EDITOR'S TABLE, 



duce a nest of ants, wliose eggs soon hatch and produce an active colony, greedy of sugar, 

 and incessantly running over the plants. The everlasting play of these insects keeps up a 

 peculiar excitement, which ends by producing the state of dwarfness so much admired by 

 the fashion of that part of the world. They will sometimes show you a fir-tree, in perfect 

 health, three inches high. After the late Chinese war, some magnificently small trees were 

 sent as a present to Queen Victoria ; Sir Wm. Hooker examined them, and found their roots 

 shackled in every conceivable way with wires, to promote their dwarf habit. — One of the 

 great errors in keeping parlor plants is, to assemble too great a variety. A few kinds bear 

 the heat of a living room very well ; one plant, well tended, and in fine health, will afford 

 more pleasure than twenty half-nurtured ; we are induced to the remark, by having lately 

 seen a Catalonia jasmine covering a large space, and running over the inside of a window. 

 Mr. Kilvington, of this city, unites a number of elegant climbers in one pot, and, when in 

 fine health and vigor, nothing can be more beautiful. But there can be no such thing as 

 floral health without fresh air, and enough of it. — It is often asked, what plants will best 

 protect a loose or sliding bank of earth, such as is made by a deep cut of a railroad ? 

 The Silver Poi)lar for trees, and the Osage Orange, and the Sea Buckthorn, for shrubs, and 

 the Lucerne and the Arundo arenaria among grasses, are the best available. The roots of the 

 Lucerne grow three feet in a season, and form a very strong mat of fibres. It will continue, 

 in a good soil, about fifteen years. — Two of the great errors of American gardens will be 

 found to be the following : The walks are not kept/wZZ of gravel, which gives them a harsh 

 and depressed look. Secondly, the flower beds are not kept covered with foliage ; they thus 

 expose unsightly patches of soil, which dries and bakes in the sun ; verbenas, by regular 

 pegging down their shoots, cover the ground thoroughly, with proper care. — A correspondent 

 calls our attention to the circumstance, that when writing of the Persimmon, we omitted to 

 mention the efforts made in France to improve this American wilding. M. Audibert produced, 

 some years ago, a seedling with large, round fruit, as large as a hen's egg, of a golden yellow 

 color, and an agreeable flavor. Vague rumors have reached us that this new variety has 

 been introduced in one of the Southern States. If so, we should be glad to hear more of it. 

 — Old John Evelyn, in his " Philosophical Discourse of Earth, &c.," printed in 1676, says : 

 " Fruit-trees do generally thrive with the soil of neats and hogs ; most flowers with that of 

 sheep, but especially roots. Peter Hondius tells us, that by the sole application of sheep's 

 dung, he produced a raddish-root as big as half a man's middle, which, being hung up for 

 some time in a butcher's shop, people took it for a hog." — What plant is this, described by 

 the same quaint old writer ? " Some vast timber-trees have little or no mould adhering to 

 their roots ; such is that beautiful stranger, the Japan Lily, called by those of Gurnsey, la 

 belle de nuit ; and a certain Palm of the same .Japan, which shrinks and dries at the least 

 touch of water, as if it were laid before the fire, which is, it seems, the only remedy that 

 restores it, or the sudden replanting it in scales of iron, or the most burning sand." — To 

 convert cheap cotton stuff to a substance for sheltering or forcing plants, after the cloth is 

 stretched to its place, paint it with a mixture of three pints of best boiled linseed oil, four 

 ounces of white resin, and one ounce of sugar of lead ; the oil and resin must be a little 

 heated to mix them, and the sugar of lead must be first groimd with a little of the oil, and 

 then mixed with the remainder. Thus treated, the cotton becomes semi-lucent, retentive of 

 heat, and is not one-fifth the cost of glass. — Extraordinary accounts of the effects of electricity 

 on vegetation were circulated ten or twelve years ago, but careful experiments have not 

 proved its utility ; those experiments were detailed in the Journal of the London Hortictdtural 

 Society, and were copied into the Horticulturist, vol. i. page 524, but nothing since has been 

 proved to give the subject importance. — Willis, in his amusing " Letters from under a Bridge," 

 speaking of the selection of a site to make a paradise in the country, remarks : " I am 

 posing you want a patch of the globe's surface to yourself, and room enough to scream 



