48 
TEE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, October 20, 1858. 
feather,” all over the Highlands. The 12tli of January 
that winter, I think, was on a Sunday, a memorable day 
in our family. I received my first Bible that day, and 
on the morrow I was promoted to the Bible class; and I 
had strict orders to bring home my Bible from school 
every night for the rest of the winter, in order to save 
man and beast from the fury of the spirits of the air. I 
did bring the Bible home every night, and we all got 
over the winter at last, about Beaufort Castle, with less 
harm from wind and weather than was in the recollection 
of my grandmother, who was the oldest woman in 
Scotland. 
Now, if we are to have such a long winter as that, after 
this comet, what book will save our stock from the 
mysterious powers, and who will read it to the nation? 
There is no book, that I know of, which is half so good 
for keeping bedding Geraniums as The Cottage Gar¬ 
dener. But everyone should read it for himself, begin¬ 
ning with the index of the first volume, and going 
through every volume till this time last year ; and always 
recollecting, that what is a good method for saving them, 
under certain conditions, may be the worst plan under 
other difficulties. There is not a plan for keeping Scarlet 
Geraniums, in our pages, which is not sure enough some¬ 
where ; and there is nothing new on the subject. 
My own last experiment upon them was tried in the 
beginning of last November. I took twelve plants 
without a cut or a bruise about them. They were taken 
up most carefully, three weeks before then: not a root 
was strained, nor a morsel of the bark hurt; but all the 
leaves were taken off with the greatest care, by drawing 
them backwards and downwards, till they snapped at the 
joint hinge, which is always the safest way before winter. 
To cut them off with a knife is not so good, as the very 
bottom of the footstalk cannot be reached: that little 
portion dies back, and the slightest touch of damp will 
reach it first; then the stem is soon affected, and away it 
goes. To pull off leaves with a jerk is as bad as pulling 
up the plants from the bed. If you could see the extra¬ 
ordinary delicacy of the organs which run from the roots 
into the body, or substance, of a plant, you would shudder 
at the idea of pulling it. Oaks, Elms, and other trees, 
which are equally strong and hardy, have been killed by 
the score, by the mere act of putting too much strain on 
the roots by pulling them. And the worst of it is, that 
death from pulling is so lingering, that the cause of death 
is forgotten before the plant is half gone. Some plants 
take one, two, and even three years, to die from strains. 
Those enormous Cactuses they had at blew Gardens, 
from Mexico, some years since, died, one after the other, 
from this very cause ; and the last that went was three 
Years from the time the awful pulling took place in 
Mexico. I had a large experience that way once; and, 
more than twenty years back, I wrote as much against 
that practice as would fill a number of The Cottage 
Gardener. Since then, I have known a clever young 
gardener, who, when he went to his first situation, took 
up all his Geraniums, the first autumn, by pulling “ to 
save time and he did save time, most assuredly, for ho 
lost ten thousand plants, and he had the rest of the time 
saved to devise means to replace them. lie is alive to 
this day, nevertheless ; and he reads The Cottage Gar¬ 
dener every week, which will make his hair stand on 
end when he reads this. 
But, as I was going to say, after preparing these 
Geraniums with the greatest care, they were gradually 
dried out in the sun and air all day, and brought in¬ 
doors to avoid the damp at night. I had them buried 
just one foot deep in the centre of the garden, where they 
had no advantage from the situation, farther than that no 
water could stand round them, or near them. There was 
nothing extra put about them,—merely the bare earth,— 
and they laid there till the first week in May, when nine 
of them, or seventy-five per cent., were quite rotten ; one 
was a little blotchy in the back of tho young shoots, and 
! two of them were just as sound as the day they were put 
I in. The three were planted out alike, and grew well 
enough. The very small roots suffered more than the 
most tender part at the top of the young wood, which 
was in full growth when the plants were lifted. There¬ 
fore, it will not pay to bury Geraniums without some 
method to secure diem from the natural dampness of tBe 
common soil; but the experiment is encouraging, anti I 
shall repeat it, with variations, this winter. 
Three winters back I buried a lot of odd plants, with¬ 
out careful preparation, in the cellar, in very dry, dusty 
earth. They were cut plants. All the young growth of 
the previous season was cut off. The heat of the cellar 
was very uniform all that winter,—very little over or 
under 48° of the scale. This was worse than'jthe damp 
or frost. The plants began growing, and nothing that I 
could do would check them there; and in less than two 
months most of them were so exhausted, that death 
; ensued. There were sixty of them, and in April there 
, were only seven or eight with any signs of life near 
I the roots ; but none of them ever pushed a bud. The 
cellar is so dry, that I should not fear to sleep in it; yet 
I cannot keep a Geranium in it more than three weeks at 
a time ; and at the end of that period it is in active growth, 
even if put in at the dullest time of the winter. Here, 
then, is another turn of the cellar question, which proves 
the necessity of perfect rest from growth to be essential 
for keeping these plants safely in winter, if they are out 
of pots or boxes. If I had had them hung up in that 
cellar it would have been all the same,—they would grow ; 
and growth in the dark, and with little change of air, 
seems particularly injurious to Scarlet Geraniums. 
I made a dozen experiments in that cellar for the last 
seven years, and I am satisfied that Geraniums cannot be 
kept anyhow in a ccllai’, which is not cool enough to arrest 
growth most completely. A few degrees of frost would 
not hurt old plants, which were perfectly dry, in a cOol 
cellar. But I have no means of ascertaining the highest 
degree of heat at which these plants would keep dormant: 
probably any heat over 40° would stir them if it was con¬ 
tinuous ; but, if the heat was only by fits and start s, and 
could be lowered at pleasure, it is more likely than not, 
that 50° would not move them for a week or so at a 
time. Depend upon it, however, nothing is so good for 
them as to be very cool,—down to the verge of freezing, 
provided they and everything about them arc perfect ly 
dry,—that is the grand secret after all; but the most im¬ 
portant is, to know- when they are dry enough without suf¬ 
fering from too much dryness. They can dry hay till all the 
goodness is out of it; but to make good hay of Geraniums, 
as it were, where the sun never shines, is a very different 
thing indeed,— it is just one of the turning points of 
success and failure among amateurs. But amateurs know 
! ten times more than some of the best gardeners on this 
subject. All the advantage that we have over them is, 
that most of us can tell what is the matter with them 
at the first glance, and, knowing that, we can the more 
readily supply the proper remedy. 
There is uo place more safe for keeping Geraniums than 
a cool, dry cellar, where they would keep the whole 
winter, if they were tied in bundles and hung up round 
the walls. But there is not one out of 500 cellars 
where that could be done : yet a considerable degree of 
damp may be got over in a cellar, by placing the plants 
in dry sand, or earth, or anything dry, to save them from 
the damp. An iron chest, packed with Geraniums and 
bran, as Mr.Kidd packs his Grapes and Tomatoes, would, 
; probably, keep Geraniums safe enough for a w inter, just 
in the bed of the Thames ; and, if so, surely there'are 
means of keeping them in a damp cellar. 
| To return to the open air. If the soil in my garden was 
! between wet and dry, or if it was quite dry, the plants 
would have kept, last winter, just like pitted Potatoes. 
One of our correspondents speaks to-day of keeping 
j Geraniums buried in a cold pit,—an odd and expensive 
