HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



77 



CONCERNING MARIGOLDS. 



IT is curious to notice the tendency of late years 

 towards the planting of yellow or orange flowers 

 in English gardens. A railway journey round any 

 London suburb will illustrate this : the little back 

 gardens in the dingier streets are often ablaze with 

 sunflowers, and cottage gardens in purer air follow 

 suit. The marigold, under one or other of its varie- 

 ties, seems to be an especial favourite, and that not 

 in our own country alone. Cross to France and you 

 will find the common orange one figuring as a pot- 

 herb, and its petals introduced under the name of 

 "soucis" into your soup. In the Channel Isles the 

 same use is made of it, and it is so nearly wild as to 

 be seen growing in waste places or by roadsides, 

 while children make wreaths of the flowers to adorn 

 the " cheap tripper " as he rides in the "cars " round 

 the island. It's a pity that such a flower should be 

 so vulgarised. 



But truth to tell, it has a certain tendency towards 

 gaudiness, a sort of rollicking behaviour, arising from 

 its rapid growth and sprawling habit (I speak of the 

 common, juicy kinds), which causes one to banish it 

 from one's choicest flower-beds, and to relegate it to 

 the shrubbery or to the kitchen-garden. It has 

 some tendency to become a weed, and is treated as 

 such. But for getting rapidly a blaze of colour with 

 plenty of luscious green to back it up, for covering 

 square yards of unsightly soil or rubbish-heap, com- 

 mend me to our friend marigold. It is sensitive to 

 light, like m.any of its comrades in the great compo- 

 site family, and ere the dew falls shuts its yellow 

 eyes, as if it were a magnified, glorified daisy. 



One variety which is now before me, seems to 

 illustrate Mr. Grant Allen's theory of the develop- 

 ment of colour, for its ray-florets — the outer circle — 

 besides doubling or semi-sterilising themselves, have 

 attained a broad stripe of yellowish white up each 

 strap-shaped corolla, the original orange being rele- 

 gated to a tiny margin up each side, producing in the 

 whole flower-head the prettiest effect. An even 

 more refined member of the genus is the little 

 French marigold with its stiff, slender branching 

 stem and delicate, strongly-scented, pinnate leaves. 

 This kind seems to be aiming at a further stage in 

 colouring, for it is striped with dark brown, which, I 

 take it, is only red overlaid with orange. Some- 

 times the disc-florets of the common kinds take on 

 this brown velvety tint, as if they were aping their 

 big kinsfolk, the sunflowers. 



Side by side with these tiny flowers gardeners 

 have produced those huge, unwieldy, double mari- 

 golds, which send up a juicy stem — admirable pasture 

 for slugs and snails — crowned with a solid mass of 

 glaring orange or sickly yellow flowers ; no shape, 

 no beauty, that I can see, though I have known the 

 flower-heads used effectively in harvest decorations. 

 Still, they always remind me of the rosettes seen 



sometimes on horses' heads, or of the favours worn 

 at elections. 



The scent of the marigold is not at all unpleasant ; 

 it resides chiefly in the leaves and stalksi; but the 

 stickiness (doubtless a protection against undesirable 

 insect visitors) of the common kinds makes the 

 gathering of a posy a disagreeable operation. The 

 juice has its virtues, for have we not in our pharma- 

 copoeia "Calendula," of healing virtue to wounds of 

 the skin ? Lastly, the name is a sweet reminder of 

 the Blessed Woman to whom so many of our English 

 flowers are dedicated, and in whose honour this 

 sojourner bears its English name. 



M. E. Pope. 



NOTES ON NEW BOOKS. 



yjIDS IN PRACTICAL GEOLOGY, by 

 _^l Grenville A. J. Cole (London : Charles 

 Griffin & Co.). This is a most valuable and very 

 welcome book to geological students. The subject is 

 treated on lines wholly different from those in any 

 other manual, and the book is, therefore, very 

 original. Indeed, it should really be considered 

 rather in the light of a companion vol. to the higher 

 class of geological text-books. A large space is 

 devoted to the best and readiest methods of 

 examining minerals, both with the wet and dry 

 processes ; how to examine rocks and rock-structures 

 physically and chemically ; whilst the concluding 

 part is devoted to the examination and determi- 

 nation of fossils. There are twenty-eight chapters 

 altogether, and one hundred and thirty-six illustra- 

 tions, mostly of fossils. We cordially commend 

 Professor Cole's book to all zealous students of 

 geology. 



The Geology of the Country around Liverpool, 

 including the North of Flintshire, by G. H. Morton 

 (London : Geo. Philip & Son). Twenty-eight years 

 ago Mr. Morton wrote a small book on this subject, 

 which was much welcomed by field-geologists, 

 inasmuch as it was the result of personal observation 

 and exploration. Moreover, the author was well 

 known as an accurate, able, and painstaking 

 geologist. Since that period other equally able 

 geologists have explored the same area, and Mr. 

 Morton has himself, of course, added considerably to 

 the subject. The result is the publication of the 

 present well-printed and neatly got up volume ; it is 

 modestly entitled a Second Edition, but it is in 

 reality a larger and altogether differently got up 

 book, illustrated by twenty plates and fifteen wood- 

 cuts of sections, &c. We congratulate Mr. Morton 

 on the excellent work he has turned out. 



The magnificently got up vols, of the United 

 States Geological Survey are always welcome to 

 English geologists, to whom they are presented with 

 a generosity which is in striking contrast to the 



