10 
the Gardening world. 
September i‘2, 1891. 
the small culture found in private gardens 
is but fruit growing in miniature, compared 
with what the South-eastern County can 
show. 
It is very doubtful whether the whole 
world can show land so remarkably undu¬ 
lated, so rich in natural as well as artificial 
shelter, so varied in the character of the 
soil as Kent is. The valleys and hills, the 
slopes and flats, all more or less seem 
naturally fitted for fruit production, and 
the enormous expansion of the vocation 
which has taken placeduringthepast twenty 
years shows that those who understand 
fruit culture are profiting by this expansion. 
When we hear of men who have a thou¬ 
sand acres of fruit land, in different parts 
of the county, with their own Jam 
Factories and all the extensive appliances 
for the disposal of the fruit profitably, we 
seem compelled to regard these as in some 
sort fruit magnates, or the aristocracy of 
market gardening. 
Apart from the question of profit or 
otherwise, and that is beside the matter 
now, there can be absolutely no doubt but 
that the County of Kent is not only specially 
a great fruit producing county, but also 
exhibits, in an eminent degree, fruit culture 
in its best aspects. To those interested in 
a question which has exercised the public 
mind so much of late, no more efficient 
lesson can be taught than the Garden of 
England affords just now. 
B|way North.— That is a very pretty story, 
J ^ oft retold, of the railway porter who 
being granted a holiday, employed it in 
visiting the stations of other Railway Com¬ 
panies. Odd as that form of recreation 
may seem, yet there is much that is natural 
in it, because railway work was necessarily 
the dominating element in the man's mind. 
Very similar positions are those of the 
numerous gardeners or other horticulturists 
who have during the week flitted North. 
Primarily they have all been animated with 
the desire to spend a holiday pleasantly, but 
subordinately there has been urging them 
to this course the attractions of the great 
exhibition in Edinburgh, and not least the 
opportunity to visit some of the many 
beautiful gardens for which Scotland is 
famous. 
It has been specially fortunate to many 
that the ordinary holiday season and the 
holding of the great Scotch Show should 
have fitted in so admirably. They will 
have a splendidholiday-time, because whilst 
enjoying physically to the utmost the 
glorious change of air and scenery which 
the North affords, they will return home 
charged with new garden thoughts and 
aspirations derived from their visits to 
beautiful Scotch gardens. Gardening in 
the North is to some extent different from 
that seen in the South, so far as regards 
conditions created by diverse climate. 
Hence there is to the Southron much that 
s pleasingly fresh to be seen. There is 
also associated with many of the fine gar¬ 
dens and nurseries with rvhich Scotland 
abounds, much beautiful scenery, and all 
accustomed to garden in flat, uninteresting 
districts can testify what a new joy is given 
to horticulture when found among hills and 
dales, mountains and valleys, forests and 
woods. 
Our Southern friends will proabbly 
mostly pay visits to Dalkeith, Melville 
Castle, Newbattle, all within easy reach of 
Edinburgh, Drumlanrig in the South-west, 
and the world-renowned vine-yards of the 
Messrs. Thomson at Clovenfords, places of 
great horticultural note, or some of the fine 
nursery establishments, so admirably con¬ 
ducted, with which the North abounds. 
Wherever they go they will meet with a 
hearty Scotch welcome, and will return 
home delighted with all they have seen and 
experienced awa’ North. 
he Autumn Plant Sales. —We shall 
soon be right into the thick of the 
autumn plant sales. They are abundant in 
the neighbourhood of the metropolis, where 
perhaps the largest plant nurseries for 
market sale exists, but they will be heard 
of in remoter parts of the country soon, and 
the hammer of the auctioneer will be un¬ 
usually active. Annual plant auction sales 
have now become permanent horticultural 
institutions. It would seem as if the 
hundreds of thousands of pot plants the 
market growers produce could only be fitly 
dispersed through that medium, although 
the sales still always seem to leave behind 
legions of other plants almost innumerable. 
The tree and shrub trader also has his 
annual sale now, and marvellous is it with 
everybody as it were full up with garden 
stuff of all descriptions that purchasers are 
found. Yet we may be sure that the astute 
men who annually produce these plants or 
tree legions know very well that they will 
find purchasers from somewhere. Of course 
there can be no pleasure to the true gar¬ 
dener to know that myriads of these plants 
are raised but to serve a temporary purpose, 
a life perhaps of a month or two alter being 
sold, and then left to die. Still it is, to put 
it roughly, all in the way of trade, and in 
that aspect we are bound to look at it. 
The vocation of plant raising for market 
employs a large number of skilled men for 
whom perhaps there would be no employ¬ 
ment but for this business. The fact too 
that plants can be obtained cheaply in enor¬ 
mous quantities of almost every conceivable 
sort, and at almost any moment, enables 
very many wealthy persons to surround 
themselves with plants and flowers almost 
luxuriantly, and far beyond the dreams of 
the floral sybarite of fifty years ago. Our 
market plant and nursery trades are great 
businesses now, and we desire for them 
every success. 
Mr. Sydney J. Burgess has been engaged as gar¬ 
dener to Sir Robert Affleck, Bart., Dalham Hall, 
Newmarket. 
The Tomb of the late Mr. William Holmes will be 
unveiled on Saturday, the 19th inst., at 4 p.m., at 
Abney Park. There will be a short address and a 
little singing. 
Mr. James Hodgson, for the last six years gar¬ 
dener to E. Chaplin, Esq., Shoreham, Sevenoaks, 
has been engaged as gardener to C. Marriott, Esq., 
Cotesbach, Lutterworth. 
Mr. William Chester, who has been at Chats- 
worth for about 40 years, and for 30 years has been 
foreman in the Conservatory, has been selected to 
fill the post of gardener shortly to be vacated by Mr. 
Owen Thomas. 
A Strange Phenomenon. — A short time ago an old 
Elm in Osterley Park, Middlesex, was observed to 
be on fire about midnight. The lower portion of 
the tree was alive and apparently sound, but the 
upper branches were either dead or in a state of 
decay. The tree is supposed to have been struck by 
lightning and thus set on fire, but it seems singular 
that no one took the trouble to extinguish it, for it 
continued to burn slowly until the heavy rains 
drowned out the smouldering embers. 
The Flower Show Disaster at Newcastle. —The 
Mayor of Newcastle having made an appeal to the 
inhabitants for subscriptions in aid of a fund for 
clearing off the liabilities incurred by the local horti¬ 
cultural society on account of the recent show, which 
had to be abandoned owing to the tents having been 
swept away by the gale, we are pleased to hear that 
there has been a very satisfactory response, the sum 
of ^525 having been collected up to the 5th inst. 
This speaks well for the love of horticulture in the 
district, and we hope will lead the Committee to re¬ 
consider their decision to abandon the society 
Perfumes ar.d the Health. —According to the Rente 
tie l'Horticulture Beige, a Hungarian physician asserts 
that flowers and the perfumes that are extracted 
from them have a salutary influence upon the health, 
and can be considered as therapeutic agents of great 
effect. He says that the sojourn in a perfumed 
atmosphere prevents pulmonary affections and 
arrests the development of phthisis. He cites in sup¬ 
port of his opinion the towns where the manufacture 
of perfumes is carried on upon a grand scale, and 
where phthisis is very rare, thanks to the odoriferous 
vapours which escape from the numerous distilleries. 
Arctic Expedition.— Some members of the Kite 
Arctic Expedition arrived at Halifax, N.S., on the 
30th August, and stated that the expedition reached 
77.43 N. and 70.20 W. The country in those regions 
was rocky, and flowers grew in luxuriant profusion, 
although the vegetation did not reach higher than 
six or eight inches. The members of the expedition 
bring with them large collections of plants, flowers, 
and butterflies, some of which were previously 
unknown to exist. They found all the published 
charts of Greenland to be incorrect. The)- left the 
North Greenland Expedition, under Lieutenant 
Peray, in Melville Bay, 2,500 miles north of Halifax. 
The latter proposes next spring to penetrate still 
further north on snow shoes, in order to determine, 
if possible, the boundaries of Greenland. The party 
have built a house in Melville Bay, in which they 
will winter. Mrs. Peary will remain there during 
her husband’s expedition in spring. The scientific 
specimens which have left St. Johns weigh thirteen 
tons; they will be sent by steamship to Philadelphia. 
Treatment of Cryptogamic Diseases. —We have 
received a small pamphlet and a supplement thereto 
on the above subject from Mr. Jean Souheur, 
Antwerp, Belgium. The agent employed in comba¬ 
ting fungoid diseases of the Vine, Potato, Tomato, 
Beet and other subjects is a comparatively new one 
named Sulfosteatite Cuprique. One of the ingredients 
of this agent is sulphate of copper, so treated that the 
salts resulting from it adhere to the other substances 
employed in a finely-powdered condition. The pre¬ 
paration is applied to the plants in the form of a fine 
powder, by means of a bellows made for the purpose, 
and the whole machine requires only one person to 
work it. The powder is so fine that it is carried 
about in the form of a white cloud by the lightest 
breath of air, and so reaches both the upper and 
under surface of the leaves as well as the fruit. Mr. 
Souheur states that the powder is inoffensive to work¬ 
men, and is undoubtedly economical, since only 25 
to 35 pounds are required for an acre of vines. Four 
or five applications may be given during the course 
of the season, and for this purpose 60 to So lbs. 
per acre are considered sufficient for the season. The 
first application should be made before the flowers 
open, and the next five or six weeks later on. The 
supplement deals with the treatment of diseases of 
the Potato, Tomato, and Coffee Tree. The composi¬ 
tion of Sulphosteatite is there said to consist of 9 to 
10 per cent, of Sulphates of Copper, and 90 per cent, 
of Silicate of Magnesia. 
The Manchester Fruit Congress. —Mr. Gladstone 
writing to Mr. Bruce Findlay on August 25th 
says :—" I will not withhold the expression of my 
good wishes for the fortune and effect of the meeting 
you are to hold in October, but it will, as I hope, 
have the support of those who are much better 
entitled to speak with authority. For many years, 
through the activity of the press, the humble advice 
given by me locally to our cottagers and farmers has 
become an exposition to the country at large which 
I was hardly entitled to deliver, and for which I 
have naturally enough been made the subject of 
witty animadversion. I have, however, a very 
strong conviction that the work which you have in 
hand is a great and beneficial work—that there is a 
great commercial void which ought to be filled by 
British skill and labour, and that the extension of 
what we may term the small culture, in all its 
branches, will produce very considerable moral and 
social as well as economical benefits.” The papers 
announced to be read at the Congress are as 
follow : Mr. Baillie : of Chester, •• The Fruit 
Growing Movement : Present Day Features and 
Prospects.” Mr. Cheal, of Crawley, Sussex: “The 
Condition, Preparation, and After-Treatment of the 
Soil for Fruit Culture.” Mr. S. T. Wright, of 
Hereford : “ Fruit Growing for Profit.” Mr. 
Crump, of Madresfield: “The Raising, Budding, 
Grafting, and Pruning of Apple Trees for Orchard 
and Estate Planting.” Mr. T. F. Rivers, of Saw- 
bridgeworth : “ Orchard House Culture.” Mr. 
Edward Luckhurst, of Romford : " The Importance 
of Early Planting and Shelter in Fruit Culture.” 
