THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN’S COMPANION, December 2, 1856. 143 
Pearce, Esq., Russell Farm, Watford. For Kitchen 
Apples —Mr. Snow first, and Mr. Ingram second. 
I did not hear nor see the rest of the prizes, but I 
have many names of high standing who competed; but 
I missed Mr. Fleming altogether, and that will never 
do now that the wheels are all oiled. 
There were green and white Asparagus , Syon House 
Cucumbers from Mr. Tilyard, several kinds of Beet from 
Mr. Henderson, of Pine-Apple Place, of which Hender¬ 
sons Short-topped Beet was decidedly the best. 
Mr. Robinson, gardener to Lord Boston, was a large 
contributor. His Otaheite Orange- trees in full fruit, and 
a large dish of the same by their side, were in first-rate 
style for the dessert-table. 
The gardeners of the Society furnished Black Ham¬ 
burgh Grapes from the glass wall, a fine Guava (Psulium 
Cattleyanum) plant in fruit, and a dish of the fruit with 
it; also a plant in fruit and a dish of Eugenia Ugni, 
which was the best of the kind yet tasted; but, as 
no,two writers can agree on the flavour of fruit, or on 
the value of colour in flowers, I shall merely say that 
this appeared to me as the flavour of an over-ripe 
Hautbois Strawberry, of which some people will get very 
fond as this new fruit becomes better known, and 
others will faint away at the very “ smoky flavour.” I 
know some ladies who can hardly sit at table when 
Muscat Grapes are handed round, and lords who must 
fly the country during the hay-making season. Others 
| get headaches from the smell of Hyacinths; and once I 
[ confined a whole family to bed one morning by placing 
a Hedychium Gardnerianum in the front hall “ the over¬ 
night,” which brings me to the flowers at this Exhibition. 
Beginning with a collection from the Wellington 
Road Nursery, consisting of different-sized pots, from No. 
CO to No. .12, all filled in the cutting fashion with little 
plants of Sonerila margaritacea in bloom, to show how 
admirably such ornaments may be made for any part of 
the drawing-room, from the two corners of the mantle- 
piece to the two strongest stands in or between the 
windows, where they may be had in bloom all the winter 
by having a few “ changes” in the stove. A large china 
vase or glass ornament might be filled first with silver 
sand, then watered, then the centre to be clear to the 
depth of four inches, that depth to be filled with finely- 
sifted leaf-mould, peat, and sand, then to plant this 
Sonerila from the cutting-pot as thick as they would stand, 
to water, and then to sprinkle sand on the top as for 
cuttings, and the whole would be as clean, gay, and 
elegant as anything the imagination can dream of— 
thanks to the inventors. Liparis longipes, the first 
ever exhibited, with long, arched, drooping spikes of 
Mignonette-looking blossoms, as closely set as they 
can stand, reminding one of the fairy-like tresses of 
Dendrochilum Jiliforme, but not quite so slender. Acld- 
menes Warszewiczii, a cross between picta and some one 
from the section of hirsutum ; and such an offspring has 
been raised to the dignity of a new genus, in order to 
“ raise the wind” across the channel. Exacum Zeylanicum, 
a blue Melastomad, several Ardisia crispa Sieboldi; two 
Palms, a Cordyline, a Cactus truncatus, a standard, and 
cut blooms of seedlings of crossed Bouvardias. 
From Mr. Woolly, gardener to H. B. Ker, Esq., the 
finest Calanthe vestita ever yet exhibited, with eight or 
nine strong flower-stems, the stems arching and fall¬ 
ing down in front to show the whole mass of living 
beauty as you have seen the Phalcenopsis do in May 
or J une. 
A collection of Orchids from the Messrs. Jackson, in 
which was one of the curious Philodottcis I mentioned 
the other day ; the Bircl-beak Oncid ditto; the Oncidium 
anguiculatum, with its long-branched, slanting-upward 
flower-stems, and large yellow and brown flowers; a new 
Cycnoches, with a drooping spike of pale blush, swan- 
neck-like blooms, all the way from Veragua; Sophronitis 
grandijlora, and a tree-like Lycopod, with Araucaria-like 
leaves and shoots, and one of the Lastrcea Ferns. 
A branch of Abies Cephalonica, in fruit at last, from 
IT. L. Long, Esq., Hampton Lodge, Farnham. It is a 
Picea, however, and the difference between the two was 
manifest in this cut branch. Picea never casts the 
seed-cones; Abies always does cast them off. The 
axil of the cones in Picea sits on the branch like the 
teeth ot a rake after the cones drop off scale by scale. 
A new species of Justicia, or Adhatoda, from Mr. 
Veitch, an excellent-looking plant to make a “ specimen,” 
with large flowers of two colours, a deep blue front lip, 
the top arch and outside pale violet; native country not 
named. 
Two plants of a new Coltsfoot ( Tussilago ), from Mr. 
Glendinning, of the Chiswick Nursery, which will make 
a better trade-plant than any we have had for many years, 
and a better exhibition variegated plant than any of 
that class, except the Sonerila aforesaid, for the hall, 
vestibule, or corridor. It is the very best we have for 
winter, and for out of doors it would soon cover the 
nakedness of the land with its magnificent, large, green, 
shining leaves, which are blotched as freely as those of 
the Dumb-Cane; and, moreover, it is quite hardy. 
Cut blooms of the lovely Lapageria from Mr. Yeitch, 
and of the graceful blue Vanda from Mr. Mant, of 
Bristol, as usual, and two pretty alpine Orchids from 
R. Warner, Esq., Broomfield, near Chelmsford; namely, 
Sophronitis grandijlora and Cattleya Walkeriana, with 
a rosy flower, nearly as large as that of Skinneri, and 
in that style. 
Two collections of Pompone Chrysanthemum, which 
I shall notice next week, with all the gossip of the 
season about that fashionable tribe. Three Pear-trees 
from Mr. Rivers, to show the stunting effects of working 
such on the Quince. One of them killed the Quince, or 
left it to die of itself, by forming strong fang-like tap¬ 
roots of its own, and an excellent subject for a funeral 
oration at the end of the lecture. But there was a way 
and means of getting all kinds of Pears to do on the 
Quince, as far as doing was concerned, when I was a 
nurseryman on the hill of Kinoul, at Perth, and behind 
the Botanic in Edinburgh. In the former the Carse 
gardeners would have the double-worked Pears in 
preference, and from the “ heart of Mid-Lothian ” they 
would think one daft to order Pears on free stocks for 
the kitchen-garden. All Quince stocks are there grafted 
first with the Virgoloeuse Pear, on which all sorts “ took ” 
the next year. 
Last of all, and better than all, a real substitute for 
Potatoes in the new Yam from China, Dioscorea batatas. 
Some people think that your humble servant can “ do ” 
a new plant at a pretty considerable rate; but they 
should have heard that lecture, and have seen how the 
spirit of the thing moved the lecturer; then they would 
see the difference of attempting to “ do,” and the real 
doing as it should be done; in fact, I was compelled to 
stand stark still, and hear it all out like the rest of 
them; and no one will be so unreasonable as to think that 
I could get at all the prizes while I was riveted to the 
very boards by all this eloquence. 
“ The most perfect indifference” is shown by the 
new-Yam to “ the most rigorous seasons;” it is perfectly 
and most perfectly hardy. The evidence is most con¬ 
clusive to prove that the bigger the “ sets ” or seed, the 
larger will the crop dig out. All potting, and all 
fiddling with it, is a perfect waste of time. Trench the 
ground as deep as for Parsnips, and put in spanking 
long Yams in the first week in March, and let them 
alone entirely for the rest of the season. 
D. Beaton. 
