74 
THE FLORIST AND POMOLOGIST. 
[May, 
sible time, we would in every case advise the 
thorough trenching of the soil before planting. 
The same applies to fruit-trees. When size 
is wanted in preference to fruit (at least for 
a number of years), we would always advise 
trenching, and when the land is poor a quan¬ 
tity of manure may be added. The medium 
practice for ordinary orchards is the best. 
Few persons wish to wait longer than is 
necessary for fruit, and by curtailing the roots 
it may he had more speedily. Some affirm 
that rich soil is more productive of roots than 
poor soil, but in no case have we ever found 
this to be so. Large strong roots are always 
formed in rich land, but in gritty and poor soil 
abundance of fibry roots are met with. 
In illustration of this subject reference may 
be made to Vines grown in rich versus poor soil. 
We know two of the largest nursery firms in 
which the Pot Vines are established by methods 
quite opposite to each other. In the one, after 
the plants are fairly into active growth, strong 
rich soil is used ; and in the other, gritty and 
somewhat poor loam. The former plan produces 
stronger wood and larger roots, but the latter 
brings much better ripened canes, and the pots 
are crammed with fibry roots. On several 
occasions when we have had to lift Vines it 
has been a notable fact that the worst rooted 
plants have been in extra rich soil, and the 
best and most fibry roots have been found in 
sandy loam by no means rich. When roots 
are thus abundant, it is not at all difficult to 
give them good food suitable to their wants, 
either by applications of liquid manure or by 
top-dressings of good solid manure. 
To prevent the roots of fruit-trees running 
across the border without filling it with then- 
rootlets and perhaps in this way getting into 
bad soil, it is a good practice to build barriers 
across with broken bricks and lime rubbish, 
then abundance of small roots will be formed, 
which do well when they are again at liberty.— 
M. Temple, Impney Hall. 
HOLLIES INJURED BY MICE. 
HEN -walking the other day through a 
shrubbery extensively planted with 
holly, I was rather surprised to find, 
after so mild a winter, a great num¬ 
ber of fine young trees, eight to nine feet high, 
completely barked round, apparently by rabbits 
or hares ; but upon close examination I found 
that some of the trees had been stripped and 
peeled six or seven feet up-wards from the 
ground, the most slender shoots being as 
neatly dressed off as if they had been scraped 
with a sharp knife. Knowing that the mis¬ 
chievous rodents, which sometimes have to 
carry more than they deserve, could not have 
done it, I was soon able to satisfy myself that 
the pretty little voles, shooting through then- 
runs in the dry grass, were the real culprits ; 
and much as one may enjoy seeing them in 
the woods and hedges, I certainly wish they 
would find less expensive food, or that game- 
keepers, -who now have little to preserve, would 
leave off killing their natural enemies the owls, 
and our soft-padded feline friends of the hearth, 
who, if they do take a young pheasant when 
temptation is over-strong, certainly assist in a 
very intelligible way in maintaining the balance 
so ruthlessly upset by a class of men who have 
blundered rough-shod over every other in¬ 
terest on an estate in order to secure a good 
show of game.—"W. Coleman, Eastnor Castle 
Gardens. 
REGISTER OF NOVELTIES. 
NEW PLANTS. 
Adiantum Victoria, Moore ( Gard. Chron., 
N. s., xvii.,428).—Avery handsome dwarf Maidenhair, 
likely to prove invaluable for pot culture and as a 
market plant. It forms close low tufts 4—6 inches 
high, crowded with bipinnate fronds of a rich green 
colour, and w-ith rather large bluntly conical or sub- 
rhomboidal pinnules, bearing oblong sori. It was 
raised by Mr. Bause, and is supposed to be a hybrid 
between A. Ghiesbreghtii and A. decorum, but appears 
more like a dwarfed form of A. farleyense lst-class 
Certificate B.H.S., March, 1882.—General Horticul¬ 
tural Co. (John Wills). 
JSchmea PANICULIGEEA, Grisebach. —A hand¬ 
some West Indian Bromeliad, having ligulate spiny- 
toothed leaves abruptly enlarged at the base, and 
with a shortly acuminate apex, the flower scape 
several feet high, of a reddish-purple clothed with 
white down, supporting a compound panicle, 1—2 
feet long, of numerous rose-coloured flowers having 
bright purple projecting petals, the rachides bracts 
and bractlets all rose-coloured.—W. Bull. 
Aloe abyssinica Peacockii, Baker ( Bot. Mag., 
t. 6620).—A very fine Abyssinian Aloe, flowered in 
Mr. Peacock’s loan collection while at Kew. It is 
stemless, with a rosette of 20—30 lanceolate leaves, 
which are lj ft. long, dull glaucous green with 
toothed margins, and produces branched panicles, 
supporting at the ends of the branches a dense oblong 
raceme of lemon-yellow cylindrical flowers an inch 
long.—J. T. Peacock. 
Alsophila Eebeccje, F. Mueller. — A fine new 
tree fern from Queensland, having a slender stem, 
supporting on short black-scaled stipes the elliptic 
bipinnate firm-textured glabrous fronds, the larger 
pinnae of which bear numerous stalked linear-acu¬ 
minate pinnules with an unequal subcordate base and 
