278 THE FLOEAL WORLD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 



shrubby habit, compact, and a good grower. The flowers are lively 

 orange-red, richer and more decisive than the colour of Prince of 

 Orange, and the plant appears to have a more than ordinary good 

 constitution, so that when other varieties are perishing, this will 

 live. 



A NOTE OK CALCEOLAEIAS. 



At page 256 I made a note on an experiment in the treatment of 

 calceolarias at Stoke Newington this year. It is with much plea- 

 sure I can repeat what is there said, with one mouth's further expe- 

 rience. The plants are robust and full of health and vigour. 1 am 

 satisfied that if they had been planted in the ordinary way in the 

 common soil of the garden, we should have lost them in the same 

 way as other people. In my travels hither and thither this summer, 

 I have not seen one good example of calceolarias ; everywhere death 

 has thinned their ranks, and in some instances has cleared them off 

 entirely by thousands. The lessons to be deduced from our experi- 

 ment are that they should be struck in autumn ; that they should be 

 strong when planted out ; that they should be planted by the middle 

 of April or by the end of April at latest; that the soil should con- 

 sist of three-fifths at least, and better if it consists of four-filths, 

 thoroughly-decayed manure, the remainder being good loam. Bank 

 manure would, of course, ruin them ; it must be three or four years' 

 old, and if there is no loam admixed with it, the plant will uot be 

 harmed. But one-fifth of loam is advisable. With this treatment, 

 I believe calceolarias will cease to trouble, and will begin to delight 

 their cultivators. i S. H. , 



ON THE NAMING OF PLANTS. 



(Contributed to the Botanical CoDgress by Shirley Hibbeed.) 



BE names of natural objects are important paits of the world's language, 

 and good names are better than bad names, not only because of the con- 

 stant value of appropriateness, but because of their immediate help in the 

 diffusion of knowledge, and the fixing of facts in the minds of men. It 

 may be said in a general -vvay that all the };ood names of things are 

 ancient, and all the bud names modern. The art of inventing names appears to 

 have degcneratid, for among the many things that discovery and invention have 

 brought within our cognizflnce, and for which old names weie not available, the 

 names adopted aie in tlie majority of cases neither well adapted to desciibe them, 

 or give a key to their character, nor to in press upon the mind any distinct principle 

 of association between the name and the object. In ancient times names were usually 

 descriptive, and even the faiciful names had so much poetry in them that the mind 

 could seize and keep them easily, and so they became deeply imbedded in the common 

 vocabulary, and v ere in thenjselves educatrve, becati&e they ltd the mind to the 

 identification of the things they represented. Leo, ursus, vulpvis, btvis, among 

 animals, and anemone, auricula, broom, amaranthus, among plants, are names that 

 have deep root in common speecli, in rhetoiic, in poetry, and are not despised in 

 science. Such names as blackbird, nightingale, sparrow, starling, beech, oak, 

 willow, in the vernacular, can never be changed, because they are good and infinitely 

 more useful than iheir classicd equivalents, because the common property ot men 

 ■who know the things they are intended to indicate, not so much from long use as 

 from their applicability as indications. In any catalogue of plants to which we may 

 refer, we may notice that the old names were usually descriptive and appropriate ; 



