290 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, August 7, 1860. 
gardening that Lawson, in his ‘ Country Housewife’s Garden,’ 
devotes a chapter to the ‘ husbandry ’ of bees. ‘ Your bees,’ 
he observes, 1 delight in wood, for feeding, especially for casting ; 
therefore, want not an orchard. A Mayes swarme is worth a 
mares foall; if they want wood they be in danger of Hying 
away.” 
(To he continued.) 
NOTES FROM NOTTS. 
I am a gardener only upon a very small scale; hut as a sub¬ 
scriber for many years to The Cottage Gaedenek, and being 
much indebted to that publication for the little knowledge I 
possess, I have thought that a few notes from this midland dis¬ 
trict might be worth insertion in that journal. 
My garden is small—just such a one as you would expect to 
find attached to a poor vicarage ; and during the time that I have 
been vicar of this place I have waged a war of extermination 
against almost all the deciduous trees that I found in it, sub¬ 
stituting in their place many of those magnificent new evergreens 
wliich are now within the reach of all persons ; so that, minus 
the flowers, the garden is as pretty in winter as summer. 
No one can realise the full beauty of the bright scarlet blooms 
of Punch , Crystal Palace , and an old friend— Tom Tkumh, upon 
which that ungrateful and fickle man Deaton has turned his 
hack, unless they are planted in contrast with Irish Yews, Cedars 
of Lebanon, or some of the dark-foliaged Cypresses and Junipers. 
Some of my most telling beds are round, four feet across, with 
a standard Rose in the centre. Of these some of the best are the 
following :—No. 1, Flower of the Pay, edged with blue Lobelia ; 
2, Tom Thumb, bordered with Verbena Purple Kiny; 3, Gazania 
splendens, with an edging of blue Lobelia; 4, Frogmore, sur¬ 
rounded -with Cerastium tomentosum ; 5, Ageratum, edged with 
Golden Chain : 6, Kingsbury Pet, and blue Lobelia ; 7, Pender- 
sonii, white, edged with Tom Thumb; 8, Flower of the Pay, 
bordered with purple Verbena Ariosto; 9, Perilla, surrounded 
with Calceolaria floribunda, interspersed between the Calceolarias 
with Lobelia; 10, Punch, edged with white Verbena Mrs. Pol- 
ford ; 11, to my fancy the best and brightest bed of all, Countess 
of Warwick, bordered with Lobelia. The dark zone upon the 
leaves of the Countess contrasts beautifully with the white- 
margined leaves and brilliant scarlet flowers. No variegated 
Geranium is so effective on dark days as this—it is a perfect 
treasure this most dismal summer. These are some of my best 
beds. 
The blue Lobelia consists partly of old plants, partly of seed¬ 
lings ; but the seedlings, of which I have a great number planted 
out, are all, without one exception, true to colour, and can only 
be distinguished from the old plants in being more backward in 
growth and flower. The Lobelia seed came part of it from Hen¬ 
derson, and some of it was given to me by my friend Nathan 
Pownall, gardener to that most excellent man and talented agri¬ 
culturist, W. Sanday, Esq., of Holme Pierrepont. 
Two beds of Tropseolum, one elegans, the other Stamfordianum, 
twining up the standard Rose in the centre, are very effective. 
What a great addition to the beauty of the garden is the lovely 
pink Geranium Christine, so clear in colour and so compact in 
growth. My Geraniums were in full bloom the second week in 
June. They were planted out between the 12th and 20th of May. 
We seldom take up an old plant; and almost all the sixteen 
hundred which are bedded were struck from cuttings planted the 
first ten days of August, 1859, and potted and housed all before 
the 10th of October. The bed for striking cuttings should bo 
built upon a hard foundation—flag-stones, or boulder-stones, or 
anything of that sort, in the hottest and sunniest place to be 
found, rather upon an incline, if possible, to secure good drainage. 
The cuttings being put in, with nearly all their leaves upon them. 
My Btriking-bed is under the kitchen window, in a back yard 
paved with largo stones, and having a south aspect, surrounded 
on all sides with walls—a perfect frying-pan upon a scorching 
day, and we seldom lose any of the young plants. The sides of 
the cutting-bed should be built of bricks, two deep, and filled in 
nearly to the top with good soil. The great secret with bedding 
Geraniums is to get the cuttings in soon enough, and up soon 
enough before they are touched with frost. However fine the 
weather, the last should be up, potted, and housed before the 
10th of October. 
To Becure flue healthy plants and early bloom, a house should 
be entirely devoted to the bedding plants, so that the temperature 
can be adapted exclusively to their wants. The less they grow 
until the spring sunbeams set them going the better: because, if 
struck early enough, they will be good strong plants to commence 
with; and if winter growth is promoted by overmuch heat, the 
house will become far too full before the planting-out time comes, 
and the plants will be drawn up and straggling, instead of 
compact bushes, as all bedding Geraniums should be. 
My house for bedding plants is thirty-six feet long by twelve 
feet wide. The sides and ends are of brick, the passage down tho 
middle, the stages right and left, and a raised brick-flue all 
round. The ventilation at the top through a hit-and-miss 
shutter. There are doors at each end. I hope to keep in it 
1800 bedding plants through this coming winter. The plants 
were ail most healthy there the last winter, as proved by abundant 
show of June bloom. 
In a small house, devoted in winter to bedding plants, we 
are trying the experiment of growing Melons in pots and boxes. 
At present there is a fair prospect of success, most of the plants 
have three and some four Melons set, and all swelling rapidly ; 
both plants and fruit appear perfectly healthy as yet.—R, B., 
Radcliffe-on- Trent, Notts. 
[We omit the unfavourable opinion on the new Dianthuses 
and Geraniums, hecauso it is contrary to the opinion of some 
best authorities, and we advise our correspondent to suspend his 
judgment for a year.— Eds. C. G.J 
SEEDLING POTATOES—RACES OF 
VEGETABLES. 
Notes of a paper read at the Royal Dublin Society, by D. 
Moore, M.R.I.A., &c., Curator of the Botanic Garden. 
Mr. Moore observed that a very general idea prevailed during 
the first years of the Potato disease, that it was consequent on 
the old stock having become worn out, which led many to sup¬ 
pose that a fresh stock raised from seed with new blood in them 
would either be wholly exempt from the malady, or be only 
attacked in a mitigate form. Others did not believe in that 
theory, and grow seedlings for experiment to disprove it. This 
led to the cultivation of a great variety of seedlings by both 
parties. J. Anderson, Esq., Fermov, County Cork, had sent as 
many as 115 kinds, marked as distinct varieties by him, to the 
Botanic Garden, in 1854, which he alleged were proof against the 
disease.; but on their being subjected to trial they were found 
fully as liable to be attacked as the old stock. Mr. Moore went 
even beyond the idea of seedlings from the old stock, and had some 
of the original tubers brought from South America, which, although 
planted apart from any other kind of Potatoes, were attacked 
early and virulently the first year after they arrived. Thus he 
believed he had fully negatived the theory of the disease being 
consequent on a worn-out stock, and in doing so he had arrived 
at other results of much more information to the public. The 
cultivation of seedlings had been continued in the Botanic 
Garden more for the purpose of trying whether n3 they advanced 
in age they would become better able to resist the disease than 
anything else, as they appeared worthless to grow as general 
ci-ops. During the first years they were soft and waxy, the skins 
did not burst on boiling, besides they had a wild unpleasant 
taste, which he believed w r as the case with all seedlings at first. 
The waxy soft state of the young tubers, he considered, was owing 
to the starch granules not being well developed in the cells, as 
can easily be seen by subjecting a sufficiently thin section of a 
seedling Potato during the first years of its growth to investi¬ 
gation under the miscroscope, and one from a well matured 
tuber of an old sort. In the former the cells will be found filled 
with small granules of soft mucilaginous matter, with only few 
starch granules, which are small; whereas, in the latter, if it bo 
well ripened, the starch granules are large and fully developed, as 
well as numerous in the mass. As the cultivation went on, the 
crop was found to improve every subsequent year in quantity, 
quality, and distinctiveness. Out of two hundred sorts, fifty-four 
of the best were selected, which had been under experiment for 
ten years, and, although so worthless at first, were now fully as 
good as some of the best of the old sorts, and could bo safely 
grown as general crops. This was the most important fact he 
had to state in connection with this subject, because it went far 
to account for the failure and abandonment of growing seedlings 
by most people, as well as for his success. All seedlings are 
comparatively useless at first, and it requires a long period of 
