secretary's budget. 405 



USES OF VEGETATION. 



The proper function, or one of the right uses of all vegetation, 

 is to produce food and clothing for us from the refuse matter of our 

 large towns. Every little green leaf, apart from its individual beauty, 

 has a share in the great work of purification which all leaves carry on. 

 In malarious countries the blue or fever gum tree is now largely planted, 

 because it grows rapidly, and its roots and leaves suck up moisture so 

 quickly that a few of these trees actually drain any swamp or marsh near 

 or in which they are planted. It is so with our own poplar trees, which 

 in wet, low-lying places act most efficiently as the best of natural 

 drains for a stagnant bit of marsh or land. Now, if you drain a swamp 

 in the ordinary way you simply carry pollution from one place and de- 

 posit it in another place ; but tree roots suck up offensive matter, and 

 tree leaves actually purify it. The leaves throw off pure water by 

 evaporation, and with it life-giving oxygen, instead of the poisoned 

 gases of the atmosphere. What is true of large trees is in degree equally 

 true of the smallest window x)lant. The highest mission of plants is 

 not merely to please our eyes with color, our mouths with delicious 

 fruits; not only do they do this and more, but they are ever silently but 

 surely eating up what is impure and injurious to ourselves in the atmos- 

 phere and in the earth all around our homes ; and any dwelling in which 

 plants are well and healthily grown will be more likely to be a clean 

 and healthy house than if the plants were not there. — Ladies Floral 

 Cabinet. 



DOUBLE STOCKS. 



" Mrs. Theodosia, B. S.," San Buena Ventura, Cal., asks : " Will 

 you kindly inform me through the columns of the Gardeners' Monthly., 

 why pot-grown seeds of stocks are superior to those grown in the open 

 ground?" Stocks grow to the greatest perfection here (where we 

 never have frost) and seed well. I raise several varieties of seeds, 

 in different colors. I have difficulty in disposing of them to florists, as 

 they all wish pot-grown seeds. As the flowers of double stocks are 

 barren, so they cannot be used in hybridizing. I cannot see why pot- 

 grown seeds are superior to open ground seeds. 



" Henderson says in his ' Hand-book of Plants :' All that is ne- 

 cessary to have plenty of double flowers in stocks is, to have seed from 

 strong, vigorous single plants. I have found from experience that he is 

 correct ; nothing could be finer than our stocks from open ground seed. 

 Yet it seems impossible to convince florists East of this. 



