152 THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN’S COMPANION, December 2, 1856, 
have a little preference for sheet glass in winter, though we 
cannot say we ever saw much against rough plate even then. 
For all the purposes you mention we would decidedly prefer 
rough plate for nine months in the year. For propagating 
and Orchids it would do admirably also in winter, and for 
Cucumbers, too, for anything we can say practically to the 
contrary. It would be a prejudice if we liked clear sheet 
then. But what is the use of Cucumbers in winter if you 
want to sell them ? Nobody will eat them then, and, at any 
rate, nobody to speak of will buy them. For market pur¬ 
poses Cucumbers are a perfect eyesore in a place until 
London fills and large parties are given, say in February. 
We cannot well say what the money-worth produce of a 
house thirty feet by ten feet should bring. That will de¬ 
pend upon the market, the earliness as to the time they 
are cut, and the skill displayed. Grown on the limited 
root-room system we have several times recommended, and, 
properly heated, &c., inside, we could next to guarantee an 
immense quantity from such a house. We have had no 
experience in raising Lilium speciosum from seed. Apply to 
Messrs. Weeks for an answer to your other question.] 
DOES WATER EXPAND WITH COLD? 
“ To settle an argument, will you please to inform me if 
water expands by heat or cold ? My opinion is, that cold 
expands water, because I have noticed the glass on green¬ 
houses to crack in all directions through water accumulating 
between the laps of the glass, and, expanding by frost, 
thereby causing the glass to crack. Is it through the same 
cause that pipes burst if water is allowed to remain and 
freeze in them ? because I have noticed pipes to burst 
more frequently when the weather commences to thaw, 
instead of, in the same way, I have noticed with glass, when 
the weather commences to freeze.—W. B. M., Clap ham." 
[The foregoing note contains so much relative to “ things 
not generally known,” and draws so many apparently just, 
but really erroneous conclusions from acknowledged facts, 
that we publish it for the sake of appending correct informa¬ 
tion relative to all the inquiries. 
It is a marvellous demonstration of the providence of God 
that water expands when passing into a solid state—the 
state of ice. If it did not so expand, and thereby become 
specifically lighter than the water on the surface of which it 
is formed, it would sink to the bottom of that water, and 
gradually accumulate there, and never melt again; but 
by expanding, and, consequently, floating on the surface of 
the water, it remains in a situation where the sun and a 
warmer season soon reduce the ice again to water. It is 
quite true, however, that heat also expands water; in fact, 
the addition of heat expands water at all temperatures ex¬ 
cept near that temperature at which it freezes. It is this 
expansion in freezing which causes the water to burst the 
pipe containing it, and to crack the greenhouse panes of 
glass beneath which it is lodged. It is quite true that the 
fact of the pipe being so burst is only detected when the 
thaw follows, because ice has filled up the crack in the pipe, 
and, until this crack is opened by the thawing of the ice, no 
water can escape, and indicate the mischief done.] 
MISMANAGED WISTARIA SINENSIS. 
“ I am one of ‘ The Doctor’s Boy’s ’ class of generally use¬ 
fuls, with this difference from him—whereas he has to tend 
sheep, <fec., I have to doff thick boots, mount white hose 
and pumps, and wait at table during company times, and 
if a few friends drop in to dinner. Also, whilst he has to 
clean and clip quickset hedges, I have to clean plate, knives, 
shoes, &c. 
“ I differ from him also in other things; for instance, I am 
just now in a bit of a fix. I have a Wistaria on a south¬ 
west wall which is about one inch and a half in diameter 
at the base of the stem, but not more than nine feet high, 
and looks likely to be shorter rather than higher, and 
there was no sign of bloom this year. (I was not here 
before.) The soil is a good, loose, clayey loam, about three 
feet deep. On one side of the Wistaria is a Pear-tree, on the 
other side a Fig-tree, both of which are, or have been, grow¬ 
ing away all the summer with almost a rank luxuriance, 
whilst the next tree, a Pear, has not budged an inch all the 
summer, nor produced any fruit. I have asked several old 
gardeners for advice; but they differ so widely, and are 
withal so unreasonable, that I at last resolved to apply to 
the fountain-head. For instance, one of the said gardeners 
advised me to stay until the middle of next summer, when 
the white sap would follow every cut of the knife, and then 
prune the Fig hard back. I thought, in my ignorance, that 
was quite enough proof of his knowledge of the subject. 
“ I am going to plant an Apricot and a Plum on the same 
border, and I have taken out the soil three feet deep, and 
put six inches of mortar-rubbish and brickbats and paving- 
stones on the top of it. Is that right? and shall I cut the 
trees back, to what height, and when ? I have an old Sea- 
kale bed which is to be destroyed in the spring, and I wish 
to know how to make the most of it, and to get it early; and, 
lastly, will you please to tell me the name of these two 
flowers, neither being known by the aforementioned cab¬ 
bage-stumps ? I have numbered them, and shall know them. 
—Generally Useful.” 
[The Wistaria never went on kindly. What is wanted 
now is to get a young shoot from the very collar of the 
plant next to the roots, and then to cut away the nine feet 
length of old wood. There are ten thousand Wistarias in 
the same plight as yours, and all the doctoring in physic or 
gardening will never cure one out of each thousand of them 
without first getting rid of the hide-bound old stem; and all 
this comes of sheer covetousness, or absolute ignorance of 
the natural ways of this prince of climbers. Some are so 
covetous as to wish a wall covered in one or two seasons, 
and never will allow the young climbers to be cut back 
sufficiently; and some do not know that cutting back is of 
any good or harm. No matter how large or how small a 
Wistaria, alias Glycine, is, when it is planted from a nursery- 
plant, it should have the first season’s growth with little 
stopping, merely the point or points being cut back a little; 
but, at the end of the first growing season, the plant ought 
most certainly to be cut back to the last bud nearest the 
roots, and at the end of the second season the rule is this: 
if the shoot has grown ten feet, cut it back to three feet; if 
under ten feet, cut to one foot; but if under five feet, cut to 
the last bud again. Never take more than a yard of stem 
till you get above ten feet of annual growth. Your safest 
plan would be to get your nine-feet stem trained along the 
bottom of the wall quite close to the ground ; and, if that 
does not cause a shoot to come from the bend, or under it, 
there is no hope for you but to cut back the whole thing to 
the bend next season. 
You are right in the preparation for the Apricot. You 
ought to get trained trees, and not to cut them back at all. 
Such cutting back is the way gardeners ruin their wall-trees 
the moment they plant them. An old Sea-kale bed is very 
likely not worth a straw for any manner of forcing. You 
ought to keep it till you have young plants for a new one, 
one year under your own growth; but, if you should be 
“ forced ” to force the Kale of the old bed, take care that the 
old gardeners do not see it, else they will have the laugh at 
your expense next time.] 
ORCHIDS IN A SMALL STOVE. 
“I have just put up a small house as a stove, very 
small, not more than eight feet long and about seven feet 
wide. I have got a few plants which thrive very well; 
but I want to know whether or not I could grow about 
half a dozen Orchids, such as Lycaste Skinneri , Oncidium 
papilio , Cattleya crispa, Stanhopea tigrina, Odontoglossum 
grande, and O. citrosmum. These Orchids are such lovely 
flowers, that I want to know if they will thrive and flower 
well in the temperature of a common stove before I procure 
them.— Anxious to Learn.” 
[You will have first-rate success with such Orchids in 
your stove. The Stanhopea and Lycaste will do best in 
baskets filled with lumpy peat and sphagnum and pieces of 
charcoal. The others will do well fastened to charred 
blocks of wood or old Oak, long enough to go across and 
fix within the open mouth of a pot, and then turfy peat, 
chopped moss, pieces of charcoal, &c., packed round them. 
An average temperature of 60° at night will be quite suffi¬ 
cient for the winter months, and the base of the plants had 
better be dryish rather than wet.] 
