The Country Gentleman's Magazine

185

D

WATERING APPARATUS.

URING the scorching weather that pre- is constantly in use. Their summers are

vails, some sort of watering appara- much hotter and drier than ours, but drought tus is in request. In Paris, and in continental is becoming more continuous every year, as

cities and towns, something like what is re- can be seen by reference to the weather or presented in the Messrs Warner's engraving meteorological tables published year by

year; and it is incumbent upon those especially who have the management of parks, and even of roads and streets, to employ an apparatus that will, in the first place, do the work efficiently, and in the next place be of the durability that will make the investment a business-like one. Of course parks must first be provided with a sufficient number of outlets to connect the apparatus with, so as the ground can be regularly gone over. Streets are well provided in this way, and if an apparatus such as our engraving represents be attached, the operation is done cleverly and most satisfactorily. Our English public parks have not been so well provided for as those of our continental neighbours,

partly from difference in climate and in rainfall; but it is only a question of time when they must be so attended to, especially in such a city that will soon number 4,000,000 inhabitants. The Messrs Warner's apparatus is made of galvanized wrought iron pipe, connected by copper rivetted flexible joints, and supported on wood carriages, with pivot castor wheels. It is, therefore, a really substantial article, such as we have some pleasure in recommending. Were Borough Corporations and Boards of Health to secure several sets of this apparatus, their streets would be well watered, and at less expense than that incurred by the antique water cart with its perforated discharge box.

WE

GARDEN DIBBLES.

тра

E illustrate a set of three garden instance, which do well planted out in beds dibbles to recall attention to a useful in the open ground, to be lifted before frost requisite. All of these forms may be used in gardening operations. The open handled one is almost continually in use in the kitchen garden for the transplanting of the members of the Cabbage race (Brassica), and so is the handled one, although gardeners prefer it for lighter transplants. The smallest one of the three is useful for putting in flowering-plant cuttings, such as Pelargoniums, for

Garden Dibbles.

comes, and potted into pots for winter preservation.

WE

AN EXTEMPORE FOUNTAIN.

WE do not know a better and cheaper article for the utilitarian and ornamental purposes of villa garden furnishing, than the subject of our engraving, to which we are indebted to Messrs Warner & Co. It is quite a portable apparatus, and has only to be connected to the supply cistern of the house to represent the arching flow of water shewn in the engraving. It is good for watering

villa lawns, and keeping them in the style so desirable to see during our short somewhat tropical summer, and how very beautiful may the operation be conducted by such a jet, or combination of jets, as this presents. It is indeed, as our heading makes it, an Extempore Fountain, refreshing, cooling, and beautiful. Nor need it always be a fixture. It can be removed from one place to another

without much trouble. It requires only lawn, according as the pressure is regulated additional length of gutta-percha or India- by the stopcock in the downright pipe from rubber piping, and the making of a connexion supply cistern. It is so useful as well as orna

An Extempore Fountain.

with the discharge pipe of the supply cistern. It is only 4 feet high, fitted with 10-inch revolving Barker's mill fountain jet. It is said to water from 10 to 250 square feet of

mental, that the exceedingly small sum of a guinea will not prevent many from noting it down to order among their other "gettings."

does best planted in a cool conservatory discovered by Mr T. J. Booth in Bhotan, border, after the same fashion as culturists who first sent home seeds about the year provide for Camellias. There, with the mild 1855. The young plants resemble those of heat of summer, they grow and form both the R. argenteum of Hooker's so closely that blossom and wood buds-some plentiful and many growers considered them identical, and some less plentiful. All such as shew a dis- consequently the present species still appears position to be rank growers, are not free. in many collections under the last-mentioned bloomers in youth. Really they are no less name. The two are, however, perfectly diswood buds, but they frequently lose some- tinct, and while R. longifolium has much what of their rankness; and the general of the fine foliaged appearance of R.

Fig. 4.-Rhododendron longifolium, reduced in size.

cessation of manufacturing activity that characterizes the supply and demand of the plant is more favourable to the manufacture of the organs of reproduction. Hence, if growers had a little more patience, they would see these miniature mammoths become more fruitful after they reached a certain age.

Rhododendron longifolium is one of the large foliaged kinds, of a pale green upper surface, and somewhat hoary beneath. It was

argenteum, it seems to be a freer flowerer, and dwarfer in habit than that tree-growing species. Like most other Himalayan plants, it starts too early into spring growth for our climate; consequently, its expanding buds and young shoots are often destroyed by spring frosts; and even in the milder districts of Britain, where this objection may not apply, its early flowering propensity must always be against its successful open-air