393 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, Maucii 27, I860. 
or 7s. 6d. each:— Princess Bacehiocchi, a beautiful new 
carmine, with white stripes. Princess Frederick William 
of Prussia, aforesaid. Cup of Beauty, ditto. Queen of 
Denmark. Valtevaredo, the best rose. Countess of 
Orkney, Dante, Formosa (Chandlers’), Daniel Webster, 
Caryophylloides, and Adelina Bcnvenuti. 
There are a few of the new ones as high as a guinea 
and half a guinea, but as these could only be mentioned 
singly I must leave them for another year; but their 
names are all in the list of new ones above the selections. 
The best of these selections are now in bloom in the 
Experimental Garden, but the plants are very small, and 
no one can judge one-tenth of the Camellias from seeing 
small plants of them in bloom, either in the nurseries, or 
in private collections. However, with the exception of a 
tew of the very newest, for which I confide in the opinion 
of Mr. Cody, their foreman among Camellias, I know the 
whole “ by heart” from good specimen plants. I know, 
also, there are twenty or twenty-five kinds just as good 
as those I have selected at the same prices, but they are 
not better, and to multiply names is not my forte. I would 
rather tell of a few more of their fine old specimens, such 
as the first Double White, on entering the house, which is 
8 feet by 8 feet, and blooming down to the ground. 
Palmer s Perfection, in a pot, and 6 feet by 4 feet. 
Marchioness of Exeter, from 6 feet to 7 feet high, and 
5 feet through, and several others of the same size, and 
larger, all on sale, if one chooses to go to their full value. 
Then, to say that all these Camellias are not as hardy 
as Portugal Laurels, would be going against the plainest 
fact on the spot. There are six full-grown specimen 
plants from 9 feet to 12 feet high, and as much in width, 
on the nbrth side of the boundary-wall of this nursery, 
which have had no protection whatever for the last 
twenty or thirty years, and where the sun has not played 
much upon them ; they are now as glossy in the leaves as 
any plants I know, and as full of flower-bud. But no 
Camellia flower will ever do out of doors in England ; the 
least cold, or wind, or sun. would drive the colours out 
of the petals. Even under glass the bloom ought to be 
shaded. The large house is shaded with a new thin 
canvass from Manchester, about a yard wide, and called 
“ Brown’s Floral Shading.” 
Outside the large house is a range of thirteen-light 
pits, with over a thousand young Camellias in large 60- 
pots, and-all plunged over the pots in spent tan, just as 
the Minimums, Jlarkaway, and Baron Ilugels were done 
the other week at the Experimental. It is astonishing 
how good it is to plunge little pots for nursing things. 
They say here the labour is only one-tenth of what would 
be necessary if the pots were not plunged, and that it is 
75 per cent, more favourable to nursing than exposed 
pots. Mr. Cutbush had all his Hyacinths plunged in moss. 
But there is another thing in plunging which tells equally 
well; you may keep all kinds of plants from rooting out 
under the pots, for one season, by plunging the pots over 
the rim. All roots come to the surface by that plan, or 
rather all plants will send up new roots from the old 
ones, and they will run over the top of the pots faster 
than they would escape out through the bottom-hole. 
That is a certain effect of plunging pot plants over the 
rim of the pots ; but w r hy it is so, no man could ever tell. 
There is nothing about roots underground, or in the air, 
but has been investigated, and is perfectly well under¬ 
stood, except this one thing, which is a fix. 
Another division of the pit with twelve lights and 150 
small 60-pots in each, full of newly-potted and newly- 
rooted single Camellias for stocks. In the new pro- 
pagating-house were 1000 grafted Camellias, last month’s 
work, and from 5000 to 7000 rooted cuttings of last 
autumn in 32-pots, waiting to be potted off. There are 
eight runs of cold pits, each run with sixteen lights full 
of stools of best Camellias for supplying grafts. They 
were formerly for inarching in them; but the march of 
improvement has put inarching on the shelf, and grafting 
by the thousand is now resorted to where inarching by 
the hundred used to suffice, and that is how Camellias 
can now be sold so very cheap. I recollect the time 
when you could not get a plant worth a straw under half 
a guinea, and from that to three half guineas for very 
ordinary plants. The number of inarched plants from 
. these eight pits averaged, yearly, 2500 for more than 
twenty years, by grafting the young wood from the same 
space fifteen to twenty thousand plants will be yearly 
worked. 
Vines in pots seem the next in degree to Camellias for 
trade here, thousands of the best kinds from eyes are 
plunged in small pots as above on tan-beds just now. 
Mr. Milne is accounted a don about London at that 
branch of rocking the cradle. Bedding plants, popular 
exhibition plants, seem the next degree in stock. Seed¬ 
ling Gloxinias hard upon three thousand plants. Be¬ 
gonias they are half mad upon, and they mean to keep 
up the old charter in Chrysanthemums. Messrs. Chand¬ 
lers used to be noted for Chrysanthemums before Mr. 
Salter was revolutionised out of France, and before our 
champion Bird, of Stoke Newington, put his talents into 
that trade. The whole family, new and old, and Pom- 
pones, hybrids and liliputians, are now' rooted by the 
thousand. Lapageria rosea, propagated by layering 
every other joint in strong heat, as Wistaria is, and has 
been done in cold pits, and open air, for the last thirty- 
five years, and with equal success. Isabella Grey Bose 
on its own roots by the hundreds. 
Mr. Bobson, the cottage-farmer and pot-provider, has 
said that Boses come best on their own roots; and Mr. 
Appleby, the very essence of the florists’ strain, opens 
his Bhododendron-budget with the patent truth that “ a 
regular uniform mixture (of colours) is no variety and 
yet florists have been aiming at variety by planting their 
own strains in “ uniform mixtures ” since I was born. 
But the Italian flower garden in front of this nursery 
has been, and is to continue to be, planted according to 
the harmony of contrast and of combination ; and the 
propagation is on the principle of everything on its own 
roots, except the Camellia, which is an exception to the 
general rule, and does best on the single kind. Mono- 
chcetum ens ferum, that rosy charmer which was before us 
the other week, is here also by the hundred, as is Pleroma 
elegans, and both as cheap as Flower of the Day Gera¬ 
nium. The India-rubber plant, Ficus elasticus, is in 
wonderful demand for London rooms, and is propagated 
here from single eyes like the Vine, but with one huge 
leaf to each bud ; and the magnificent Cyanophyllum just 
in the same way, and just as freely. Dragon trees from 
18 inches to a yard high, the finest and fieriest I ever 
saw, and the best grown—it is Dracceha terminalis. 
Centradenia grandifolia, quite new, broad purple-shaded 
leaves, and flowers in the way of rosea. Campylobotris 
argyronewra, is one of the best purple fine-leaved plants. 
Dipladenia crassinoda. Beds and beds of Eranthemum 
pulchellum, struck at the end of autumn after the flower- 
buds were formed, have bloomed all the winter in 48- 
sized pots, just like Hydrangeas. A large stock of 
Vallota purpurea. A new seedling Begonia in the right 
direction—that is, with smooth, medium-sized, illustrated 
leaves; it is between Marsh allii from Leeds and Madame 
Allwardt from the Clapton Nursery—the three being 
superior to Rex. Two excellent strains of fringed Primula 
sinensis, white and red. Begonia Lapeyrousei, a most 
capital winter, or all the winter-flowering kind—a dwarf 
stocky one, w T itli short-jointed, strong, gouty stems, and 
large loose bunches of rosy flowers the whole winter; to 
be grown, bloomed, cut down, and grown and bloomed 
again and again, exactly like a good Pelargonium Gera¬ 
nium—that is, any of the good greenhouse kinds. 
One whole house, perhaps forty or fifty feet long, filled 
entirely with variegated Geraniums, a perfect sight; two 
thousand Floiver of the Day, all of one uniform size ; 
hundreds of Brilliant the same. I mean ten hundreds 
