1880.] 



AND HORTICULTURIST. 



55 



he uses " sweetness" as some people would who 

 may talk of a rose or a carnation, is not clear, — 

 but he certainly found neither in the buffalo 

 grass. 



Botanic Gardens. — A correspondent of the 

 London Garden says : 



"I see that Mr. Meehan says ' the Cambridge 

 Garden is a long way ahead of anything of the 

 kind in America. The Bartram Gardens have 

 little to boast of but a few valuable old trees. 

 Fairmount Park has done wonderfully well con- 

 sidering how rarely a body under political influ- 

 ences comes to much. Mr. Shaw's garden con- 

 sidering that it is the work of one man's life tune 

 is a rare monument of success. It could hardly 

 be expected to compete with an old institution 

 like Cambridge. In short, Cambridge well de- 

 serves the honor of being the best botanic gar- 

 den in the United States.' No doubt it is so, and 

 yet when I saw it, it was a poor ramshackle af- 

 fair made after the very poor models in Europe, 

 and without a feature of any particular interest. 

 In this respect it difiered much from some of the 

 public parks in America, which are quite equal 

 to anything in Europe." 



Cambridge Botanic Garden, since it was le- 

 modelled under Professor Sargent's care, is any- 

 thing else, but the "poor ramshackle affair," 

 the writer above quoted may have seen in the 

 past. But we wish chiefly to say that our refer- 

 ence to it was as a " botanic" garden, and had 

 regard to its collections of plants. If we were 

 to take beauty into account chiefly, Mr. Shaw's 

 garden is a very long way ahead of Cambridge. 

 Indeed as we have already said of Cambridge, 

 its chief defect to our mind is its adherence to 

 the old-time notions that herbarium arrange- 

 ments must be copied in the garden, and all 

 landscape beauty sacrificed to mistaken scientific 

 requirements. In this respect it is much better 

 than it was once, though still weak, — and yet it 

 is our best " botanic " garden. 



Freezing of the Sap of Plants. — It is sin- 

 gular that arguments should still be continued 

 in the way they are. A very intelligent corres- 

 pondent of a contemporary concludes a very 

 good chapter on hardy plants by the following 

 conundrum : 



" And now I come to the disputed point as to 

 whether any plant or tree is able to survive the 

 complete solidification of its sap by cold. Many 

 difficulties attend the practical solution of this 

 question, but my belief is that many kinds of 

 trees do survive, without injury, a complete 

 freezing of their sap in their bodies and limbs 

 for a longer or shorter time, according to cir- 

 cumstances." 



As most trees will "bleed" at once after the 

 thermometer goes above freezing point, though 

 they may have been for weeks below zero, did 

 it never occur to those who believe the trunk 

 was a solid block of ice, that the tree must have 

 wonderful powers of thawing out? Completely 

 solidified liquids do not generally deliquate in 

 a few moments. 



Deciduous Trees in California. — Refer- 

 ing to a statement by a correspondent of the 

 Gardener's Monthly, the California Horti- 

 cidturist says, ia some parts of San Francisco 

 deciduous trees have done well, and names Lo- 

 cust, Walnut, Maple and Ash as among the 

 successful kinds. 



Batchelor's Buttons. — People who hanker 

 after easy common names, should be those with 

 plenty of money to spare. Then they can send to 

 their seed stores for " Batchelor's Buttons" and 

 get Gomphrena globosa, and then send to Eng- 

 land for Batchelor's Buttons and get a lot of 

 double Buttercups. Whenever he reads of 

 Batchelor's Buttons he can keep on sending his 

 money, and get something fresh every time. 



The Atamasco Lily. — A leading English 

 horticultural journal gives this as the popular 

 name of Camassia esculenta. It belongs really 

 to Amaryllis Atamasco. 



Literature, Travels \ Personal Notes. 



COMMUNICA TIONS. will hereafter appear in these notes. To-day we 



introduce a novelty in American culture. M. 



NOTES AND QUERIES-No. 9. Desire Corbin, a French gardener, selected the 



BY JACQUES. growing of watercresses, and established him- 



fFe a?Z ZtA-e ^0 Aear of original occupations sue- | self at No. 517 Lebanon avenue, West Pbila- 



ceeding ; many things of value are neglected as delphia, above Hestonville, where in a modest 



