BOTANY. 383 



It will enable landscape-gardeners to make single trees or groups as orna- 

 mental as they please. Parks may thus become more beautiful than ever, 

 and public walks, boulevards, and the like, maybe decorated according to 

 taste or fancy. There are many persons who will, perhaps, say that trees 

 are most beautiful when left entirely to nature ; but they forget that nature 

 sometimes produces vegetable as well as animal deformities, and that it must 

 therefore be an advantage to be able to encourage gracefulness. 



But M. Millot-Brule"s method admits of an immediate and eminently use- 

 ful application namely, that of controlling the form of branches in planta- 

 tions grown for their timber. In agricultural implements, in ship-building, 

 fancy cabinet-making and carpentry, as well as in other employments that 

 will suggest themselves to the mind, angular, forked, and bent timber is an 

 ariicle of prime necessity. What an advantage is gained to the grower 

 when, using his judgment, aided by his penknife and a slip of sand-paper, 

 he can make the trees under his care obedient to his will. 



OX THE COLORIXG OF THE SKIX OF FRUITS. 



The following article, by M. Flotow, is translated from the French " Jour- 

 nal de la Socicte Imperiale of C'entrale a" Horticulture." 



" Duhamcl, in his Treatise on Fruit Trees, says, that to encourage the color- 

 ing of kernel fruits, it is merely necessary, when they have attained their full 

 size, to remove the leaves which shade them, first from one side, then from 

 the other, and finally all round. He adds, that their coloring may be ren- 

 dered more brilliant by marking the side next the sun with a hair pencil 

 dipped in cold water. This passage applies more especially to pears. It 

 suggested to M. dc Flotow experiments, the results of which he has given 

 in a lengthened article on kernel fruits in general. He selected some favor- 

 ably situated fruit of the Xapole'on, Beurre' d' Hiver, B. Diel, Merveille de 

 Charneaux, and more particularly of the Poire longue blanche de Dechant, 

 on which he had never observed at the time of ripening the least degree of 

 redness, whilst the other varieties had several times exhibited a little red ap- 

 proaching to yellow or brown. He moistened these in the morning, and 

 repeated the operation several times during the day, when the sun shone 

 noon them ; and he continued this treatment as long as the weather permitted. 

 The result of this experiment has justified the assertion of Duhamel. All 

 the fruits thus moistened were remarkable among others of the same variety 

 and on the same tree, by a more brilliant red. The Poire dc Dechant, in 

 particular, exhibited a decided red tint, while the fruit usually presents no 

 such appearance. 



" M de Flotow had remarked, but without being able to account for the 

 fact, that in apples and pears which were striped on both sides, the rays or 

 stripes were longitudinal, that is, from the eye to the stalk, but never trans- 

 versely, although he says that in several works on pomology, fruits are 

 figured with the stripes in the latter direction. The results of the experi- 

 ments have led to the conclusion that the action of the sun's rays upon the 

 skin of fruits wetted or moistened by dew, is the cause to which the produc- 



