THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN’S COMPANION, December 2, 1850. 151 
BRODLEA CALIFORNICA. I FRUIT-PAINTING. 
Brought home by Mr. Hartweg in June, 1848, and said 
to have been collected upon the mountains and plains of 
the Sacramento, where it is scarce. 
This bulb is very like the old B. gran diflora, from which 
it differs in the following particulars : it is a much larger 
plant in all respects ; its leaves are more fleshy; the flowers, 
which are pale blue, with darker streaks along the middle 
of the divisions, have a tube which is slightly inflated, and 
much shorter than the limb; the flower-stalks are also 
much longer in proportion to the flowers. 
It is hardy, and requires a strong sandy loam, with the 
same kind of treatment as Scillus. It is easily increased 
by offsets from the old bulbs. The species is rather pretty, 
and flowers freely from July to October, or even Christmas, 
if sheltered by a frame.— ( Horticultural Society's Journal.) 
COW-KEEPING. 
As a person of experience in this matter, always having 
had a large dairy and great success, I feel a desire to say a 
word to your correspondents who put a query to you at 
page 98. 
The small cow commonly called Alderney is the best an 
amateur can have. Let them look to the cows having yellow 
in the fleck of the ears and tail; and when they have got 
their cows from Fowler, or from elsewhere, let them take 
care that none but a good-natured person has to do with 
such gentle creatures, and let them also take care that, 
when the cows are milked, not a drop be left in the dug. 
Leaving milk in a cow’s udder at milking-time will soon 
ruin any milch cow. 
Also, let them take care that the person who milks finishes 
off by punching up the udder as the calf does when sucking. 
This prevents mischief to the udder. These Alderney or 
Jersey cows are small cattle, but they give a thorough 
creamy, rich milk, and are so docile, that, with kind treat¬ 
ment, they like being caressed as much as a dog, and are 
used to being tethered in small pastures. 
Next to this stock, I should recommend the Ary shire, 
a beautiful little beast, and an excellent milch cow, with the 
advantage of having symmetry for grazing.—W. Mason, 
Necton , Norfolk. 
This is a subject which I am not aware has been touched 
on yet in your very instructive periodical; yet, as I have j 
long found that the best way to remember the name of a 
plant is to write it down, so, also, I find that the best way to 
remember the characteristics of a fruit is to paint it. 
As no one has taken the subject in hand, I shall make 
bold enough to do so, premising that the few hints which I 
give are only for beginners. The first thing to be done is 
to get a sheet of drawing-paper and a box of Miller’s shilling 
water-colours. Armed with these, which will only cost you 
sixteen pence, you may now set to work by stretching your 
paper on a table or board sufficiently large, and tack it down 
at the four corners. This done, then draw with a pencil 
four parallel lines at the respective distances of three, four, 
five, or six inches apart. Supposing that the sheet is to be 
filled with portraits of Pears, it will thus hold about three 
dozen, putting the smallest on the top row. 
Then, by way of example, take a specimen of Williams's 
Bon Chretien , which, w'hen ripe, is of a greenish-yellow 
colour; put a few drops of water on a common plate; take 
your paint named indigo, rub a very little of it down in the 
w'ater on the plate; after which, rub your gamboge paint 
in the same place till it brings up the yellowish-green colour 
wanted. Then, with a sharp knife, cut the Pear in half 
lengthways, lie one of the halves on the paper, outside 
downwards, and with a pencil describe its shape. Take 
plenty of colour on your camel’s-hair brush ; begin and lay 
it on the farthest side first, working towards you; as soon 
as dry, if not dark enough, give it another coat of paint. 
Vandyke brown will generally give the desired colour for the 
eye and stalk ; write the name neatly above it; and, when all 
is perfectly dry, you may rub out the pencil-mark with a 
piece of Indian-rubber, and finish by drawing another brush 
gently over it with proper varnish. 
This is the way I have done my fruit portraits, and hung 
them up in the fruit-room ; they become quite interesting, 
helping to a thorough remembrance of fruits, which every 
gardener ought to possess. Of course, stone fruits cannot 
bo done in this way; but then practice makes perfect, so 
that one can copy them by the eye.— J. Rust, Gardener to 
the Right Honourable L. Sulivan, Fulham. 
TR1TONIA AUREA CULTURE. 
The seeds should be sown immediately, and the pots 
kept in a very gentle heat. In a month or six weeks there 
will probably be a very numerous quantity of seedlings, and 
when an inch high it will be well to remove them to a warm 
and airy greenhouse. In March or April the balls should 
be divided, and the young plants, with their roots as little 
disturbed as possible, repotted into 16’s or 12’s. In August 
or September many of the seedlings will probably-flower. 
This species is, with me, quite hardy, and, covered with 
ashes, survives the winter; but the bulbs vegetate so late in 
spring as scarcely to arrive at a flowering state till too late to 
do any good. In a warmer soil than mine it might, perhaps, 
be otherwise.—C. L. 
[A packet of seeds of Tritonia aurea —a fashionable Cape 
bulb—was sent to the Experimental Garden, from a valued 
correspondent near London, with the above excellent advice 
for raising seedlings of it so as to bloom the following 
autumn.—D. Beaton.] 
QUERIES AND ANSWERS. 
GLASS FOR A STOVE. 
“ Would you be kind enough to answer whether Hartley’s 
rough plate glass would do better for a house, or, I would 
say, a stove, for growing Cucumbers, striking cuttings, and 
growing stove plants and Orchids in, or common sheet glass, , 
which is generally used ? And could you give an idea how 
much a house of this sort would make, out of one year’s 
crop of Cucumbers only, supposing the house to bo thirty 
feet long by ten feet wide?—I. W. C. L.” 
[You must make a little compromise in the matter. We 
