August 18, 1888. 
THE GARDENING WORLD. 
805 
noticed many splendid heads that would turn the scale 
at 10 lbs. These find most favour with the costers and 
greengrocers in poor neighbourhoods, who are the 
principal mediums through which the bulk of the 
Cabbage crop is distributed, the higher-class dealers 
taking comparatively few. 
The value of shoddy, or wool refuse, as a manure for 
Potatos is well illustrated by the difference of growth 
in a patch of Beauty of Hebron, one half of which was 
treated with stable manure, the other with shoddy, the 
latter doing altogether much the best ; but unfortu¬ 
nately they have become a prey to the destroyer. The 
smell of the decaying haulm meets us in all directions 
in this district, the only variety apparently safe at 
present being Champion. All other root crops are 
doing admirably. A good breadth of Carter’s Per¬ 
fection Beet is splendid, though we ourselves, for 
private use, prefer Dell’s Dwarf Crimson. Parsnips 
are unusually good, the same remark applying to 
Carrots, the sorts grown being Intermediate and 
James’s variety. These are sown broadcast, and 
thinned out with small hand-hoes. This involves more 
labour than sowing in drills, but the extra cost is well 
covered by the superiority of the produce. Onions, 
both autumn and spring-sown, have been excellent 
crops. Reading is first favourite here for spring sowing, 
and in this connection it may be news to some to hear 
magnificent crop it was. It is interesting to notice, as 
regards Vegetable Marrows, that those sown in the 
open fields without the slightest protection, are very 
little behind those raised much earlier and planted out 
under what are supposed to be more favourable cir¬ 
cumstances.— JV. B. G. 
-- 
GARDENING MANIAS. 
I ONCE heard the remark fall from the lips of an 
authority on gardening, that to achieve perfection in 
horticulture “we must take up one subject at a time, 
and develop it to its utmost limits, leave it there a 
finished work, and take up another, and exhaust it 
similarly, and so on ad infinitum ” ! Were the 
suggestion even practicable, in substance it is an 
absurdity, for although at first sight it would appear to 
be a step indisputably in the right direction, a little 
reflection, however, will utterly demolish any premature 
opinions formed on the matter, and show that the 
Utopia of horticulture could never be achieved in such a 
manner. The life blood of horticulture necessarily does 
not lie in the accomplishment of perfection in one single 
subject, more than the beauty of mind exists in the 
education of a single faculty. The relations in either 
case which one subject or faculty has to its compeer are 
so manifestly undivided, that all efforts in effecting such 
a means to an end must prove futile. 
painter. Anyhow, we are fortunately emerging out of 
the region of fast and vulgar colour into the quiet, the 
harmonious and the natural, but whether any 
advantage has been derived from passing through the 
ordeal, is perhaps a little perplexing to define. 
No sooner had we awakened from the somnambulism 
of the bedding-out mania than we tottered under the 
pressure of the Orchid mania, which in virulence and 
magnitude, outstripped by far all other preceding 
rages. Here again the rage extended in dimensions, 
discarding other plants to the accommodating custody 
of the rubbish heap, to disappear for ever, for all they 
cared. Thanks to the clear-headed men who saved us 
their loss, once again we are recovering from the 
attack, and on the highway to better things. After all, 
are Orchids really worth, from any point of view, the 
place they hold in horticulture 1 The Orchid, no doubt, 
is a charming flower, but taking into account the 
sparsity of flower, how short-lived, and in general its 
non-decorative features when not in flower, and all 
other conditions attending it, little remains to show 
that it is an economic subject in proportion to the 
extent of its past and present cultivation. True, its 
cultivation offers little obstacles, even to the amateurs, 
provided to begin with the plants are in tolerable 
health, and the exercise of ordinary common sense be 
brought to bear upon them. There may, however, 
occasionally be some difficulty in overcoming inherent 
parental weakness in near related species, as is often 
met with in the animal kingdom, but in such cases the 
question confronts us, are these worth the time and 
trouble ? 
In the occurrence of such a type Nature herself 
destines its extinction, which sooner or later takes 
place. The Orchid scarce merits the power of exacting 
the same amount of the gardener’s skill as many other 
branches of horticulture. Many will succeed in the 
cultivation of an Orchid who could not successfully 
grow our soft-wooded Heaths, leaving alone the more 
fastidious and slow-growing ones. The hard-wooded 
class of plants is the department in gardening which, 
I believe myself, tests the gardener’s skill. The system 
is not only founded on practical experience, but is 
necessarily conducted on scientific and philosophic 
grounds—and where do we find a class of plants that 
attracts general admiration like the Heath 1 Some 
may think differently, and, I have no doubt, will ; 
but there remains no doubt in the matter, that a house 
or collection of well-grown Heaths—and they cannot 
be considered but as either good or worthless—is one 
of the highest, if not the highest, attestations to the 
ability of the grower that in any other sphere he could 
well merit. Faint attempts are made to grow Heaths 
from time to time in many gardens with equally faint 
results; and in this country, though in several 
instances these plants share a place in the collection, 
with one exception, or two at most, they must rank 
in the order of emaciation and shade. Much of this 
is dependent on the employer’s taste, and the uncon¬ 
servative weakness and unrest for change. This, to 
some extent, extenuates the case and exonerates the 
gardener from blame.— D. Chisholm. 
-- 
ZINNIA ELEGANS. 
The value of these for bedding purposes does not seem 
to be fully recognised. Mexican plants—Composites 
particularly—flower, as a rule, with great freedom in dry 
seasons in this country, and this was the case with 
Zinnia elegans last year in a large bed of mixed double 
varieties at Stile Hall, Chiswick. The prolonged dry 
weather in no way affected their flowering qualities, 
the plants being freely branched and very floriferous. 
This year they have been similarly produced, and 
notwithstanding the amount of rain in July, they have 
not exceeded their usual height of 12 ins. or 15 ins., 
being branched and bushy, making the bed quite full; 
and every branch terminates in a hemispherical or 
flattened head. All or nearly all are double, with flat 
ligulate florets, beautifully and regularly imbricated. 
In colour they range through clear tints of white, 
yellow, orange, rose, red, salmon, scarlet, and other 
shades. When once expanded they last a long time in 
excellent condition, and are admirably suitable for 
cut-flower purposes on account of their long-lasting 
propensities when cut, and the rigidity of their stalks, 
which keeps the heads in any desired position. Our 
illustration shows the free-branching habit of the plant, 
which is quite natural, provided when the plants are 
raised in heat they do not get drawn before they are 
pricked out and removed to cool quarters. They 
should be finally planted out when all danger of frost 
is over. 
~ acj n L'/xfLAMm. 
Zinnia elegans. 
of Onions being clamped like Potatos or Wurzels, but 
though strange, it is true. They are well ripened, and 
then got together much the same as Potatos, the only 
difference in their favour being an extra covering 
of litter before the earth is thrown over the heap. 
Spinach has just been sown, and I notice that greater 
care is taken here in setting this crop out than we find 
in most private gardens. Every single plant is given 
ample space for its full development, the result being a 
crop of larger and more succulent leaves, which con¬ 
stitute it the best saleable sample that can be produced, 
and very different to that which is allowed to remain 
crowded in the rows. 
Lettuces have been splendid, Prince of Wales’s Cos 
being exclusively grown for summer supply. This, we 
think, is little known in private establishments, though 
unsurpassed by any kind grown. Our own experience 
with it has been that when grown at the same time, 
and under exactly the same conditions as Paris White, 
Victoria White, and Kingsholm White Cos, it is 
superior to them all. Painted Lady is pronounced the 
earliest and most prolific of the Scarlet Runners, and 
White Dutch is regarded as too coarse. At present the 
general public are not educated up to the standard of 
Mammoth Runners, which are, no doubt, good for 
sensational and exhibition purposes, but quite out of 
place in the kitchen. Of Broad Beans, Windsors are 
found the most saleable, a breadth sown in February is 
now having the final gathering taken from them; a 
Nor is this all: onstitutionally one gardener from a 
sentient stand-point is different from another, and 
withal a vastly superior piece of mechanism to the 
universal gardener, who, officiating under the dispen¬ 
sation of the above assumption, would essentially exist 
as the slave of precept—a nonvolitious being—and an 
atrophied shade in the ideal waste. As matters stand 
now, with all their acknowledged shortcomings, most 
intelligent masters in the art make a specialty of a 
certain subject that attracts their attention beyond any 
other, and thus silently and unostentatiously raise up 
the structure—the offspring of love. And yet the 
automaton plays a conspicuous part in the drama. Of 
course in a great measure the gardener is a creature of 
circumstances, and despite his force of character may 
at any moment fall a victim to “ the rage ” or current 
mania. How very few escaped the allurements of 
the bedding-out rage a few years ago, and had been 
spared reason enough to save at least a few of the never- 
failing and attractive herbaceous plants. It was 
unnecessary, they thought ; the new system was to 
reform the whole face of then existing matters. 
History of course repeats itself, and in a few years men 
who had lost their heads were observed returning to pick 
them up again. As was to be expected, these men 
found no mental food in the system sufficiently 
attractive to induce them to persevere with it. Design 
and colour-tinting lay, strictly speaking, in the sphere 
of the Kidderminster carpet designer, or the landscape 
