editor's table. 



period, merely hy keeping sulphur froqucntly on the pipes, with evaporating pans thero 

 also, anil a moilcrate use of tho syringe. Whenever tlio fruit is gatliercd, there is little 

 ditlii'ulty in olTi'i-ting a clearance. Tlio house is kept rather dose, and the trees are syringed 

 several times a day with sulphur and lime-water, madi; hy hoiiing a pound of quick-lime 

 and a pound of sulphur in a gallon of water for a quarter of an hour, allowing it to settle, 

 and pouring off the dear into a hottlo, and then putting ahout a quartern, or a little more, 

 hut not more than half a pint, into a common-sized watering-pot full of water, and syringing 

 the trees well over, ahove, and under tho leaves. Tlie mixture will he more effectual, hut 

 not so cleanly, if a little size and soft soap are added. The ahove is one of the most econo- 

 mical ways of getting the properties of sulphur at once to bear upon the insects. In extreme 

 cases, and where syringing could not well be done, a pair of nimV)le hands, with a small 

 sponge, would soon wash every leaf on a tree, and remove every insect on it. Where 

 cleanliness was an especial object, the sulphuretted lime-water should merely have the size 

 in it. About a quarter of a pound dissolved in a garden pot holding about four gallons of 

 water, will not be too much. I have found it injurious to no plant to which I have applied 

 it in such limited quantities ; and when enough is in the water to make the stickiness just 

 perceived, when a thumb and finger being wetted are placed together firmly, it will case up 

 the vital powers of every little insect to which it is applied. Even when the glue or size 

 Avas used rather strong, the film formed on the leaf broke and foil off in pieces when dry. 



A HiXT FOR Exhibitors. — The Cottage Gardener has the following remarks on staging 

 j)lants at exhibitions : "The managers here have introduced a now and grand improvement 

 on the former systems of exhibiting plants ; the greatest improvement, in fact, and the ouo 

 which was most needed in our day. They offered .£30 for the best staged collections of thirty 

 plants, as a gardener would say ; that is, for a collection of thirty plants, so placed as to 

 give the best effect. Just the very thing which we have always held forth about flower- 

 beds, vases, baskets, and all other accompaniments to the flower-garden. One man cuts 

 out his beds at random, goes to a great expense to fill them with the best plants of the day> 

 and yet fails, for ' want of eye,' to give the right effect to them. Another grows his plants 

 into ' specimens' with the highest degree of skill, exhibits them for competition, or ' sets' 

 them in the conservatory, or show-house, or in the living-rooms of his employer ; or, may 

 bo, on the dinner-table, before ' all the company,' yet, for want of an eye, he fails to make 

 the best of them ; and, although he is the best gardener in that part of the country, his 

 employers are dissatisfied, because they see such things 'in better style' with common 

 people, who cannot afford to pay much for their gardening — the secret being, that the eye 

 goes further than the purse in all such things — dresses among the rest. Tlie Crystal Palace, 

 as a school, is founded on the principle of teaching by the eye. Its Directors have placed 

 all their own collections and creations on that principle, and now they offer the highest 

 prizes to gardeners, to induce them to learn this principle, and to follow it out through the 

 whole range of the ' establishment,' even to the setting of two pot-plants on the mantel- 

 piece in the drawing-room, or on the window-sill." 



Seeds of Ferns. — The naked eye, says Dr. Lindley, in the last Chronicle, cannot detect 

 on the under side of a fern-leaf its seed-vessels ; fern seeds are little angular bodies too 

 minute to be visible, and are expelled by the spontaneous bursting of the seed-vessels, 

 wMch then remain empty behind. When the brown dust from the back of a fern-leaf is 

 sown, it may happen that it has no seeds among it, but consists entirely of fragments of the 

 broken seed-vessels, and no success will follow. 



To obviate this diffici^lty, Mr. Saunders requested Mr. Wallace, the distinguished natu- 

 then at Singapore, to adopt the following method. A little moderately damp earth 



