and thus hastens the cessation of growth. In pots such matters are easily managed. But the roots of planted-out trees often strike a rich vein of food, and go on growing and forcing up growth right into the winter. If one could only know where to hit such roots, the shortest process of arresting further extension of top, is to sever them. But if root-pruning is objected to, then dry the whole border as much as possible, by witholding water. But it is needful to guard against the opposite extreme. Plants in pots and in borders, also often suffer from drought in the autumn or winter months. It is a significant fact, that in this country our heaviest rains fall in autumn and winter. When our trees want water least, they have the most of it. The normal state of the roots of fruit trees in winter in the open air in England, is a wet state. We must therefore guard against keeping them too dry under artificial conditions. One of the reasons of bud dropping and shy setting is, assuredly, root drought in winter. The juices of the tree are drained dry, and then the rush of watery sap bounds forward, and carries off buds and young fruit with a rush, as a newly opened sluice carries all before it in a mill-run. One of the likeliest means of preventing this irremediable loss of a crop, is to keep the sap flowing gently at all seasons. Give the roots sufficient water even in winter. Borders may require none, trees in pots several waterings during the month of November, and see that sufficient is given to penetrate the entire mass of roots, without in any manner water-logging them. You must also have a sharp eye for insects. "Insects in the dead season," I fancy I hear Mr Prince exclaim, "It is not to be thought of!" But it must, if you wish for a crop next year. Just you look over those beautiful Peach and Nectarine trees in your orchard house. What are the black lines clustering along against your plump buds? Aphides, I declare. What are they doing? Only eating the hearts out of your next year's fruit, where they are by scores. Dose them with a thick lather of Gishurst's Compound forthwith. Or, better still, brush them off first, and dress the wood afterwards. But see, there are a number of semi-circular brown knots or blisters distributed along the sides of some of your finest shoots, this looks like woody protuberances growing out of the bark. Why, these are brown scales, eating the lining of your plant cases through, or fixing themselves like innumerable vices along the surfaces of life and growth. Brush them off with strong soap suds, and paint all your wood over, as a suffocating measure for bug, scale, and other insects, with a thin paint composed of equal parts of clay and cow dung, in lieu of lead, and strong tobacco water instead of oil. This will smother the baby scale in their invisible beds, and probably send any prowling aphis that has escaped destruction, by taking to its wings, away in disgust in search of cleaner quarters. Finally, give ants no quarter; there will not be many about in winter therefore winter is the best time to exterminate them. Kill every one you see. It is all nonsense about ants living on aphides and other insects. They distribute them, if not increase them. Certain it is, the more ants the more aphides, and they consume choice fruits wholesale. Scatter guano over their runs, pour it as a thick paste into the nests, scald them with boiling water if you can catch them beyond root range, and pour on them with treacle and arsenic. You will have neither peace nor comfort, nor any perfect fruit, if you once allow ants to gain a footing in your orchard house. Be sure also to keep out birds. It is very pleasant to see and hear them chirruping away among your orchard house trees, but they will reward you for your shelter by feasting upon the tree buds. Also keep out severe frost, especially from the roots. The latter is easily done by a covering, a few inches thick, of Fern leaves, straw, hay, moss, cocoa-nut fibre refuse, or mats. The dryer the covering, the more frost it will keep out, and vice versa. THE GLASS HOUSE. And as it It As winter approaches, the glass house grows daily in importance. A short month since we could cull handfuls of beauty anywhere. But now the garden is bleak and bare with here and there a battered Michaelmas Daisy, or a sprig of Laurustinus, looking up pale, or blushing as if frightened, from its cushion of green leaves. These are the scant gleanings of the harvest that is gone. And now comes the tug of war upon the glass house. It has to supply all demands— flowers for button-holes, bouquets, vases. is the perversity of human nature, or a mere hallucination of those who are driven to their wits' end, to make the flowers hold out for all purposes, that the fewer flowers, the more are wanted. The demand rises to a maximum as the supply sinks to zero. seems even so over November in some well-known establishments. Above the sweep of the storm, and on the sharp heels of the frost, the cry for more flowers, and oftener, comes. Well, the glass house or houses must do all it can to suit and supply these demands, though they sometimes seem most provokingly unreasonable. Chinese Primroses, Scarlet Salvias, Chrysanthemums, Camellias, Coronillas, and a few plants of late Pelargoniums are perfect god-sends in November, and with ample bases of green leaves can do marvels of furnishing. Chrysanthemums alone form a gorgeous winter garden of themselves "to the manner born." But unless skilfully intermixed with other things, they are so wintry-looking that one seems to feel the keen winds, see the snow driven, and hear the hail rattle, as we look at them. But flame them up with a few plants of Salvia splendens, and the case is altered wholly. But I must not stay to arrange the glass house, but hasten on to give instructions concerning the exclusion of frost, and the careful watering and ventilating of the same throughout the winter, Never let the temperature fall below 40 deg., nor raise Work in the Garden during November t above 45 or 50 deg, with fire heat. In watering, see that the water falls on the soil only, and that none of it is splashed about our pots, paths, or stages. The great enemy of the glass house in November is damp. It is worse than frost itself. For one plant that frost kills in winter, damp destroys its thousands. Let us therefore only water the soil when it absolutely requires it, and keep the air dry. A moving atmosphere, by an exchange of air between the outside and the inside, is favourable to this dryness. Still, when the outside air is steeped in fog, keep it out. Better a still and stagnant air within your glass house, than one of almost equal parts of air and water. Hence it is safer not to admit any of the outside air for a week, than to sweep a saturated atmosphere, cold or wet, over our favourites. Pick off every damped leaf or flower, these clinging to the stems cause decomposition; they are very unsightly, and reveal that worst of faults in care, want of thought or care, or both. Give the choicest plants the best places, if there is a choice of place, in the glass house, mostly packed in villa gardens for the next four months like the hold of a slave ship for the middle passage. Indeed, this passage from the shades of winter into the gleams of spring or early summer is almost equally full of horror to plants. It taxes their powers of endurance and our patience to the utmost. May our readers' skill rise to the task of carrying their living cargo safely through! To this end note the hints already given, and also these two :-No excitement for the next two months, and no excess in overcrowding. Also a place, however small, for everything, and everything in its best place; and the most delicate plants in the choicest places. As a rule, too, the smallest should stand nearest to the glass. Over-shadowing means death to most tender things in winter. This is often wholly overlooked by villa gardeners. If they can only thrust their pots in anywhere under glass, they think all will be well. There never was a more fatal mistake, plants languish and perish unless cheered by the sun, or his light-the eye of the day. PITS AND FRAMES. All we have written concerning the glass house is applicable to these. Our summary of work for the month here also is-Let in the light, keep out the damp and the frost. No easy matter now, when light is at a discount, and moisture superabounds, and the means of drying up damp in pits and frames are mostly absent, and nearly always totally inefficient. Pits, hot or cold, that have a pipe or flue run through them, are easily enough kept dry. Heat absorbs or drives out damp. And even a brisk lining of hot dung applied to the sides of the pots will dry up the greater part of the moisture within. In the absence of any source of heat, covering the surface of the glass with dry mats prevents the condensation of water on the glass, and this is efficacious by preventing one of the 351 greatest sources of damp-drip. The only gleam of sunlight or current of mild air, must be utilized for the disposal of damp. Let the air and the sunlight into pits and frames freely, and they will carry away much of the moisture that would have produced decomposition. Hot Pits.-Place a few early Hyacinths, Tulips, Lily-of-the-Valley, Deutzias, and Persian Lilacs into these, and maintain a sweet growing bottom and surface heat of 55 to 60 deg., and you will be rewarded before Christmas with some forced bulbs and other flowers. Nothing is so charming in winter as the sight and smell of some of these sweet children of the spring. Water such plants with water at 65 deg., and sprinkle the top occasionally with the same. Let them feel the benefit of a spring morning in April, and the quickening warmth of an April shower. Cover warm pits with care. Some villa gardeners will like to devote a warm pit to the growth of early Radishes and Potatoes. These can be prepared or sown this month; 50 or 55 deg. is heat enough for these; keep the Radishes within a few inches of the glass, and the Potatoes within 6 or 10 inches of it; cover the frames carefully. Little water will be needed for the Radishes, and none for the Potatoes for a month. Cold Pits and Frames.-Many will have to store their bedding plants, and keep such things as Auriculas, Carnations, Calceolarias, Cinerarias, &c., in them. The first cannot be kept too cool, if not too severely frozen. On the contrary, Cinerarias and such plants should never touch a lower temperature than 40 deg. When cuttings are stored for the winter in cold pits, they can hardly be kept too dry. On the verge of flagging, is the safest condition till January. THE FLOWER GARDEN. Finish clearing, digging, and winter furnishing. The spirit of every-day cultivation has not only entered but possessed our flower gardens. That spirit may be thus embodied—always under crop. Empty beds, borders, fields, proclaim a waste of force, space capacity. Would you stop that waste? Fill them with something beautiful and useful. There is a satisfaction in their being filled. The consciousness of occupation sufficeth for the present. The crop may be invisible as of bulbs or seeds, but there is beauty, I had almost written, certainly a pleasure in the fact that there is a crop. The autumnal and winter cropping is in many gardens a heavy business. Shrubs, herbaceous plants, bulbs, annuals, are mostly used. Villa gardeners may crop with the same materials, though necessarily on a smaller scale. It is astonishing how well a few shrubs, such as neat plants of Laurustinus, Hollies, Aucubas, Box, Berberis, tell at this season. They furnish at once with size as well as beauty. Next to shrubs, perhaps Chrysanthemums are the most useful for immediate effect. Those either grown dwarf on purpose, or pegged down so as to cover the beds, lighten them up at once with a glow of beauty equalling in brightness the summer display at times; and villa gardens are rare places for Chrysanthemums. They seem to revel under the shelter of villa walls, and to wax fat and grow beautiful by consuming the smoke of villa residences. A rare old plant for villa gardens in winter is the Chrysanthemum, of all sizes, forms, and colours. Other plants are Christmas Roses, Forget-me-nots, Violets, Primroses, Dwarf Phloxes, Arabises, Aubrietias, Daisies, &c. These should now be planted in masses, patches, carpet patterns, or rows. And then among Bulbs, what a wealth of floral beauty for winter and spring furnishing is found among Crocuses, Snowdrops, Anemones, Aconites, Hyacinths, Narcissuses, Tulips, and then the Californian and other annuals, of which we have given lists, come in to fill up all vacant spaces, and crowd the ground with beauty and variety. When all are planted, mow the grass over once or twice, clip the edges, clear gravel, and roll the grass smooth for the winter. The garden will then have the charm of cleanliness, and the interest that only springs of good keeping. Roses.- Prepare ground by deep trenching and heavy manuring for growing Roses, collect and plant Briars for budding; make up blanks in Rose beds, and mulch the roots with 6 inches of rich juicy manure for the winter. Prepare ground for planting shrubs, and finish planting all deciduous trees and shrubs this month. See that all freshly transplanted plants are kept firmly in one spot by strong stakes. No plant can root if the top plays see-saw with every wind that blows. Herbaceous borders should be manured or top-dressed with fresh earth, pointed or flatly dug over; all rough plants reduced, weakly ones encouraged and increased; the plants fresh labelled, and replanted and re-arranged if necessary, and the whole prepared for a safe wintering and a vigorous start early next spring. No herbaceous plant should ever be planted without a strong stake or label to indicate its whereabouts for ever afterwards. The want of such landmarks has wrecked myriads of the most beautiful plants in flower gardens and borders throughout the kingdom. THE FRUIT GARDEN. The last of the fruit must be safely garnered early this month. It is a tempting of the elements to leave it longer abroad. The frost must no longer be trusted, and no fruit is improved by being wreathed round with snow-drift or battered with ice pellets. Fruit needs a good deal of attention immediately after it is gathered; the change from the outside to the inside tests its keeping capacities considerably, and all imperfections soon reveal themselves in the fruit room, therefore fruit should be looked over almost daily for the first few weeks after storing. Every bruised and specked specimen must go into the immediate-use shelf, before it has time to infect the sound fruit; after a few weeks these blemishes will reveal themselves, and the fruits need less care. Plums. Such as Golden Drops and Imperatricemay be kept for several weeks, sometimes months, suspended by the foot stalks, these make a wonderful change for the dessert when the late Peaches are over. All fruit, but especially Pears, require gentle handling. Many of the choice sorts are thin skinned, and it is hardly too much to add that if the skin be bruised ever so slightly, the fruit decays. Plant Fruit Trees and Climbers of all sorts. -November fogs are sent as a wet blanket to recoup newly planted trees from any loss of sap sustained in the process of removal. Evaporation from living surface of bole and branch is almost nil. Therefore this is the time, above all others, for transplanting old and planting young trees. All such work ought to be completed by the end of this month. Prune all hardy trees, such as Cherries, Plums, as soon as the leaves fall, and train the same during mild weather. The pruning of the more tender trees must be deferred till the spring, and for these reasonsearly pruning means early blossoming; and early blossoming risks the loss of the crops as spring weather had done last year. Small Fruits, such as Gooseberries and Currants, are often left unpruned till February, for the same reason to keep the embyro fruit as late as possible. There is also another reason for deferring the pruning of these fruit bushes. The more wood left for the winter, the more chance of buds escaping the birds to yield a crop next season. Pruned or unpruned, it is, however, good practice to use November fogs as fasteners for showers of soot, lime, or other hot dust, to protect the buds from the hungry birds. They Raspberries may be pruned and trained now. hardly ever break too early for the season, and the birds seldom make much havoc with them. Strawberries may receive a winter dressing of 6 inches thick of good manure. This will feed and protect the roots at the same time, and send up rare strong fruit stems next June. Root Pruning.-When necessary, proceed with during the month. The sooner it is completed the better. Remove loose bark, route insects out of nooks and crannies of walls and of trees, remove all dead ties, scrape or wash off American blight or scale, dressing the affected parts with train oil, and paint the stems of fruit trees infested with Moss or Lichen with a paste formed of equal portion of quicklime and soot. THE KITCHEN GARDEN. Cropping.-Yes, to be sure! Put in your first crop of Peas, Carter's First Crop, or, if you prefer dwarfs, Beck's Gem or Tom Thumb. Wet the Peas, and roll them in red lead, then sow them thin on the warm VOL. VII. Work in the Garden during November sides of ridges, in drills 4 or 6 inches deep, and fill the ridge up over the Peas, with furze or whin chopped fine. All this to bother and baffle the vermin of all kinds, from slimy slugs to sharp-toothed rats. Mazagan Beans.-Treat in the same way. Lettuces.-Advancing crops of Hardy Hammersmith and Cabbage may still be planted under protectors. They grow away in these all the winter. Cauliflower, &c.-Place these under hand lights. Give air, stir surface soil among them, sprinkle with hot lime to destroy slugs. Advanced crops of Lettuces and Endive under protectors may now be left to take care of themselves. They will need no air, and if kept dry, no frost will injure them. Celery.-Continue to earth up, cover the ridges from frost, take up and store, as wanted, a week's supply in larder or cellar. Late Walcheren Brocoli or Cauliflower.-Look over, and cut all that are fit, every other day. Cabbages. See that the frost does not throw them out of the ground, nor slugs consume them on mild nights. Succession crops may still be planted. Rhubarb, Sea Kale and Asparagus.—Take up a few roots at a time, and bring on in cellar, stable, or any warm place, or in a hot pit or frame. The Asparagus 335 is best grown in the light, the other two in the dark. A temperature of 60 deg. will bring them on nicely, or they may be forced under pots out-of-doors, encased round with a foot or two of hot dung or litter. This is the season for all such radical measures as drainage, trenching, double digging, rough ridging, and heavy manuring. The earth, however, should never be moved about in a wet state. It is even worse to wheel over wet earth. It utterly ruins the texture, and hardens and sours the tilth of gardens. By taking time by the forelock, and being on the watch for opportunity, suitable seasons may generally be found for all the needful operations in gardening. The grand secret of success is always to take the first chance that offers. The sooner all earth is turned up to the air the better, and the weaker the root run it will form next season. If you get your manure on now, dig or trench at once, and run the dung on when the frost comes, and dig again afterwards. Never let the earth lie in dung, because it is too soft to bear the carriage of manure, nor puddle it into sourness by making it carry loads in a wet state. If time and opportunity offer, and the manure is ready, on with it at once. But if not, up with the soil, and on with the manure during frost. 2 The Deterinarian. THE CLICKING OR FORGING IN HORSES. HERE is scarcely any habit to which the horse is liable which becomes so annoying to the experienced rider as that of clicking," or, as it is variously termed, "nicking," "forging," "hammer and pincers," &c., particularly when in some instances it appears to have settled down into a most obstinate and chronic condition, and defies all the arts known to the owner against its removal. In consulting the various means recommended for its removal by many prescribers, we are first reminded of their numerical strength, and, secondly, that the fault lies entirely with the animal's will. Nearly all the authorities who give an opinion upon the matter recommend the application of whip or spur, or both. We almost believe some consider the animal to be asleep, for, say they, "you must wake him up," and the means are by sticking the spur into his flank, in order to induce him to move the hind legs more rapidly. The cure, or rather removal, of the habit does not depend upon such means, for the cause is really due to the fact that the movements of the hind limbs are already too quick and too long as compared with the action of the fore. But this anomaly arises from different causes, and it is as inhuman to whip and spur the horse for the habit, as it would be to bleed the rider as a means of cure. In some instances, the rider might be benefited by a horsewhipping, but care is required in diagnoses of all cases, in order that the treatment may be appropriate. Young horses are commonly prone to forging. This is due to a want of education, in which muscular weakness may assist in some part; but, as a rule, there is a want of harmony of action, the fore limbs are raised too slowly, while the hind are thrown forcibly forward, covering too large a distance, and which results in the toe of the hind shoe being violently brought into contact with the lower surface of one or both branches of the fore shoe as soon as it is raised from the ground, being then almost in a vertical position. Horses having no shoes on do not click or forge. It is the striking together of the iron surfaces, and the magnitude of the sound is increased in proportion to the amount of surface struck. But there are other causes which induce the habit. In young horses, the weight of the rider has much to do with its production, and also the pace at which he rides. We saw a "breaker," some time ago, driving in his skeleton break a young mare. He knew she could not trot very fast, and evidently was pushing the animal to the utmost extent of her speed and strength, while he was deaf to the disagreeable sounds which arose from the forging of each foot. A slower speed, with careful handling, and patience while proper strength is acquired, would remedy these matters; but the breaker desires to work quickly, and delivers the animal "tamed" to its owner, with half its education yet to receive. With regular work and watchful care, suitable food, and other means to acquire health and strength and condition, the habit vanishes. Older animals perpetrate the annoyance under bad riding and driving, and when both have become confirmed, having grown together, complete reformation in management is often required before he is satisfactorily used. Some animals also suffer from a decline of muscular power in the extensor muscles of the fore-limbs, which, occurring |