 
sirens; and fish that make distinct journeys by land over burnt- 
up grass and dusty roads without suffering the slightest in¬ 
convenience from a broiling sun. Within doors you are a 
shade worse off than in the open air. The red ants alone would 
be sufficient to render life intolerable; and to them must be 
added the ingenious termites. These wonderful little creatures 
are more numerous than the leaves of the forest or the sand of the 
shores; and they possess the additional merit of being ubiquitous. 
They work with a vigour and rapidity so astounding that while 
you are at dinner they will construct one of their domed palaces, 
or ant-hills, at least six inches in height and twelve in diameter, 
under the table. Their ravages are awful, and on a scale of 
grandeur which, considering their individual physique, affords 
a fearful example of what may be done with unanimity. They 
will eat into the timber of a house till they leave nothing but 
the skeleton masonry, destroy the contents of a portmanteau 
in a single night, tunnel a gallery through a shelf of books, and, 
by burglarious processes known only to themselves, break into 
the strongest presses, and reduce all manner of records and 
documents to powdery fragments. Flies invade your apart¬ 
ments in such swarms that they frequently put out the lights, 
and on the occasion of a dinner party it is customary to kindle 
fires on the lawn for the purpose of diverting their attention, 
and to keep the house closed and darkened till the guests 
arrive. The emerald eye of a hungry leopard may sometimes 
be seen glaring through the foliage on the outskirts of a town, 
and your gardens are infested by troops of wild monkeys from 
the neighbouring forests. Crows are so familiar that they will 
enter every apartment to which they can obtain access, pull out 
the contents of ladies’ workboxes, steal kid gloves and pocket- 
handkerchiefs, open paper parcels, and undo the knots of 
napkins, to ascertain if they contain anything eatable. Your 
tame elephant will watch till the coast is clear, walk into your 
dining room, and deliberately sweep away a sideboard of glass 
in search of dainties. Lizards permanently reside on the pre¬ 
mises, and the moment the lamps are lighted come out from 
their recesses. Eat-snakes consider themselves entitled to be 
domesticated on the establishment; scorpions take up their 
quarters in the sleeping apartments and wardrobes, where they 
snugly settle themselves down in the folds of loose dresses; 
and cobras glide about the house at pleasure, in some instances 
aspiring to the functions of the watch-dog, in addition to those 
pursuits for which they are generally supposed to have a greater 
aptitude .—(Sir J. JS. Tennent.) 
TO CORRESPONDENTS. 
Bigg (A Scotch Subscriber), —Our correspondent asks “ Whether Bigg- 
seed (Bere, or Square Barley), will produce Bigg'!” We can only reply, 
that, if it will not, how is the variety perpetuated? The question, “ Is it 
of any advantage manuring the seed before sowing?” has long since been 
answered by experiments in the negative. 
Ribbon-planting ( Connaught). —We never recommend ribbons or beds ; 
we can only tell, when others choose their own taste, if that taste agrees 
with the fashion at the time. Look all over our pages—every size, style, 
figure, and fashion are there in abundance and to spare; choose for your¬ 
self, and then we shall give you the comfort of knowing if you be in the 
fashion or not. But about the circle in the centre of a group. No one now 
puts a scarlet or yellow’in the middle; generally they put a variegated 
plant in the centre, or neutral colour, as they call it. 
Climber for a N.E. Front (J/. A. M.).—Clematis montana, as it never 
is disagreeable with insects or blight, is a very free and fast grower, and 
will grow in most soils; plant it full six inches from the wall, as the 
“ butt end ” of it grows very thick. We can say nothing about “ cuttings 
of bedding plants, not knowing the kinds ; hut autumn-struck cuttings of 
that class, which have been stored so many in a pot, ought now certainly, 
or very soon indeed, to he shaken out of the winter soil, and the largest 
plants, at least, to have a pot, each according to its size, and so ought 
every bedding plant. 
Fancy Geraniums—Gloxinias—Gf.sneras (M. P.) —There are only two 
kinds in your list of new sorts, for which we would exchange any two of 
eight kinds of your list of older sorts. According to our judgment you are 
up to the very tension of the tether in Fancies; and without launching 
out your guineas for new kinds you cannot improve your collection, which 
is chiefly of “ Pelargonium Geraniums,” not Fancy Geraniums. Four 
good, cheap, upright Gloxinias are Alba auriculata, Helen of Orleans, 
Miranda, and Imperatrice Eugenie. Four good Gloxinias, not upright— 
Duke of Wellington, Claude Lorraine, Sebastiano, and Victoria Noel. 
Six good Gesneras are Donckelaari, Oloxiniceflora, Miellez, Leopoldii for 
summer; and Zebrina and Oblongata for winter. Ilouttei, and Herbert i, 
and Mcrki are also equally good. 
Gas Tar inside a Pit [An Anxious Inquirer). —Your Cucumber plants’ 
leaves curling and turning brown at the edges we are of opinion is caused 
by the fumes of the gas tar, which you say “ smells very strong.” The 
ammonia, creosote, &c., forced off by the heat must injure the leaves. 
Scrape off as much as you can, and give a coating of Stockholm tar ; the 
fumes from that will not be injurious to the plants. 
Consumption of Coal [H. B.). —No one can foretell the consumption 
under the boiler of your small greenhouse. It depends upon draught, 
temperature of season, and management. You would find coke preferable 
to coal; it is more enduring, gives off less smoke, and is cheaper. 
Tropj-olum elegans {S. G. IF.).—There is no such plant as Tropceoluin 
splendens, as far as we know. Perhaps you mean that best of all of them 
for a flower-bed Tropaiolum elegans, and if so it will not come true from 
seeds, it must be had from cuttings in the autumn ; and such are very apt 
to slip through one’s fingers during the winter, being from the flowering 
wood or shoots they often either become leggy, or make a dead stand of 
it. The surest way for very ordinary accommodation would he to keep 
a few plants in pots from the end-of-April cuttings, and not to allow them 
to bloom that summer, but to be stopped from time to time, so as to make 
nice bushy plants to keep over the winter. Such plants would now give 
lots of the very best cuttings, and the tops of these would still give better 
and best cuttings every three weeks to planting-out time. If the last lot 
of such cuttings were made at the beginning of May they would be quite 
time enough to plant out before the end of the month. We never recom¬ 
mend blinds for the inside of a greenhouse; they are always in ihe way 
of something. Tiffany, or the hexagon netting, or any light, thin canvass 
to roll up and down on the outside, is by far the best plan. The same way 
as common window-blinds is probably the simplest for inside blinds for 
the front lights. 
Obsolf.te Garden Planting ( Beaumont ).—The plan of your garden 
was capital. Your own way of planting it was good ; but that way of 
planting a garden is now obsolete, or out of the fashion. No one now-a- 
days would put a scarlet or a crimson, a bright rose or A yellow in the 
centre bed of any regular plan, although that was the rage twenty years 
back. 
Eucharis Amazonica Culture [Ignoramus).— This is much more simple 
to treat than a Hyacinth, or Tulip, or even a common Narcissus. Each of 
these fail to bloom well occasionally ; but if any one from the country were 
to write up to London inquiring about the way to keep Eucharis in good 
health, and free from blooming for two or three years, so as to get very 
large bulbs from it, every one of us could answer about the health, but 
