THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN’S COMPANION, March 3, 1857. 
375 
plight I remained until the beginning of February, when 
iny poor blossom-buds became loose in their sockets, 
and fell oft' one by one, and no wonder. 1 was watered 
almost daily through the winter; but, as my soil had 
become rifted by the dry heat, most of the water passed 
off through the chinks without ever moistening the 
main bulk of my roots. It was now determined on that 
I should have a larger pot. So to work my master 
went, and having seen the nurseryman repot me ori¬ 
ginally, lie felt tolerably competent, I suppose, for the 
task. However, he committed some grave errors, which 
did serious mischief. When first the nurseryman potted 
me 1 had not required what plant growers term a‘ ball 
of earth,’ and he had to strew fine compost, sand, &c., 
amongst my delicate fibres, which at the time did me 
much good. My master having, I suppose, observed 
this, made up what he thought a nice compost, and 
having passed it through a sieve to make it look 
uniform, felt persuaded he had acted most judiciously. 
Not so, however, as the remainder of my tale will show. 
This fine compost was shook around my old and parched 
ball by sundry thumps on the potting bench, and when 
finished I was sprinkled over with a fine rose water-pot, 
—the practice, my master said, of every good gardener 
on every occasion. 
“ Now commenced the second great trial I was 
destined to undergo. It was supposed that I should 
soon show a change for the better, and my master was 
fondly dreaming of a nice bloom in the ensuing spring; 
but how were they astonished to find that I could 
scarcely produce a young twig, certainly not a perlect 
one ; for the tops of my branches alone produced a few 
lean shoots, and on these the leaves were but half the 
size they had been when I was in health; and thus I 
might be said to pine away for many months. My 
master, having despaired of my recovery, seldom looked 
at me, but ordered Tom to water me occasionally. 
“ After a lapse of several months I noticed him one 
day parading the greenhouse path, with a book in his 
hand, at which he was looking very intently. Tom— 
the man-of-all-work, who ‘ groomed ’ the horse, fed the 
pigs, pumped water, kept the cook in temper, and occa¬ 
sionally did a bit of gardening—was watering his plants 
for him. After reading a little while he called Tom to 
him. ‘Tom,’ says he, ‘I’ve found out what ails the 
poor Camellia.’ ‘ I’m nation glad, sir,’ says Tom. 
‘ Why, here I. have the last number of The Cottage 
Gardener, which I will lend you when you have time 
to read, and which has taught me more sound gardening 
than all too books 1 ever bought; and here is a capital 
hi tide on the Camellia by some of those gentlemen who 
have whistled at the spade. The writer, whoever he is, 
has my case to a fraction. I’ll be bound he has gone 
through the same difficulty. He calls it pot bound, 
Tom ; and says that when Camellias have grown freely 
for some time in cramped pots they acquire a ball so 
solid tuat it would take almost a bill-hook to separate it, 
and that repotting or shifting, as he calls it, under such 
circumstances, requires much caution, and must be per¬ 
formed either by a regular practitioner, or by some one 
who is quite familiar with the proceedings necessary. I 
am now quite assured that this is our exact position, 
and I wonder that I liad t not seen it before. So now I 
have made up my mind to get Mr. A.’s plautman to take 
it in hand; for you know, Tom, I would rather give half 
a guinea than be beat in this way, and, besides, I still 
feel a partiality lor my poor Camellia.’ 
“ Tom was delighted at the notion, and said he had 
heard say that these nurserymen’s propagators and 
plautmen were so knowing that they could grow a plant 
as well without roots as with them; nay, could grow a 
plant upside down; in fact, could do anything with a 
plant, come from where it would, and, in his opinion, 
had secrets which nobody else ever could or would get at. 
“ I must now hasten on to the end of my pitiful tale ; 
but before I conclude I must relate what this plantman 
did; and although I am not yet by any means fully 
recovered, yet I have sufficient evidence that I have 
again received the assistance of one who quite under¬ 
stands my position. 
“ My master took care to be present when my new 
friend arrived, and watched his proceedings with much 
interest. 
“ Without any farther ceremony he marched me off to 
the potting bench, turned me out of my pot, felt the ball 
all round as a doctor would a pulse, and then all of a 
sudden began to liberate the new soil which had been 
added when I was repotted. Turning to my master he 
said, ‘ Let me advise you, sir, as a first step in gardening 
reform, to burn your sieves or riddles; there is up good 
plant culture where there is much riddling or sifting.’ j 
Having liberated all the new soil, and left nothing but 
the old hard ball, he threw me into a bucket of water for 
an hour, and directed my master to listen to and watch 
the air bubbles gurgling through the water. ‘ There, 
sir,’ said he, ‘you told me the plant had been well 
watered. You see that the interstices in the ball are 
filled with dry air, and the bubbles show that the water, 
by its gravity, is displacing them.’ ‘ But why,’ said my 
master, ‘ could not all the watering I have given displace 
them?’ ‘Why, sir, because your water never entered 
the hard ball, but escaped through your porous new soil, 
which, as you see, has at last become mud.’ Poor Tom 
stood with his mouth wide open, feeling assured that my 
new friend was right, though lie said afterwards that he 
could not for the life of him quite understand all he said. ; 
However, I was taken out of the water and repotted, 
the operator merely asking for some old and dryish turf. 
This he chopped tolerably small with a pot-board knife, 
and, after taking immense pains with the drainage, 
crammed this turf in almost as tight as he could 
pack it. The rest, he said, was merely a work of time; 
it would, he said, be more than a year before I regained 
my health. 
“ Before he left he wrote my master down a few 
maxims on Camellia culture, to which he directed his 
particular attention; and amongst the rest reminded 
him that our family are not partial to intense sunlight, 
especially from the moment they have done blossoming 
until the young blossom-buds are as large as peas; but 
he also advised him that it is in vain to talk of this 
plan or that as regards the management of the atmo¬ 
sphere whilst the root is wrong. Our family in general 
are somewhat thirsty, hut we do not like the water to lay 
long on our stomachs; it must speedily pass away, and 
in thus passing it produces most desirable effects. We 
enjoy abundance of air moisture, and there is nothing 
we abhor more than to be perched up on an elevated 
stage, with a hot sun overhead and heated pipes beneath 
us. There needs nothing more, under such circum¬ 
stances, than such a bad state of root as I was found in 
to complete our ruin. If I must pass my life in-doors a 
prisoner, there is no structure I should prefer, however 
fine, to what gardeners call a cold pit. Here, with a 
few mats or straw over the lights, I could endure the 
hardest winter, and should never complain of two or 
three degrees of frost, which I could better endure than 
from seventy to eighty degrees of sun and fire heat 
combined. 
“ Some people may think, as we are so partial to old 
chopped turf, and abhor rotten manures in a compost, 
that we like a starvation system; but they are much 
mistaken. We are delighted with occasional waterings 
of liquid manure, but it must be quite clear and weak, 
and the roots in good condition to enjoy it. I at one 
period received some guano water, about one ounce to a 
gallon, once a week, and, bad as my appetite was, it did 
me much good, and I could but think how I should have 
