760 
THE GARDENING WORLD. 
July 31, 1886. 
the upper side sloping towards the lower side and the 
apex of the shoot, and three parts through. The upper 
portion is then slightly twisted to bring the cut surface 
in contact with the soil, and is pegged down firmly and 
covered with a fine sandy compost. Water lightly with 
a fine rose can and little more attention will be needed 
until it is found that the layers are rooted and become 
independent of the parent plant, when they can be 
separated and transplanted if desired. 
For propagating these plants by cuttings or pipings, 
a space of ground should be selected in a sheltered 
position near a wall, and if hand-lights are employed, 
numbers of other plants, such as Veronicas, Pent- 
stemons, &c., can be raised in the same way. The soil 
should be finely sifted and contain a good proportion of 
sand, being well drained and raised slightly above the 
level to prevent the accumulation of water around the 
bases of the cuttings. This is especially necessary for 
Pinks, which are very impatient of excessive moisture. 
Pipings consist of the shoots 3 ins. or 4 ins. long, which 
are not cut but pulled off the plant, and do not usually 
require any trimming; they must be pulled straight 
and sharply, or they would be torn and not likely to 
be very satisfactory. When cuttings are employed they 
must be cut neatly just below a joint, the lower leaves 
removed close down to the stem, and when inserting 
them firm the soil carefully around them and at the 
base. — Scolytus. 
-- 
LONDON GARDENING.— III. 
Its Mixon Difficulties. 
They are five ; — Walls, Cats, Cramped pSace, Intrac¬ 
table Soil, and Hard Water. The first of these is 
practically the worst at present, inasmuch as it seems 
to be seldom even recognised as a difficulty, and until 
the corner of recognition is turned of course treatment 
is not so much as in sight. Yet the Wall difficulty is 
amenable to treatment, though not of the heroic order. 
In the country the advantages of a walled garden are 
many ; walls afford shelter, store warmth, break the 
force of the wind, and harbour few insects if well built 
and well kept. But the country walled garden is 
usually more or less spacious, and outside its walls 
stretch open fields or fragrant woodlands, over which 
the wind can rush unchecked ; and oh ! what a dif¬ 
ference that makes! Healthy breezes charge the 
garden walls, and toss the boughs of the trees that peep 
over them ; the flowers within are sheltered from the 
violence, yet refreshed by the pleasant movement of the 
outside world ; the walls protect without imprisoning 
them, and they breathe a continually changing air. 
But in the little London garden walls means stagnation. 
Itself hemmed in on all sides by high houses, and often 
planted thickly with tall trees, the space allotted by the 
builder for what he grandiloquently calls “pleasure 
grounds ” is divided and sub-divided by walls, generally 
built of rough and uneven bricks, which effectually bar 
the passage of such currents of air as may have found 
their way into the enclosure. Mow these wall are pre¬ 
sumably unavoidable, for in such a situation hedges are 
out of the question, and palings would not give general 
satisfaction .because wood is popularly held to be more 
perishable than it really is, and the British householder 
delights in the solid, the durable, the impermeable— 
in his “ money’s worth ” in fact, as he fondly calculates. 
Thus the walls are as impregnable as an institution as 
they are materially proof against the solicitations of the 
breezes. Me must have them. But why should we 
not try, as far as we can, to reduce the mischief that 
they do ? why should we play into their hand, so to 
speak, by putting our plants immediately beneath 
them ? Plants love ventilation and sunlight, and these 
walls prevent the one and exclude the other ; yet, ill as 
the London gardener can afford to lose any available 
light or air, what is the constant practice in laying out 
a town garden ? "What but to run a border round it 
immediately under the walls, so as to bring the plants 
well within their shadow and their influence ? Mow 
suppose the walks, and not the border, were to skirt the 
garden and be thrown into juxta-position to the walls ; 
and that the plants were to be grouped in beds or 
borders in the middle : — should we not secure for plant 
life the maximum of sunshine and of air, and the 
minimum of molestation, at the same time, by auts, 
earwigs, snails, and cats ? 
Ah ! cats. Truth has obliged me to station them 
second among the drawbacks to the happiness of the 
Lon Ion gardener. But I must frankly avow that 
counsel for the prosecution where cats are the accused I 
could never be. Sandies, tortoiseshells, tabbies, lon- 
haired, short-haired, green-eyed, yellow-eyed—I love 
them all, as the late Bishop Thirlwall loved them, even 
to the point of personal sacrifice; and traduced and 
misunderstood as they too often are, I have found them, 
as he found them, worthy of esteem as well as affec¬ 
tion. His easy-chair and his waste-paper basket, I 
think, the good bishop was wont to surrender to his 
cat at her convenience, and in the shadow of such a 
name one may well proclaim one’s love for cats with 
pride. But plants are nearer to one’s heart than easy- 
chairs or the baskets which are the comfort of the tidy 
soul, and though I ■would not hurt a cat for hurting a 
plant of mine, I would do—and, indeed, have done— 
all I could to defend my plants from cats, and my 
simple devices are easily recorded. The first point is 
to make the descent of the walls an arduous under¬ 
taking—that is, if the borders lie at the wall’s foot in 
the conventional fashion ; it is obvious that if walks 
are there instead of borders, neither the “thud ” of the 
descending paws nor the passion of the paw’s owners 
for a warm wall to loll against during the noon-tide 
siesta will do any harm. But in the ordinary case fine- 
meshed wire, 18 ins. deep, fastened to the inner edge 
of the wall, and kept upright at short intervals by 
wooden supports nailed to the brickwork, will be found 
a pretty effectual check. A precipice per se may be a 
trifle to cathood, but a precipice edged by a stiff fence, 
with no claw-hold on the offside, is regarded, I observe, 
as a widely different affair. Cats sometimes have access 
to a garden other than by -wall-scaling, and great is the 
havoc when it is the scene of a battle royal ; but on less 
dramatic occasions a liberal dressing of pepper or flour 
of sulphur will usually avail to put the visitors out of 
conceit with any border they may especially affect. 
Let us duly note in passing how profitable under 
some circumstances is the smallness of small gardens ! 
Aye, and that though the very next difficulty on our 
list is none other than Cramped Space. If, as I have 
heard it said, the secret of an orderly house is the 
banishment of superfluities, a house occupied in every 
corner is less likely to fall a prey to the mystery of ac¬ 
cumulations than one inhabited only here and there. 
For we all know how conveniently things that have no 
particular place, and perhaps no particular use, are 
relegated to rooms that have no particular owner. Yet 
a single “ box-room,” it must be admitted, is a comfort 
in any house, nor is there any reason why its hetero¬ 
geneous occupants should not be marshalled in the most 
edifying order. 
Just so in a garden. The accumulations of garden 
life, indeed, differ from their indoor kindred in that 
they are not only inoffensive, but most valuable, and it 
would be hard to over-estimate the consequent value of 
a few square yards of empty ground—behind some 
hedge or in the angle of some out-buildings—in which 
to store them. A pit full of dead leaves here, a pile of 
decaying turf there, little mounds of spent manure, of 
river-sand, of peat, and of fibrous loam, hard by—a shed 
in this corner to shelter clean pots and pans as well as 
gardening tools—an airy little loft up that ladder where 
bulbs can be safely lodged, be the winter ever so wet— 
oh ! what a tempting picture this sort of outdoor 
“box-room” is! But the London gardener must 
sternly turn the back of her imagination upon it; 
such delights are not for her. Her little pet stores, 
moreover, cannot be gracefully accommodated within 
her four uncompromising walls ; she must cover them 
with sacking, or matting, or boards, or other unsightly 
materials, and even then those that can be injured by 
the weather will be injured. Still much can be done 
when you philosophically cease to consider appearances ; 
in my little garden a big washing-tub is conspicuously 
en evidence, full of “Auricula-compost”; it has a 
wooden lid of the rough-and-ready kind, and if every¬ 
one did his duty in the world as stoutly as does my 
washing-tub, and look no worse than it looks, a great 
improvement in the world at large would very shortly 
become apparent. "Where there is a will, there is a 
way to garden without gardening conveniences, and 
after a time, if one tries hard, one ceases to wish for 
them, or at least to wish for them otherwise than 
spasmodically. 
Of the last two difficulties I have not left myself 
room to speak this week, but they can be conveniently 
considered conjointly with the other class of opponents, 
those plants, to wit, which will not grow kindly, or 
perhaps grow at all, in London—about which I shall 
have something to say in my next paper.— C. A. Q. 
PINK PIPINGS. 
Calling at the Royal Mursery, Slough, a fortnight 
a S°> I found the process of taking cuttings or pipings 
of Pinks in full operation. The second or third week 
in July is, perhaps, the best time to do this, and cer¬ 
tainly the cuttings to be taken should be removed from 
the plants before they have lengthened and hardened 
into side-blooming shoots. At Slough, John Ball and 
his staff were hard at it, and I found a different plan was 
now employed as compared with the one in operation 
when I was at Slough thirty years ago—namely, that 
of striking the pipings under hand-glasses on a hot-bed. 
Mow, some nice sandy soil is prepared, and 48-sized 
pots are filled nearly full with it—after being carefully 
drained, of course—and on the surface is placed a thin 
layer of silver sand. The pipings are then inserted 
somewhat thickly, the soil pressed firmly about them, 
and then they are treated to a good watering at first. 
Then the pots are placed in a frame on a gentle bottom- 
heat, kept moderately moist, shaded from the sun, and 
the lights kept nearly closed, just allowing a little air 
during the day. In about three weeks or so they have 
made roots, more air is given ; later on they are placed 
in a cold frame and encouraged to grow, and when 
strong enough planted out in the open ground. 
But this caution is necessary. If a Pink-grower 
would have his flowers well laced when they bloom, he 
must not only plant out in the autumn, but he must 
plant out early enough for the roots to get a good hold 
upon the soil before winter sets in. That is a golden 
rule in regard to Pink culture. I have known Pink 
plants to be ordered in March. How can anyone 
expect them to flower in character in July ?— E. D. 
-—>X<-- 
STONE’S CYPRIPEDIUM. 
The original Cypripedium Stonei, the narrow 
petalled flower (A) in the accompanying illustration, 
is an admittedly fine plant, and when well grown 
with several spikes of three or four flowers each, 
a noble object in any collection; but beautiful 
though it be, it is fairly eclipsed by its rarer and 
more showy variety, “platytamum,” (B) which was 
introduced by Messrs. Hugh Low & Co. as a chance 
plant among a lot of the old Stonei nearly twenty years 
ago, and first flowered soon after by John Day, Esq., 
the learned Orchidist, of Tottenham. The beauty of 
this foundling cannot fail to suggest the question, 
“ Is it a cross-bred seedling, or what ?” From a study 
of the flowers, side by side, I should say it certainly is 
not the result of cross-fertilisation between two species, 
but rather that it is the outcome of a freak of nature 
in a plant of the true type. 
Comparison shows that the two plants in most 
respects are identical, or resemble each other as nearly 
as any Orchids of the same species do. Both have the 
same slipper-like lip, white veined and flushed with 
rose, the jaw-like fold on the under-side, and the same 
yellow pink-tinted fringed cushion at the base. Both 
plants resemble each other in their pure white sepals 
with nearly black lines, and differ only in the form of 
their petals. A critical examination of these, how¬ 
ever, shows that there is no other difference between 
them than just that which might take place by the 
widening of the petals of the common C. Stonei. In 
proof of this, it will be seen, on reference to the illus¬ 
tration, that the typical form has the dark chocolate 
markings on its petals displayed in spots or irregular 
blotches running into lines along the nervures. 
Imagine that by some process these very same mark¬ 
ings would have to supply the material for widening 
out into the variety platytienum, and I think we must 
conclude that they, being surface colours, would assume 
just the form they present on the wide-petalled form, 
the widening of the blotches reducing the lines in order 
to cover the broader surface. 
This is just what has taken place in the broad-petalled 
hybrid, C. Morgan®, raised by Messrs. Veiteh between 
C. Stonei and C. Veitchii, no trace of the lines of C. 
Stonei appearing although the plant in other respects 
bears strong traces of both parents. C. Stonei platyt*- 
num which is a great beauty, is just one of those plants, 
the hope of obtaining one of which animates the breast 
of every Orchid grower when watching over his un¬ 
flowered importations. The flowers illustrated come 
from Sir Trevor Lawrence’s collection at Burford Lodge, 
where C. S. platyt»num flowered with two spikes of 
three flowers each this summer. C. Stonei and its 
varieties, some of which have much more twisted 
