368 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, September 7, 1858. 
in eacli bed, and a flow and return on each side for top heat. 
That would give you eight pipes for the length of your house. 
We do not like estimating expense, but if you calculated such 
piping at a shilling a-foot, with an allowance for bends, 
carriage, and fixing, you will come pretty near the mark ; but 
it is best to have an estimate of all these matters, so that there 
may be no grumbling afterwards. 
If such a house is to be used all at once, and without 
divisions, and, consequently, to be heated all at once, it 
matters but little where the boiler i3 placed. If bottom 
and top heat are to be given separately, as simple a mode as 
any is to bring the water from the boiler to an open tank, and 
that supplied with the necessary communication with both the 
pipes to be heated, and with plugs to be opened or shut as re¬ 
quired. If this is done, it will be as well to have the boiler 
in the centre of the house. If you had several divisions in 
the house, and the boiler was placed at one end, then the 
simplest plan would be to sink the boiler low enough, and 
take a flow and return-pipe under the pathway, covered with 
a grating, and to connect this main flow and return with the 
pipes in the different departments, by valves, or even common 
beer-barrel taps, fixed in small connecting pipes. This plan 
answers thoroughly when all the other pipes are above, in 
level, the main, flow, and return. No more pipes would be 
necessary, as one pipe at the sides for top heat would be 
sufficient, instead of two. By this mode, as well as the open 
cistern plan, you can give top and bottom heat at pleasure, 
and in the different divisions as wanted. The only objection 
to the former plan is, that you must heat the main flow and 
return for the full length, at times when you wish to heat 
only the division next the boiler; but a little more air to the 
other department will prevent any injury from a little heat. 
That heating, too, could be prevented, by connecting the flow 
and return in each division, but the trouble and expense 
would not be compensated for in any great advantage.] 
BEDDING GERANIUMS. 
<c Please to let me know whether there are any bedding- 
out Geraniums which will flower with the abundance and 
continuance of the Scarlets, and what their names and colours 
are, as I prefer Geraniums to any other bedder ? I have a 
small-flowered, very pretty, delicate pink one, with soft, vel¬ 
vety foliage ; but the flowers bear only a small proportion to 
the leaves ; and the same may be said of Nutans , a deeper 
pink, or carmine ; also of Sidonia. Is the latter a bedder ? 
‘ e I kept several old Scarlets through the winter, but am 
rather at a loss how to make use of them,—they do not look 
so compact as younger plants. Although it is rather late to 
ask the question for this year, should they be taken out of 
their pots, or how can I turn them to most advantage for a 
small garden — Jane. 
[If the old plants do not, with you, grow and bloom better 
than young ones, the rule is, to let the old take their chance, 
or be destroyed, and to strike a crop of young ones annually. 
Some of our best bedders are over ten years of age, but young 
ones of the same kinds would be better in some places. 
There are at least one score of Geraniums which would 
flower as freely and as long as the Scarlets, if people had a 
taste that way; but they cannot be treated in three different 
places alike. But two score kinds of the Scarlet race are in 
the same fix. Tom Thumb is the best bedder at the Crystal 
Palace, and the fourth best in some of the eastern counties. 
Punch is by far the best bedder of the Scarlet race at Kew ; 
; and Magnum Bonum is, unquestionably, the best Scarlet 
bedder for Hampton Court; and there are other Scarlets much 
better than any of these, but which will only grow best in 
particular places. A friend of ours is going to give up 
\ growing Brillante after this season, and Brillante is the richest 
bedder of the Variegated class where it succeeds. We ourselves 
I have ordered the discontinuance of the Variegated Alma in 
| our grounds, where it is not worth its keep ; yet what comes 
i near to a good bed of Alma , where it suits ? Your Nutans 
was never a bedding Geranium, yet it is a most lovely flower, 
and one of the oldest crosses in cultivation. Sidonia is a splendid 
bedder, in about one place out of 300 or 400, and not worth a 
straw in the rest. Lady Mary Fox was the most complete 
bedder which we ever handled, yet it is not worth its salt on 
our present soil. Ignescens superb a is one of the best kinds, 
this season, at the Crystal Palace. With ourselves this 
same kind, this season, went all to straw, or leaf, with 
a bloom now and then. With a perfect practical knowledge 
of these things, how could we sit down conscientiously 
to recommend any particular kind of bedding Geranium 
for a garden we never dug or planted. But people who 
are ignorant of these things can hardly believe them, and 
go on haphazarding recommendations. What it all comes to 
is this,—for truth is better than gold,—that any plant that is 
likely to answer any particular purpose is recommended for 
trial only; but, unfortunately, in our country, no one will try 
a new plant, or buy a new plant, which is the Same tiling. 
Every plant, that has any merit at all, will do most capitally 
somewhere, and yours may be that very place; but unless 
you try, who is to know. Try Diadematum , D. rubescens , 
I), carminatum and regium ; Quercifolum, and Q. coccineum ; 
Touchstone; Lady Mary Fox; Crimson Unique; Pretty 
Polly , in very poor soil; Lgnescens rosea and superb a; Dennis' j 
Alma , and Duchess of Sutherland (Turner’s). Every one of ! 
these is best somewhere.] 
FAILURE OF FRUIT CROPS. 
We have had such certain information that many orchards 
have been uprooted in Kent, and their sites devoted to other 
produce, owing to the continued failure of their crops, that 
we began to think that there might be some truth in the sug¬ 
gestion, that “ fruit trees are getting tired of our soil and 
climate or, as the proprietor of one of the uprooted orchards, 
who usually takes “ the night-side of nature,” said, “ the 
old soils, old trees, and old England, are decayed past re¬ 
covery !” We happen to incline to preferring “the sunny* 
side of all things,” especially when we oannot see any reason 
on which such “ past recovery” assertions are founded ; and 
this is the case with the despair about our fruit trees. 
Meteorologists show that, within the last twenty years, our 
climate has improved by its increased temperature ; our soils 
remain unchanged in composition, but are bettered by drain¬ 
ing ; and observation can point to many localities where 
orchards are healthy and productive. They are in warmer 
and yet more elevated positions than the older orchards. “ If 
age has nothing to do with the matter, and temperature 
everything, why does the Peach thrive, even as an orchard- 
tree, in colder districts of America ?” At the time we could 
only reply to this query, from the despairer before-mentioned, 
by saying, “ the summers are better there, and ripen the 
wood better j” but since then we have met with the follow¬ 
ing notes, from personal observation, by the editor of The i 
Genesee Farmer :— 
“ A few weeks since, on visiting some friends in one of the j 
finest fruit sections of Western New York, we told them we had 
come to see some of their celebrated Peach orchards. 4 Nay,’ 
said they, 4 but to see the nakedness of the land ye are come.’ 
And truly, for these once flourishing Peach orchards look as 
though they had been struck with a blast of barrenness. 
Many of the trees are dead, and on nearly all the leaves are 
curled up and withered. Plum trees are so affected with 
black knot, that they cannot furnish fruit enough for the 
curculio to propagate itself in ; and even the Cherry trees, 
hitherto healthy and fruitful, are so debilitated that the leaves 
curl up and the fruit is comparatively worthless. 
“ The dry, hot summer of 1856 enabled the trees to ripen 
their wood so perfectly that the following severe winter in¬ 
jured them far less than the comparatively mild winter of ! 
1857-8, following a cool, wet summer, which did not ripen j 
the wood. Even the Osage Orange hedges in this section 
looked worse this spring than they did in the springs of 1856 
and 1857, after winters of unparalleled severity. 
“ Immature wood is more to be dreaded than cold winters ; 
and happily we can do much more to avoid the former than 
to lessen the severity of the latter. That which is favourable 
to the healthy growth of a plant is favourable to its early ma¬ 
turity. Superphospate of lime has a remarkably beneficial 
effect on the growth of Turnips, and it causes them to mature 
several weeks earlier than those liberally supplied with ni¬ 
trogenous manures, which, while they induce an excessive j 
growth of leaves, are not favourable to the formation of bulbs, i 
