165 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, June 12, 1860. 
if there is adulteration in sweet or Olive oil (from Olea 
Furopma), that might hurt leaves and young shoots: 
therefore, a key to safety is thus turned. Try your sweet 
oil first on a Geranium young leaf which is full in the 
sun, and draw the oiled brush gently under the leaf, so 
that every part is just wetted and no more, and if nothing 
bad seems to come to that leaf from oiling it, of course 
nothing in the oil would hurt any other leaf, and that one 
application on the Geranium leaf would kill as many 
brown, white, blue, and blotched bugs as the oil would 
reach. The same with the dry, hard, white and grey 
scales from all foreign parts. But the Cochineal insect, 
or bug, which I have unpacked in tens of thousands on 
the Cochineal opuntia, from Mexico, and the “Apple 
bug,” or white woolly bugs on Apple and other fruit 
trees, must get a surer dousting before the oil can get 
through their woolly envelopes. Like all great and 
useful discoveries, this was found out by mere accident. 
Mr. Summers and some of the men were doing something 
to springs, hinges, or bolts, or something which I forget, 
but the thing needed oiling, as most writers do at times. 
The oil-cruise was at baud, and some plants had to be 
shifted from one shelf to another, one of which, fresh 
from a London nursery, was as scaly as a badger under 
leprosy. To kill such a plant would only bo doing one¬ 
self justice, and here goes the killing agent. The leaves 
were oiled with the sweet oil, after the manner of a cart 
wheel; but next day, and the next, and a burning sun saw 
no signs of hurt. The scales scaled off, however, in broad, 
thin, filmy flakes. All the plants that came in that basket, 
and all that were suspected of under-surface kind of 
work on the premises, were oiled over as gently as 
possible ; and I was offered a sovereign for every bug 
or scale that I could find in all the house. I asked to 
look at certain Mammillarias and Echinocacti of the 
same section as Seopa. These being the most difficult 
kinds to clean, and always the heaviest infested with 
these troublesome insects, on their first arrival from the 
arid slopes of “ Terra Calienta,” in Mexico. I was shown 
over a large collection of the various sections of Cacti, 
but they were all as clean as a pincushion, and I gave up 
the hunt. 
Another thing, which was quite new to me, tickled my 
fancy, and confirmed the experience of my own life ; and 
it is this—that I never knew a gardener yet who was 
Self-taught without his mind running in a different circle 
from the minds of those who had their knowledge crammed 
into them, like cramming fowls for the spit; always on 
the go, and never in the old paths, but feeling his xvay, and 
mending it as he went along ; taking neither money, nor 
time, nor precepts solely on trust, but trying all and prov¬ 
ing all—that is, such men lead an experimental life, so to 
speak, and all the world could never lead them out of it. 
This new contrivance is a galvanised wire flower-pot, and 
of as many sizes as clay-made pots, and the same shapes 
as the old ones. Plants of almost all kinds have been 
found to grow in hanging-baskets made of wirework as 
well as in ordinary pots—witness the hanging-baskets at 
the Crystal Palace. To make basket-pots—say from the 
size of 48’s to any of the larger sizes, a top rim and a 
bottom rim of the sizes intended are first welded together 
by three upright wires of the same size as that in the 
rims, the uprights being of the same length as the depth 
of that sized pot. Then with very small wires make 
hoops to reach round the uprights, and fasten each hoop 
to the uprights ; the hoops to stand an inch apart all the 
way up, or nearly two inches for some kinds of plants — 
as Ferns, Orchids, and succulent-rooted stove plants. 
These pots have now been nine months in use; and every 
kind of plant, from Heaths to Ferns, is growing in them 
just as well as in pots. The shape being the same as that 
of common pots, balls can be shifted from pot to pot just 
as in the old way. This is the right kind of pot for 
Orchids at last. Iu filling them, the bottom and sides 
are lined with small lumpy pieces of peat or loamy turf, 
and tho centre just as for common pots. They look 
exceedingly well, and are called crinoline pots, for they 
are made on the same principle ; only what is an inverted 
Tulip in crinoline is here the upper part—the widest, like 
the fair Tulip itself. Mr. Summers, Crystal Falace 
Nursery, Sydenham, is going to invade the kingdom with 
these crinoline pots as soon as the twelve months of the 
experiment have proved that they are just as useful for 
the roots of plants as crinoline has been on the health, 
strength, and vigour of the rising generation; for it has 
been proved by philosophy that air is the very life of all 
living things. Therefore, the more of it at the roots and 
at the onstart of our kindred, the more healthy and more 
blooming will the two races come up to the starting-post. 
All the plants in this establishment look as if the 
winter had been in no way uncommon, except what are 
otherwise noticed below. Miniature orchard trees are, or 
were then, gone over every day, and all growths stopped 
at the third joint; no root pruning is allowed, but most 
of the trees are yearly transplanted. Orchard-houses fts 
good and promising as can be. Pears not taken inside 
till the bloom is just opening, unless a sharp night 
threatens destruction. No other way seems so good to 
secure a full crop of Pears under this temporary help. 
Mr. Summers sold every leaf of his Crystal Palace 
Scarlet Geranium before the middle of May, and had to 
forego orders for it from other London firms to the tune 
of one hundred dozens to supply their customers, who 
must go without them for one more season. Several 
private gardens in the country had this Scarlet from me 
as far back as 1841-5-6-7-8—Trentliam gardens among 
the rest. I think it was in the summer of 1844 that Sir 
Edward Kcrrison married. He was a neighbour, and 
visited at the birthplace of this bedder, and that autumn 
I was going along the terrace one afternoon, and saw a 
lady and gentleman sittings at the top of some flight oE 
steps : they were Sir Edward and Lady Kcrrison, wait¬ 
ing for me to come up to get a leaf out of my book for 
managing “ these Tom Thumbs ” better than they had 
seen them elsewhere. “ This is a second cousin to Tom 
Thumb,” I replied; “ for Tom does not do very well 
here.” And I shall warrant Sir Edward recollects what 
they heard of the stud-book that afternoon. Two years 
after that the Duke of Bedford, the Marquis of Exeter, 
and the late Sir John Shelley—three Newmarket men^ 
with Baron and Lady Parke (now Lord and Lady Wensley- 
dale) and a large party, heard of the garden stud-book 
and this bedding Geranium before them for the first time, 
and they—the turf celebrities—were amazed that such 
things could be done with flowers. Lady Weusleydalo 
was the only gardener among them, and could tell them 
that without registering the pedigrees of crossed flowers, 
the same as for the racecourse, the one would be as much 
in confusion as the other; and one might safely add, the 
one would open the door to blacklegism as the other. 
The Verbena Beauty Supreme was registered that day 
by Lady Parke as her seedling, bred at Ampt Hill, I 
think. Mr. Dick, who I said raised the best of the 
Improved Frogmores, Lady Agnes Byng, has written to 
say that Mr. Grant, whom he succeeded at Livcrmere, 
was the raiser of Lady Agnes Byng. I knew Mr. Grant, 
who is now dead; but Mr. Dick tells me that Mr. Grant 
told him that he raised Lady Agnes Byng from the 
Frogmore Scarlet; also that he, Mr. Grant, gave some 
of that batch of seedlings to a Suffolk gardener before 
the plants bloomed, and that he had reason to believe 
that Tom Thumb was one of those very seedlings. “I 
therefore believe,” adds Mr. Dick, “ that Mr. Grant was 
the raiser of the two,” meaning Lady Agnes Byng, the 
best “ Improved Frogmore,” and Tom Thumb. The father 
aud grandfather of the “ jmuthful Earl ” aforesaid have 
grown this Crystal Palace Scarlet in their extensive 
gardens since 1846 or 1817, I forget which, to my know¬ 
ledge ; and Mr. Summers, of the Crystal Palace Nursery, 
has made arrangements already to strike one hundred 
