THE SIXIIETAIIY'S POin'FOI.TO. 449 



tlirivc well in a case, us iilso do numy orchids; but in goiioral tliu case is more 

 adapted to the preservation of Uowering i)hints than for their growth. 



SCIENTIFIC HORTICULTUKAL NOTES. 



SEEDS THAT BORE. 



Some time since, in a paper by Mr. Francis Darwin, read before the London 

 Linnaius Society, the curious structure of the seeds of some of the grasses was 

 shown, by whicli they were enabled to pierce their way into tlie ground. In 

 relation to this subject, in a recent number of Nature, Mr. Darwin calls atten- 

 tion to the discovery by Ilerr Fritz Muller of more than a dozen grasses and 

 one species of geranium, growing in Brazil, whose seeds possess these peculiar- 

 ities. They are furnislied with awns, which, twisting by the action upon their 

 cells of an alternate moist and dry atmosphere, when lying upon the ground, 

 this hygroscropic torsion causes the seeds to penetrate into tlie soil. In one 

 of the most singular sjiecimens, belonging to the genus Aridida, the seeds 

 have three-tailed awns, five or six inches long, which, projecting in three direc- 

 tions more or less at right angles with the seed, serve to hold it in an upright 

 position, witli its lower end resting on the ground in the most favorable man- 

 ner for boring into the earth. 



FEEDING PLANTS. 



A great deal is written and said about methods of feeding cattle to produce 

 the most tlesh, and the kinds of food to employ to get the best results, but few 

 stop to think that the same kind of discussion applies to plants. Food that 

 will cause some plants to thrive is about the same as poison to others, so that 

 plants may be said to have a diversity of tastes. 



We are apt to think of all manures made on the farm as alike, except as we 

 distinguish by speaking of one kind as made from horses, another from cattle, 

 etc., etc. But plants that a2:)propriate this manure for food indicate plainly a 

 different classification. If the same food is given the hog as the horse, in the 

 same quantity, the manure produced will be exactly the same, provided no flesh 

 or milk is made from it, and the differences in manure are not made bv the 

 animal, but, rather, by the quality of food eaten. Plants find this out very 

 readily, and by their laboratories decide oftentimes that the manure produced 

 by a herd of cattle fed upon straw, with a very little grain, is very inferior to 

 that made by another herd fed upon the best quality of hay, witli aw abun- 

 dance of grain. 



Plants, again, in their clioice of food, very of ton outwit the best calculations 

 of the keenest chemist. It has been found that it is not safe to assume that 



57 



