18 
THE ELOEIST AND POMOLOGIST. 
[ February, 
■will always pay to have a heating apparatus. 
No doubt good fruit has been grown in suc¬ 
cessive seasons without any such aid, but in 
some cases there has been a failure of the 
crops because of the unfavourable character of 
the weather when the trees have been in blos¬ 
som. The effect of frost is not felt very much 
if there is plenty of sunshine by day. It is 
during dull cold weather, with a low tempera¬ 
ture at night as well as by day, that artificial 
heat is required. When the trees are in flower, 
it is as well to shake them gently twice a day, 
to distribute the pollen. In this way, a good 
“ set ” is generally secured. 
Where the natural soil of the garden is un¬ 
suitable, it is very desirable to grow the trees 
in pots, as a small quantity of imported soil 
serves for each tree. Good clayey loam from 
the chalk is the best soil for stone-fruits, and 
it answers as well for Pears; a fourth part of 
good rotten manure ought to be mixed with it, 
and in potting, the soil should be well com¬ 
pressed with a wooden hammer. 
Unless for the sake of variety, it is not de¬ 
sirable to grow many sorts of fruit-trees. Six 
good Peaches are :— Hales Early^ Early Yorl\ 
Royal George, Grosse Mignonne,i>ellega)‘de,andi 
Hesse Tardive. Nectarines :— Lord Xapier, 
Murrey, Pine-Apple, Violette lldtive, and 
Victoria. A few useful Pears are ;— Beurre 
eVAmanlis, Beurre Diel, Louise Bonne of Jersey, 
Souvenir du Congres, Marie Louise, and 
Williams' Bon Chretien. — J. Douglas, Aoaybrtf 
Hall, Ilford. 
PLUMS AS GROUND CORDONS. 
has somewhat surprised me to find these 
^ p so little used. They have done remark- 
ably well with us on a narrow border in 
front of an apricot wall. A wire is run along 
about 25 in. from the ground, and 4 ft. from 
the wall; this is furnished with a good collec¬ 
tion of dessert plums, planted at lour feet apart. 
Most of these are confined to a single stem, 
though a few are trained both ways, and form 
double cordons. All are kept tolerably close to 
the main stem by summer pinching, and pretty 
close winter or spring spurring. The soil is a 
sound loam, and the trees have no special 
feeding or ground culture, further than being 
kept clear of weeds, and the application of a 
slight surface mulch in very hot, dry weather. 
As soon as the trees flower in the spring, a 
few spruce branches, or laurel or box boughs, 
are tied or placed over them. These, with the 
lateness of the blooming season of Cordon 
Plums, have hitherto protected them from 
spring frosts, and contrary to our expectations 
at planting, though we have had many losses 
of crops on the walls, we have not once failed 
of plums on our Cordons. On the contrary, 
the trees have generally got a double or treble 
crop, and towards the middle of June large 
quantities have been thinned off. Neither do 
the Cordons suffer from aphides, as plums on 
walls mostly do. During the years we have 
grown Cordons, they have not needed dress¬ 
ing with tobacco-water or other pest-destroying 
mixtures, and the trees have continued, with 
very few exceptions, in good health on the re¬ 
strictive system. The fruit is generally fine, and 
a fortnight to three weeks later on the cordons 
than from walls. This is a great advantage, in 
prolonging the Plum season in gardens like 
these in which standard plums seem imprac¬ 
ticable, from the ravages of birds, and also partly 
from peculiarities of position and climate. A 
second and later crop of such fine Plums as the 
Gages, Jefferson, Golden Drop, and Impera- 
trice is invaluable for dessert. 
Most seasons, the Cordon Plums are quite 
equal in quality and almost as large in size as 
those gathered from walls. In exceptionally 
cold or wet seasons, the plums, as might be 
expected, are rather smaller on the Cordons. 
But the quality here has been excellent in all 
seasons. Singularly enough, too, the wasps are 
less troublesome to the fruit on the Cordons 
—possibly this arises from their noveltju It 
seems to take wasps and such insects some time 
to alter their habits. They have been accus¬ 
tomed for centuries to find luscious fruit on 
sunny walls, and they make a dash at the 
walls in search of it, flying right over the lines 
of ripe plums stretched in front of it, and 
seldom, apparently, finding out their mistake. 
For I have seen them often flitting from bough 
to bough on fruitless Apricot trees, in search of 
the delicious plums which they could obviously 
smell, but could not see or find.—D. T. Fish, 
Hard'wiche. 
SPATHIPIIYLLUM CANDIDUM. 
S his very elegant plant was imported 
from the United States of Columbia by 
Mr. Bull, in 1874, through his collector, 
Mr. Shuttleworth. Like most of its allies, it 
requires to be grown in a stove temperature, 
and from its slender habit, and its pure white 
spathes, it is well worth a place where interest¬ 
ing plants are cared for, as it flowers in com¬ 
paratively small pots, and thus becomes useful 
for setting beside other plants of different 
habit and character. 
It has a creeping rhizome. The leaves, 
which are quite smooth, spring erect from the 
root-stock, and have green petioles 5 in. to 6 in. 
long ; these are furnished below with a pale 
membranous sheath, above which, for about an 
inch, they are very slender and almost terete, 
passing into the short geniculus or joint by which 
they are connected with the leaf-blade, the latter 
