Pot-pourri from a Surrey garden

exhibitions, as well as to the great show at the Temple Gardens in May, free, before the public is admitted. He has the run of the society's library in Victoria Street; he receives free the yearly publications, which are a series of most interesting lectures (I will give some account of them at the end of the year) ; and he is annually presented with a certain number of plants. These fortnightly meetings at the Drill Hall are instructive and varied, though they might be much more so. Nevertheless, I think an amateur cannot go to them without learning something, and I am surprised to find how few people take advantage of them. The entrance fee is only a shilling. I went to one of these exhibitions the other day. The great mass of blooms shown consisted of beautifully grown potfuls of Cyclamens in great variety of colour, and of Chinese Primulas ; these last, to my mind, are rather uninteresting plants, but they show great improvement in colour as now cultivated. What pleased me most were miniature Irises, grown in flat pans, and some charming spring Snowflakes (Leucojum vernum) grown in pots. These are far more satisfactory grown in this way than are the finest Snowdrops in pots, their foliage being so much prettier. The little blue Scillas are extremely effective grown in pans through a carpet of the ordinary mossy Saxifrage. February 14£fo. — Salads are rather a difficulty during the early spring in English gardens. In seasonless London everything is always to be bought. I wonder why Mdche (Corn Salad, or Lamb's Lettuce), so much grown in France, is so little cultivated here? People fairly well up in gardening come back from France in the winter, thinking they have discovered something new. Mdche is a little difficult to grow in very light soils, and the safest plan is to make several sowings in July and August. We find it most useful, but, without constant FEBRUARY 25 reminding, no English gardener thinks of it at all, though it is in all the seed catalogues. As it is an annual, with- out sowing you naturally don't get it ; and if sown too late, it is bound to fail. In very dry weather we have to water it at first. If Beetroot is carelessly dug up and the roots broken, they bleed, which causes them to come to the table pale and tasteless. This is the fault of the gardener, not of the cook. Some English cooks boil them in vinegar ; this hardens them, and makes them unwholesome. They are much better slowly baked in an oven, and not boiled at all. The poor Beetroot is often considered unwholesome, but if it is served with a little of the water it is boiled in, or if baked with a little warm water poured over it, a squeeze of lemon instead of vinegar, and a little oil added, I think the accusation is unjust. Beetroot served hot and cut in slices, with a white Bechamel sauce (see ' Dainty Dishes '), makes a very good winter vegetable. The Old English dish of Beetroot sliced and laid round a soup-plate with pulled Celery, mixed with a Mayonnaise sauce, built up in the middle, is excellent with all roast meats. At all the best Italian grocers' in London they sell a dried Green Pea from Italy, which makes a pretty pur6e both as a vegetable and as a soup in winter, especially if coloured with a very little fresh Spinach, not the colouring sold by grocers.