'20 



NEAV HOSES OF 186G-7. 



HE roses of this year are not equal, on the whola, to last season's, yet 

 there are some very good amongst them, and hut few positively bad. 

 Charles Yerdier is an immense advance ; Madeline Nonin and Monsieur 

 Neman are fresh in colour and promising; Antoine Ducher furnishes 

 us with a really good I'ose in the way of William Jesse. Francois 

 Treyyc is a rich brownish dark, original in colour; Annie Wood and Horace 

 Vernet are good additions to the crimsons ; Mrs. George Paul, Paul Yerdier, 

 Souvenir de M. Poll, and Thoriii, to the different shades of rose colour. Monsieur 

 "Woolfield is exceptionally good, a seedling, doubtless, from Victor Yerdier. Of 

 Duke of Edinburgh, a seedling named and selected here, we can report most favour- 

 ably ; it is the biightest colour yet attained. All of these can be recommended. 



In the second section of hybrid perpetuals will be found some of our most 

 deservedly popular roses. We cannot dispense with our old established favourites, 

 Baronne Prevost, Anna Alexieff, Eugene Appert, and other useful roses, first in and 

 last out of flower. They make splendid free-blooming standards and bedding roses; 

 and the vigorous varieties amongst them the best of perpetual climbers. One defect 

 alone excludes them from the first section : they are not florists' flowers — they lack 

 the form necessary in the present day for exhibition roses. 



The whole of the hybrid perpetuals thrive best in a rich soil, and require close 

 pruning, regiilated by the rate of growth. The strong growers form excellent 

 autumn-flowering climbers or for pillars; when so used they need but little pruning, 

 leaving the shoots of a good length.— PawZ and Son, Cheshunt Nurseries. 



LUMINOSITY OE THE EEAXINELLA. 



BY DE. HAHN. 



^f HEN the daughter of Linnasus one evening approached the flo-wers of 

 ^t^l Dictamnus aibus with a light, a little flame was kindled, without in any 

 ,VM way injuring them. The experiment was afterwards frequently re- 

 peated, buf it never succeeded; and whilst some scientific men regarded 

 the whole as a faulty observation, or simply a delusion, others endea- 

 voured to explain it by various hypotheses. One of them especially, which tried 

 to account for the phenomenon by assuming that the plant developed hydrogen, 

 found much favour. At present, Avhen this hypothesis has become untenable, the 

 inflammability of the plant is mentioned more as a curiosum, and accounted for by 

 the presence of etheric oil in the flowers. Peing in the habit of visiting a garden in 

 which strong healthy plants of Dictamnus albus were cultivated, I often repeated 

 the experiment, but always without success, and I already began to doubt the cor- 

 rectness of the observation made by the daughter of Linna3us, when, during the 

 dry and hot summer of 1857, I repeated the experiment once more, fancying that 

 the warm weather might possibly have exercised a more than ordinary eflect upon 

 the plant. I held a lighted match close to an open flower, but again without result; 

 in bringing, however, the match close to some other blossoms, it approached a nearly 

 faded one, and suddenly M'as seen a reddish, crackling, strongly shooting flame, 

 which left a powerful aromatic smell, and did not injure the peduncle. Since then 

 I have repeated the experiment during several seasons, and even during wet, cold 

 summers it has always succeeded, thus clearly proving that it is not influenced by 

 the state of tlie weather. In doing so I observed the following results, which fully 

 explain the phenomenon. On the pedicels and peduncles are a number of minute 

 reddish-brown glands, secreting etheric oil. These glands are but little develoi)ed 

 when the flowers begin to open, and they are fully grown shortly after the blossoms 

 begin to fade, shrivelling up when the fruit begins to form. For this reason the 

 experiment can succeed only at that limited period Avlien the flowers are fading. 

 Best adapted for the purpose are those panicles which have done flowering at the 

 base, and still have a icff blossoms at the top. The same panicle cannot be lighted 

 twice. The rachis is uninjured by the experiment, beinj;- too green to take fire, 

 and because the flame runs along almost as quick as lightning, becoming extin- 

 guished at the top, and diffusing a powerful incense-like smeU. 



