161. 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, Decembee 14, 1858. 
readers of The Cottage Gakdenee, who have not ap¬ 
preciated the subject, that winter pruning is of import¬ 
ance to all fruit trees. As for our trained trees in 
gardens, if they are well handled in summer, they need 
little in winter; but our orchard trees cannot possibly 
receive that attention. B. Eeeington. 
LITTLE THINGS. 
“ Well, there now, I have just been having it again. 
I suppose I must make up my mind, and get another 
shop, where my talents will he better appreciated,—I see 
no hope of anything like comfort here. I should not 
mind being told of faults, or shortcomings, of any im¬ 
portance ;—hut this carping about the veriest trifles; 
this magnifying of moleheap nothings into mountains of 
importance ; this proverbing about can do when there is 
a will do; these hints about procrastinating, when I only 
put off from day to day what I might easily have done 
twenty times over, had I considered the doing it at a set 
time of any importance; this pointing to pots under¬ 
watered and over-watered, and to yellow leaves merely 
thrown on the floor, instead of being clapped in my 
apron, as if I could not clear all up in a few minutes ; 
this telling me to look at dampers-out, and at furnace 
ashpit doors open after the fire had burned bright, and 
at the small heap of ashes and cinders in front of the 
ashpit doors, just as if I was a downright waster, and 
had more intention to heat the air of the village, than the 
flue, or water pipes of the house, and cared but little if 
the whole place was burnt down, &c.;—these are the 
things I find I cannot stomach. Let others do it, if 
they will!”— Young gardeners, in bothies, rooms, and 
lodgings. 
“ There it is again, those confounded tidfies;—a broom 
left lying in a place for several days, suggesting that 
brooms must cost nothing here; a scraper not put up at 
a desired spot, though there was to be no hurry about 
it ; a plant standing at the drawing-room door, with 
yellow leaves and fading flowers, -which might have been 
soon changed, had I only thought of it; a few largish 
weeds in a quarter, a reason for saying satirically, that 
gardening must bo a very profitable affair ; or, when a 
few weeds are seen on a walk, saying plainly, that it was 
not generally supposed that gravel walks were meant to 
be a close imitation of a grass lawn;—mentioning that 
certain plants, in a prominent place, wanted tying up or 
removing, though I had known that for days, and in¬ 
tended doing it the first time I went that way ; that it 
was thought some group of flower-beds near the window, 
which looked so well a fortnight ago, wanted a little 
arranging or dressing, as I had not looked at them since ; 
that the Cabbage and Cauliflower sent in might be very 
good, but they wanted a change, though I had been told 
they would never weary of them ; that they would like 
fruit more continuously, and not such quantities at one 
time,—just as if I intended to starve and surfeit, in turns ; 
that in future it would be desirable that the cut flowers 
for the glasses should embrace more variety of colours, 
and that if pots were put in the house at all, they should 
be small, so that it would be easy to arrange such flower¬ 
ing plants in baskets and vases more artistically,—thus 
conveying the insinuation that such matters had been 
previously neglected; that the flower groups of which I 
had asked opinion were stated to be showy, though a 
different arrangement would have been preferred,—just 
as if I were deficient in all knowledge of colours, and 
the true principles of taste, &c. Ileigho !—what next, I 
wonder! Find fault with my general management, if 
they could, and I would know how to meet it, or bear 
it;—but this obtruding of trifles, the very essence of 
littlenesses, — and giving them such distinction, as if 
they were really important,—would wear out the patience 
of a Job, and worries and embitters my very existence. 
I suppose I must cut it! ”—From unpublished soliloquies 
| of head gardeners. 
Much of the discomfort and wretchedness of mankind 
generally, and of gardeners in particular, arises from the 
contempt or neglect of the littles. As respects comfort 
and utility, a great object would be gained, did we only 
get into the habit of looking upon every little as either 
inherently, or from association or combination, truly great 
and important. What seems less important than a pearly 
drop of water, and yet that continuously dropping will 
wear away the hardest rock. Combine vast numbers of 
these drops, and the river or ocean is formed. From 
such myriads of mote particles of matter as float in 
the sunbeam, huge continents are constituted. The 
hempen thread is small, but from it and its neighbours 
are manufactured the huge cables at Devon port. The 
locust is but a small animal; but bring an army of them 
over a fair landscape, and no other array of destroyers 
and plunderers could leave such a wilderness of desola¬ 
tion in its track. Doth the thrip and the acarus, or red 
spider, are so small, as to require good and young eyes 
to detect them clearly ; the greenfly is much larger, and 
plumper, but little, after all, so far as mere contrast with 
larger insects and animals is concerned; yet what harm 
can be done by a few such insignificant insects. 
“ We have seen a few of them, certainly ; we will watch 
and look now and then, and notice if they increase or de¬ 
crease. If we must wash, or sulphur vapour, or smoke 
with tobacco, let us have enemies to destroy worthy of 
our prowess and our labour.” So speak, or at least act, 
the contemners of the littles. Taken when the first 
insect was seen, one effort to destroy them might have 
been sufficient, and without doing injury to the plant on 
which they were living. But leave them alone for a day, 
or a week ; keep congratulating yourself that there are 
not such a vast number of them yet; resolve, and re- 
' resolve, that erelong you will do for them ; meanwhile, 
let them increase by hundreds of generations, and by se¬ 
curely depositing myriads of eggs, -whilst all the time 
drawing the lifeblood from the plants ; and then, when 
you have attacked them time after time, and find a new 
generation, hydra-like, to battle with, as soon as an elder 
race is destroyed,—you may ultimately have reason to 
congratulate yourself on the wisdom, the prudence, and 
the economy which led you to waste so much time, ma¬ 
terial, and labour, which could have been mostly saved 
by taking such insect-plastered plants, after waiting so 
long, at once to the rubbish-heap, or rather to the inside 
of a furnace. 
But, the contempt of the little does not end, as in the 
above case, in bringing into full-blown development the 
mere procrastinating impulses to which we are so ready 
to listen; but, if at all persevered in, will give a tone 
and a marking to our field of thought and of action. 
Be careless of trifles to-day, be quite above consider¬ 
ing the littles to-day, and that carelessness in a week 
will cling to you like a cloak of habit, and become as 
compactly bound around you, as your skin, in the shape 
of character, in a month or a year. Hence, a wise man, 
when he wishes to know the distinguishing characteristics 
of a stranger, seeks for these characteristics not in one 
brilliant circumstance, but in the events of retired 
domestic life. It is not more true, that good gardening 
is just attention to the littles, than it is true, that these 
littles alike form and demonstrate character. The man 
known among his neighbours for a uniform close-fisted, 
selfish penuriousness, will not rise above that undesirable 
character, though once or twice in his life, under the 
influence of a strong stimulus, he may have been induced 
to perform a liberal benevolent action, an action which 
even the unlettered peasant can easily see to be not in 
unison with,but abhorrent and opposed to, his general con¬ 
duct. M r ho, carrying out the dictates of practical wisdom, 
would think of appointing a man to the charge of some 
great interests, if lie had previously found him inattentive 
