THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY 
this last winter, and I cannot say that a single plant of 
them looked well or half well for fully four months, and 
some of them would have looked “ shocking ” to many 
of my neighbours; but just take one instance. Mr. 
West, who makes the Waltonian cases, is “no gardener.” 
Mrs. West is the head gardener of the firm, and manages 
the conservatory capitally. I took him to look over my 
collection in the dead of winter, and 1 shall never forget 
his remark. “Well," says he, “if those who read your 
writings were to see this poking way of having plants 
you might shut up shop, for no one would believe a word 
of what you said;” and yet, all the time, my plants were 
in the best state for them and for me. I lost none, or 
“ none to signify,” and now I would back them against 
England, France, and Germany. 
You recollect my telling last winter how the different 
plant houses in the nurseries stood, or were kept at 
such and such temperatures. That would have been a 
grand lesson to gardeners did they not know the thing 
as well, and many of them better than any one else; 
but the lesson 1 intended for another generation of gar¬ 
deners, the bee-like swarms from the “ hives of industry ” 
which took their flight down the lines, and rested on 
every bush aud tree, hedge and down, within miles of the 
stations. I knew the steam was up with them, and 
that some of them w'ould go ahead faster than was 
“ lawful ” for their fostering cares; therefore, after telling 
i them of the lowest point of winter heat for such and 
such plants, I warned them particularly against the 
moon philosophy of giving and taking off air. We 
know that all animals and all plants require periodical 
rest. No one doubts that; but rest comes in different 
ways to man according to his exercise, and in different 
temperatures to plants according to their natures. The 
nature of the best bedding plants yields to a few degrees 
of frost, and they perish; but keep them above the 
freezing point, and they are safe on that score. Give 
them a different, a higher temperature, and they are 
equally safe from death, but they are not at rest as 
they ought to be ; and what is here safe is very wide of 
being natural, and therefore not good for the plants, not¬ 
withstanding their good looks. Oaks and Elms do not look 
well in winter; but they do better than if you covered 
them with glass, and so managed the temperature as to 
make them look well in the eyes of moon philosophy. 
They have their rest in winter, and stand all winter 
frosts. Geraniums do not stand frost, and they rest a 
little above the freezing point. Other plants rest at 40°, 
some at 45°, at 50°, or 55°, some at 60°, and some as 
soon as they are at 65°, like Mr. Veitch’s Asiatic Vandas 
and such plants. If you now begin at the bottom of 
this scale, and alter the natural degree at which any of 
the sections are properly at rest, you disarrange their 
economy, and in the proportion you derange this, in the 
same proportion will they yield their fruit, and you may 
call the flowers “the fruit” of bedding plants. 
If I was writing out an act like an Act of Parliament 
for keeping bedding plants in winter, and all other 
plants which ought to winter at the same temperature 
as bedding plants, I would make the preamble or intro¬ 
duction run thus : : —“ Whereas these and all like them 
do rest in winter, by reason of their nature, at a tem¬ 
perature fluctuating from 34° to 40°, and seeing there 
are only two seasons in the plant year, the summer 
and winter, let it be enacted that the winter season 
commences for plants at the termination of the 
autumnal equinox, and ceases on the turn of the 
vernal equinox.” Then the first chapter of the act 
would prohibit any sun heat to be used for warming 
the air among such plants between these periods, and 
the next and last chapter would go to sanction all 
lawful means for borrowing sun heat in such aud such 
degrees as experience has taught to be best suited for 
the gentle rise and progress of the sap, and for the 
GENTLEMAN’S COMPANION, March 24, 1857. 423 
maturity of the “fruit” required, whether that fruit was 
seeds, roots, leaves, or flowers. 
The act has been in force in some parts of Scotland, 
as we have just read, since 1815; but, like some other 
very good acts, it has been a dead letter in many parts 
of the kingdom, or queendom, from that day to this. See, 
therefore, if it was not rather from infringing on some 
clause of this act than from the capabilities of your new 
place, and all about it, that you lost so many of the 
bedding plants this winter. At all events make a memo¬ 
randum of all you lost, of what is now but middling, and 
of the prime lots, if only to see the difference this time 
next year, after a more natural system of resting the 
stock next time ; and in the meantime resolve to have 
an extra number of plants of all the kinds that failed 
last winter before the propagating season is over, in 
order that you may be able to keep some of them in pots 
all the summer for stock plants the following season, 
which brings us round to the point from which we 
started. 
Well,‘how is the propagation going on this spring? 
We are first-rate at the Experimental so far, with the 
hotbed system in full force. The covering over the 
dung is three or four inches of finely-sifted coal ashes 
and dry, old, dusty tan. The heat is good, steady, and 
mild, from 65° to 75°. There was too much steam or 
smokiness at first to allow of closing the lights entirely, 
and when that happens the remedy is to have a 
little air on at the back, and more by night than during 
the day, because there is no way of consuming the 
smoke at night as the sun does, so to speak; hut 
from the first the smell was quite sweet." I think 
the cinder ashes help to fix the bad smell and keep 
it down. They certainly keep the tan from getting 
too wet, and the tan keeps the ashes from getting too 
dry, and the whole is so porous that the heat rises 
freely and very steadily. Large 60 and small 48-sized 
pots are what we use for the cuttings, and we only 
put one row of cuttings round a pot, with clean sand 
on the top, and a very sandy compost below. The 
smoke or steam was all gone before we ventured to put 
in seed pots; but we force all the hotbed seeds in the 
cutting bed. 
The Horticultural Society gave us a packet of seeds 
of the Lobelia ramosoides, a plant which I often said 
never seeded at all; but we shall soon see the “ rights 
of it.” One of their packets last year made a new bed 
for us; but I could not tell of it as I lost the name. 
We have it again this season, and it is a new kind of 
Viscaria, called Burridgii, the same as oculata , except 
the colour of the flower, which is the very rarest tint 
we have—a real lavender colour, or say about four 
degrees lighter than the colour of Plumbago Capensis. 
Ladies aVe very fond of this delicate tint, which the 
sun, or rain, or wind did not affect to the last. It 
was sown in the open ground on the 5th of March, last 
spring, and the seedlings transplanted in May, at 
eighteen inches apart, over a bed of Mangles' Varie¬ 
gated Geranium. The two agreed well, and there was 
no blank when the Viscaria was over. D. Beaton. 
Manchester Botanical and Horticultural Society.— 
It will be seen from an advertisement that this Society has 
made arrangements for various Exhibitions this summer, in 
connection with the “ Art Treasures Exhibition,” and much 
will it add to the attractions. Exhibitors already promising 
to send flowers and fruit include some of the principal nur¬ 
serymen and private gardeners in this country and on the 
Continent. To the Exhibition of American plants Messrs. 
Waterer, Mr. Baker, Mr. Cunningham, and others, will 
contribute. Its extent may be estimated from the statement 
that the tent will be 240 feet long, and sixty feet wide. 
