Pot-pourri from a Surrey garden

are the two that no one should be without. They grow most easily from cuttings every year, though we keep the tuberous roots of S. patens, as we do Dahlias, from year to year. There are other Salvias quite worth growing, but none I know so good as these two. Things are keep- ing on well in the kitchen garden with the wet and the absence of frost. We have still some excellent late-sown French Beans. As a rule gardeners stint the slightly uncertain crop of French Beans by not sowing them in succession, depending for the kitchen supply on the Scarlet Eunners, which are not nearly so delicate, and have not half the flavour of the true French Beans. Late Peas completely beat us. We have never had them but once ; they damp off. This must be, I should think, from the western aspect of the garden. I will try sowing them the first week in June next year in an open field we have, exposed to the full sun and wind, to see if in that position they will do better. September 30th. — We have tried for the first time just lately the baby chickens, which were a fashionable and expensive luxury last season in London. Eoast them as you roast a quail, or they can be boiled and served cold with a covering of delicate white Mayonnaise sauce. They should be killed when five or six weeks old, cooked the same day, and each person should have one. This sounds very extravagant, but a chicken the day of its birth is not worth much more than the price of an egg, and feeding them six weeks is no great expense. I can strongly recommend anyone who keeps poultry to try them, as we found them very delicate and tender. For those who keep pigeons and want to kill them off— which, of course, must be done — I do not advise you to roast them and place them on the menu as ' Bordeaux pigeons ' (which a friend of mine did, to the indignation of her sons), but to cook them as they do ptarmigan in Norway : — SEPTEMBER 175 Stew them quite fresh in an earthenware stew-pan (with the livers, &c., chopped up, inside them) in good stock, with a lot of vegetables cut up, especially onion and a bunch of herbs, which is removed before serving. If more details are wanted, the receipt for jugged hare in ' Dainty Dishes ' will supply them. Serve with a hot compote of Cherries, dried or bottled, or Cranberries or Bilberries or Barberries, instead of the usual Red Currant jelly. If you have a great many pigeons, they could be boned and made into the French Pie, according to the recipe in ' April.' We grow a great many Morella Cherries on the east and north side of the wall. These ripen enough to be used for compotes in July, but by covering up the trees they can be kept on till now, or even later, and this is the best time for making them into Brandy Cherries, as follows : — Cut the cherries off the trees, leaving a little stalk, and let them drop straight into the bottle. When the bottle is half-full, shake in some powdered white sugar. Fill up with more cherries and more sugar. When quite full, pour in brandy, and leave it till next day. Then fill up the bottle with brandy, and cork it down. Seal the cork as in receipt before given (see pp. 109, 110). The brandy cherries are better if kept for two years before eating.