Glass Houses — Construction and Ventilation 



55 



doors or flaps along the full length, and about 

 8 inches wide, these also opening and being 

 regulated by a single handle to each range, 

 and affording complete protection from the 

 weather ; the air is thus admitted below the 

 level of any foliage and immediately over the 



hotwater pipes, by which it is slightly tem- 

 pered on entering the house." 



What is an advantage, the houses are so 

 constructed as to be removable at will, and 

 refixed, as the patentees describe, " without 

 a pane of glass being disturbed." 



NEW AND RARE PLANTS. 



SKATSCHKOFF's CHINESE RED SUMMER 

 RADISH. 



WHEN seedsmen and others are busying 

 themselves so much about novelties in 

 the vegetable way, we recommend Scatschkoff's 



Fig. I.' — Skatschkoff s Chinese Red Summer Radish. 



Radish as being one of a sort likely to find 

 favour with those who relish a salad. As 



our engraving shews, it is distinct from most 

 kinds offered, and the quality, we understand, 

 is such as to secure for it more than mere 

 flitting favour. It is a Chinese variety sent 

 to the Russian garden at St Petersburg by 

 M. Skatschkoff, the Russian Consul in 

 China. It is reddish, with green flecks upon 

 the roots, and Professor Regel says that it 

 combines the delicacy and agreeable taste 

 of the Radish, with much beyond the ordinary 

 size. To those who like to munch a good- 

 sized Turnip-Radish we would say, buy a 

 packet of seed, and sow as soon as possible. 

 The whereabouts to find it, however, we are 

 not in a position to inform our readers. It 

 will, doubtless, be got at by applying to the 

 Director of the St Petersburg Botanic Gar- 

 den. 



LEUCADENDRON ARGENTEUM {Protea argentea, 

 Linn.) 



The Silver-Broom (Silver Tree), or Silver 

 Pine of the Cape of Good Hope. No Pines 

 or Firs are found in Africa south of the 

 Sahara, but there grows at the Cape of Good 

 Hope a plant which bears cones which de- 

 ceive those who are not botanists ; the leaf 

 (fig. 2) is long, stiff, hardish, willow-shaped, 

 but without any foot-stalk, and has an almost 

 unequalled lustre of frosted silver when 

 looked at in certain lights; it is densely 

 clothed with a fine woolly pubescence, and 

 ciliated, or hairy, along the margins, and is 

 marked by a multitude of nerves, more 

 or less longitudinally disposed, and crossing 



