October 7, 1899. 
THE GARDENING WORLD 
85 
Changing the Water in Flower Vases.—A common 
carelessness or want of knowledge on the part of 
those who use cut flowers for their dwelling room 
decoration, is that of allowing the water in the vases 
to become impure. So much is this the case that at 
times it stinks. Nothing sooner invites malaria, and 
lays the footing for typhoid and other dangerous 
fevers. The water should be changed daily, and a 
part of the flower stems should at the same time be 
cut off. This operation also helps to retain the 
flowers fresh for a longer period. 
Planting Ornamental Shrubs.—To get the best 
results in planting ornamental trees and shrubs, it is 
important to give them good soil to begin with, and 
if that ia which they are to be planted is not of high 
quality it will repay the planter to get some, but no 
manure should be used about the roots in any case. 
Trees and shrubs from i ft. to 2 ft. in height are at 
the best size for planting. At this height they plant 
easier, and with much greater success than when 
they are older. Give the roots perfect freedom of 
stretch all around, but avoid planting the trees too 
deeply. Great care should be taken not to allow the 
roots to become dry. Planting may be done either 
in autumn or spring. It is a disputed point which is 
the best time to do so, but we favour autumn plant¬ 
ing. The surface of the soil should either be 
mulched with short^dung or be kept constantly hoed 
through the summer. 
Plants to grow under Trees.—In Gardening 
(American) Mr. Joseph Meehan names a list of plants 
which he finds to succeed beneath Pine trees even in 
dry districts of the United States. He states that 
in Pine woods one seldom or never observes any 
growth beneath the trees. On the other hand, under 
forests of Oak, or Elm, &c., we do find vegetation. 
There must be something] injurious in the Pine 
needles to cause such an effect, and their dark, thick 
heads have also a detrimental influence. To get 
plants to grow beneath them one must first rake off 
the needles from the ground. Then some of the 
lower branches of the Pines must be trimmed off. 
He recommends bulbs for a start, Hyacinths, Tulips 
acd the like. After planting them place a good layer 
of manure over them and if the bulbs were as they 
ought to be, this will bring them along all right. 
Hypericums in several varieties will also succeed. 
So will Euonymous japonicus, Privet in several sorts ; 
sjme Viburnums, and Yuccas. If the only object be 
to have some green covering on the ground plant Ivy, 
Honeysuckles, Euonymus radicans and English Ivy. 
It is imperative that strong rooting varieties of plants 
should be chosen for places like this. Plants with 
long roots will have a better chance of living than 
those with short slender ones. 
The Production of Rubber in the Amazons —Much 
of the rubber-bearing area in the Amazon region is 
situated on the islands of the river Amazon. There 
is altogether an area of 2,500 square miles. The 
upper and lower regions of the Amazon produce the 
same kind of rubber, but that coming from the upper 
river obtains slightly higher prices, being drier by 
the time it reaches the port of shipment. The 
collecting season in the lower Amazons begins about 
April, after the waters have subsided, and ends in 
January or February. The collectors employed are 
principally Brazilians or Portuguese, or half castes. 
The pure South American Indian is of very little use 
as a labourer. There are many thousands of collec¬ 
tors in the rubber field, yet the number does not 
supply the demand. Among the tools used in the 
Indiarubber industry is a clay funnel very like an 
ordinary water jug without a bottom or handle. 
Everyone engaged in the forest carries a knife. One 
of its uses is to cut down fuel for the preparation c| 
rubber. It is necessary to chip a smooth surface on 
the bark before attaching a cup to the tree. This 
is done to prevent impurities from mixing with the 
sap. These cups are stuck into the bark or truck 
of the tree, and a gash made just abcve the cup so 
as to let the sap flow out freely. A tapper can 
manage from 75 to 150 trees a day ; all depends 
upon the distance they are apart. From 7 lbs. to 
21 lbs. of liquid can be obtained in one day. After a 
sufficiently quantity has been collected the workers 
start to coagulate it. Various implements and pro¬ 
cesses are used or gone through, until by fire and so 
on, a cake of some height has been formed The 
process of curing and forming the rubber is very in¬ 
jurious to the eyes. 
Trees forced into faster growth by a milder 
climate than that of their natural habitat—when 
brought away from the same—produce wood 
generally of far less value. The Scots Pine (Pinus 
sylvestris) makes a white wood, soft, and much in¬ 
ferior when grown in the South of England than 
those of its kind away in the North of Scotland, 
whose wood is firm, red, and resinous. 
There are at times misunderstandings and back- 
shrugging between the gardener, coachman or other 
servants on a gentleman’s place as to what is their 
own work and what their neighbours’. Private gar¬ 
deners have to be diplomatic and must also remem¬ 
ber that the gardener is kept for the place, not the 
place for the gardener, and it is necessary to accom¬ 
modate himself to circumstances. 
Do Woodbines injure other Plants ?—A corres¬ 
pondent in an American paper asks whether Wood¬ 
bines growing near Roses will harm them by im¬ 
poverishing the soil. An answer is given by Joseph 
Meehan, of Philadelphia, who says: "Woodbines 
are not to be feared about large trees, but to allow 
them to flourish around Pcses or such like plants, 
is certainly unwise. Rampant Woodbines kill 
shrubs by absorbing moisture w hich their neighbours 
want, and by taking all the food for themselves. 
Further than this, if their shoots become entwined 
with those of other plants that grow near, their 
greater rapidity of growth smothers the under vege¬ 
tation.” We suggest planting the Woodbine to 
clamber over hedges—where these are not likely to 
be injured by so doing—or beside strong and deep 
rooting shrubs and trees. 
The Colouring of Fruits.—The great beauty and 
intensity of colour seen in a very large percentage of 
the fruit exhibits at the recent Crystal Palace show 
has been the subject of meditation for not a few. A 
well-known grower of hardy fruits and plants visited 
our offices recently, and in a discursive conversation 
he broached the subject of fruit colouration. Many 
opinions and experiments to prove this or that 
belief or theory have been made by many interested 
persons all over the country, but after all there has 
been no summary report or analytical draft made 
out from the various writings. In our own experi¬ 
ence we have proved that hot dry summers will 
never give us highly-coloured fruits, unless the rools 
of the fruit trees are abundantly supplied with 
nourishment as well as overhead moisture. Te;ts 
were made at a famous fruit garden in Yorkshire, and 
in a sentence it was found that given nourishment, 
mulchings, watering and dressings of various chemi¬ 
cal manures in a warm summer the fruits were as 
rosy or deeply tinged and streaked according to the 
variety, as anyone could wish them to be. The 
Devon, Kent,Monmouth,and Herefordshire Apples as 
seen at the Crystal Palace, were superior to any other 
in colour. Now, how is this ? Situation has not all 
the effect in colour elaboration. Our friend men¬ 
tioned a case in Cambridgeshire where the best 
coloured and cleanest fruits always came from trees 
growing in the grass. Plums, for instance, are some¬ 
times spotted, and just a trifle rough-skinned under 
some conditions, but ia the instance cited pure and 
smooth fruits could be relied upon from trees on 
grass. Is there greater vigour in surface-tilled fruit 
tree plantations, and is the roughness due to this ? 
In Hereford the rainfall is generally slightly larger 
than in the south-eastern counties, and the fact of 
the red sandstone formation protruding over the area 
of that county may also have its effect. With two 
very large Kent fruit growers, the method whereby 
they secure fine skins and brilliant colour is to grow 
young trees for exhibition fruits under glass for a 
period, until the young fruits have swollen to a 
certain size and then they are taken outdoors to 
finish off. Even here they are protected from cutting 
or forceful winds, birds, &c., by a wire-nettiDg cover. 
Then we might ask what is the colouring matter, is 
it a pigment and what is its purpose ? Black people 
have a pigment just beneath the cuticle, we are told, 
and its use is a physiological one so far that it pre¬ 
vents their skins from blistering or peeling as a 
white man's would do under a tropical sun. In fact, 
our " sun burning” is not scorched skin, but rather 
a f rotective layer of matter or change of skin growth 
to suit requirements ; and so again, we ask, Why is 
fruit coloured and what really helps colouration ? 
There is need for a thorough scientific and practical 
explanation. 
Fatal Feast of Aeo ns— The Blackburn county 
police report the remarkable death of a boy named 
Robert Catterall, aged six, son of a fire-beater, of 
Livesey, near Blackburn. The boy returned home 
on Sunday complaining of headache, and it after¬ 
wards transpired that he had had a feast of Acorns 
and Blackberries. He became convulsed and died 
from acute inflammation of the bowels. 
How Fruit Growers are Handicapped.—As evidence 
of the extent to which British fruit growers are 
handicapped by the “preferential” railway rates 
charged for foreign produce on its way to the 
English markets, we may cite the following. It 
costs 6s. to transport a ton of Potatos from 
Germany to London, while from Bexley, in Kent, 
which is only twelve miles from the market, the 
cost amounts to 10s. Fruit from the Continent, 
landed at Dover, is carried to London at rs. 8d. 
per ton, while English fruit is charged 12s. 3d. per 
ton, and not only this, but the foreign produce is 
sent on by the fastest trains, while English has to 
take the slow train which is shunted into a station 
to let the fast train pass carrying foreign produce. 
Of course if the foreign fruit did not have express 
service it would be of no use when it reached the 
market. Moreover, the railway companies would 
lose a certain proportion of this foreign fruit 
traffic if they raised the carriage dues. They also 
know that the British grower must use the railway 
and also that he has to get rid of his produce, so that 
they have the working of this entirely in their own 
hands. 
©leanings from the IDuelit 
of UMencq. 
An Ornithological Cavalcade.—Mr. Harry F. 
Witherby, in the October issue of Knowledge, presents 
us with a further instalment of bis lively adventures 
in Spain in quest of rare or otherwise interesting 
specimens of the feathered members of the animal 
kingdom. " We are fortunate,” says Mr. Witherby, 
"in having as headquarters a large rambling old 
house, from which we set out accompanied by two 
keepers and a boy, all on horseback—an imposing 
calvacade, surely, for a bird-nesting expedition. 
But to have a smaller escort in Spain would be con¬ 
sidered infra dig, while to walk when there are horses 
to ride would be altogether out of the question. We 
were loth to depart from the customs of the country, 
and, therefore, consented to this arrangement. As 
we rode in single file along narrow pathways, through 
a growth of Tamarisk, Gorse and other plants as high 
as our horses’ heads, and, in many places, quite 
impenetrable, or as we spread out in different direc¬ 
tions to search for birds’ nests, we began to under¬ 
stand the advantage of the Spanish system of bird¬ 
nesting. From horseback we could see over the high 
cover, and so guide our way to the most likely looking 
spots. On a horse, too, one can cover more ground 
in a day than on foot, which is a great advantage in 
a big country, with a burning sun ; and, again, one 
feels more comfortable on a horse when suddenly 
confronted by a fierce-looking sow with her littor¬ 
al all events, such was cur experience. . . . We 
were riding home after a hard day’s work, when we 
spied a large black bird sitting near the top of a cork¬ 
tree some distance off. The keepers proclaimed it a 
cuerbo or raven, but a glance through our binoculars 
told us it was semething better. Accordingly, we 
made a wide circuit until we had placed the tree be¬ 
tween ourselves and the bird. Then we dismounted 
and crept as quietly as possible through the coveruntil 
we were under tbe tree. Here an unforeseen difficulty 
presented itself. The tree was so thick that we could 
not at first see the bird. At length we caught sight 
of it sitting all unconscious above our heads. We 
fired, and down it dropped, not to the ground but 
into a great nest which we bad rot seen just below 
it. It did not take us many seconds to reach that 
nest. It was just a flat platform, some 6 ft. across, 
and was made of green boughs. In it was the great 
bird we had shot lying stone dead—a Spanish 
Imperial eagle—while near the old bird were two 
young ones clad in soft white down, and a little dis¬ 
tance from them a great round dirty-white egg. 
There was ro:m in the nest for a couple of sheep, 
but the eagle's larder contained nothing more than a 
few rabbits and the legs of a coot. ' 
