303 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN’S COMPANION, February 3, 1857. 
this much disheartened me. for I had longed to look like 
other Camellias. But, poor silly man, he was what men 
call a kind of homoeopathist; that is, if a Camellia can 
understand such hard words, one that administers very 
small quantities in very small doses. He used to give 
me a spoonful or two of water every morning from a 
neat little dandy waterpot; and how many times I have 
wished I could he allowed to stand out during a twenty- 
four hours’ rain : I would have forgiven a degree or two 
of frost. However, I was obliged to submit, and my 
poor blossom-buds, short of supplies below, and hurried 
towards a premature development through heat before 
their parts were perfect, became doomed to destruction. 
My unfortunate employer was now in a pretty fix.— 
- ‘ Very odd, indeed,’ lie would say; ‘ I have watered it 
regularly, and kept it warm: what else could anybody 
do? Surely these nurserymen must have some secret 
that they will not tell folks.’ He consulted two or 
three kind-hearted neighbours who knew a thing or two 
about plants; but their answers, it appears, were so 
contradictory, that he was more perplexed than ever. 
One said he had kept me too hot; another that he had 
watered me too much—had no right to water me every 
day; a third insisted that Jack Frost must have crept in 
some night whilst he was asleep, and that Kitty, the maid i 
of all work, had been sweethearting, aud had neglected 
the fire; another affirmed stoutly that it was some cold 
current had struck me; and not a few suspected some¬ 
thing deleterious in the water. At last he determined 
on popping a query or two in the gardening periodicals; 1 
for, said he, these editors know a bit about everything. | 
But he gained no ground; one suggested any one or all 
1 of the above causes combined; another that it was j 
indispensably necessary to see the patient and to examine 
the roots. However, he thought he would just take his 
own inference in the matter, and believe a little of 
every one of the suggestions, not too much in any one; 
for he shook his head gravely, and said, ‘ Nothing like a 
medium ; there is seldom any good in extreme opinions.’ 
“ So now commenced a series of what I must call cruel 
persecution, which makes the sap staguate in my poor 
j shrunken vessels whilst I relate it; and the result was, 
that by the succeeding month of May I had lost most 
of that fine, deep green colour for which my poor mother 
was so famous, and which also distinguished me before 
1 was so mauled and quacked. My unlucky master 
again sought advice, and went to an old gardener, a 
j regular King of Spades, a man of ‘ levelling principles,’ 
who was reckoned one of the first in the neighbourhood 
| at dubbing a hedge, laying verges, pruning a Gooseberry 
bush, and such-like. He said I wanted fresh soil, it 
was become sour, aud that the best thing would be to 
‘ head mo back,’ by which proceeding I should, as he i 
said, make fresh wood. Fresh wood indeed ! I had j 
nothing left to make it out of. However, off my head 
1 must come, and off it went, and a pretty skeleton I 
| looked. My master, however, would not have me taken 
| out of my pot; he said it was too much all at once, and : 
| the gardener said I must be put in a hot place, aud 
forced into new wood ; so my master, having a piping 
! hot Cucumber frame at work, put me in that, and was 
| ordered to plunge me in the warm manure. This done, 
i aud liberal waterings applied, my poor hardened stem 
certainly made some efforts at producing shoots, but 
i they were poor yellow things ; and my master was sadly 
: annoyed, after being a few weeks in that situation, to 
: find that on applying water to my soil it would not run 
I through, but stood on the surface. At the same time 
j my pot was always coated with a green scum. A ’cute 
j neighbour was consulted, a lady by-the-by, and she 
1 advised my master to run a knitting needle through the 
| soil in several places. This done, the water flowed again 
for awhile; but I had but few live fibres left, and of 
: these about one-third perished by the intrusion of the 
knitting needle. My employer was now getting quite 
disheartened, tor, in truth, i was sinking in constitution 
continually. 
“ About this period, August I think, a clever nursery 
man, a great Camellia grower, called on my master, aud 
was asked to look at poor Camellia. I could soon perceive 
that he quite understood my position, and how roughly 
I had been handled; and I shall not easily forget hi's 
mode of examining me. He first obtained permission 
to do as he pleased with me. This was readily granted. 
He instantly turned me out of my pot, and surveyed the 
ball with its drainage with a most critical eye. He then 
took off a few patches of the soil and squeezed it be¬ 
tween his finger aud thumb, afterwards tossing it on 
the ground most indignantly, it was full of rotten 
members, once live roots. He then searched the very 
interior, where he found a baked clot of dried-up roots, 
the lump quite impervious to any ordinary waterings. 
Methought that this proceeding would have been the 
death of me ; and, indeed, so it would had I not felt 
persuaded that my new physician could understand very 
well how I had been tampered with, aud would do all 
in his power to renovate my much-abused constitution. 
“ But to proceed. After taking all the soil he could from 
me, that which was once such nice chopped turf, but 
now become a mass like putty, he washed my roots in a 
bucket of water, thus removing every particle of the 
old soil as far as he possibly could ; he then pruned 
away some of my decaying fibres, and again placed me 
in a nice clean pot, a size less than that from which I 
had been removed. I was now to be doubly potted, for 
he plunged my little pot inside one much larger, and, 
filling the cavity between with coarse new moss, he 
covered me with a glass again, like a cutting, the glass 
rim resting between the two pots. I was now placed, by 
his directions, in a mild corner of the greenhouse, in a 
place where sunshine could not reach me, and where 
little watering would be needed, with directions that a 
little water should be poured over the glass once or twice 
a week, in order to produce a slight amount of humidity 
in the air inside the glass. Thus I was to remain in 
quietude until the end of October, when the glass was 
to be removed, and I was to be kept in the coolest part 
of the greenhouse until spring. This was done, and 
the situation I occupied being far away from the flues, I 
enjoyed a cool, refreshing, and somewhat damp atmo¬ 
sphere. When spring arrived I found my strength in¬ 
creasing fast, for 1 had produced some nice new roots ; 
and, as my good friend had advised that I should have 
one whole season’s rest, that no attempt should be made 
to induce me to form flower-buds, that I should have my 
own way through the next summer—indeed, if I pro¬ 
duced any blossom-buds they were to be stripped from 
me immediately—in the course of the next summer I 
had made nice shoots again, and began to feel as I used 
to do; and, as for blossom-buds, I thought it pretty well 
j to produce the nice shoots, and to acquire through their 
! instrumentality a nice lot of new fibres. This summer 
I was ordered to be put out of doors from July to October, 
and they set me on a bed of cinder ashes amongst some 
other hard-wooded plants; and very well we agreed 
together, for we all loved a partial shade, quiet, and 
a rather damp air; aud when it rained much my master 
was advised to lay me on my side until the heavy rains 
were past. 
“ I had now for awhile got over my sorrows, and the 
next spring I cut a respectable figure, having four very 
fine blossoms, so my master thought he at last under¬ 
stood the character of my family; but I had yet farther 
trials to undergo, which I suppose he dreamt not of; 
but I am exhausted with my own tale for the present. 
I, however, am determined some day to tell the rest of 
my disasters for the benefit of my relations in general, 
and as a warning to cultivators. I am persuaded that 
