EDITOR'S TABLE. 



should we doubt it in agricultural States here ? A proposal is on foot for a testimony to 



Mr. Mechi, of Tiptree Hall, England, who has done so much for agriculture. The advance 



of science is marked by the circumstance that in 1696 the Grand Duke of Gotha assembled 

 a council of learned men to tell him what the bones of a fossil elephant were, and they 

 unanimously declared they were sports of nature. The bones of a mastodon, found in 



Dauphiny, were exhibited in Paris by a surgeon, as the remains of a giant ! It has lately 



been a subject of discussion whether honey made from Rhododendron ponticum flowers is 

 poisonous or not, and the belief is entertained that it is not, while that made from Azalea 

 pontica is highly dangerous. Dr. Lindley closes an article in a late Chronicle on grape- 

 houses with the remark, " Blood, flesh, and all such substances make vines rank, difficult to 



ripen, and predisposed to mildew and any other disease." C. F. Otto, late Director of the 



Royal Botanic Garden, at Berlin, to whom we were indebted for unbounded civilities in 

 1850, died in September last. He was the author of five or six works on botany, forest 

 culture, and on the cactus tribe, but was most distinguished as the editor of the periodical 

 AUgemeine Gartenzeitung, in connection with Dr. Albert Dietrich. A genus among um- 

 belliferous plants was named Ottoa in honor of him. Too much stress is sometimes 



laid upon the necessity of having elegant apparatus for teaching science. A man who is 

 eager to learn — who is determined to know his subject — may, if he be at all handy, or ^f•ith 

 the assistance of the village carpenter or blacksmith, extemporize his apparatus. Polished 

 mahogany, and expensive brass work and complicated adjustments, are not at all essential. 

 It is told of the celebrated philosopher, Dr. Wollaston, the inventor of the method of ren- 

 dering platinum malleable, that when a continental chemist of some celebrity called on 

 him and expressed a wish to be shown over the laboratories in which science had been 

 enriched by so many important discoveries, the doctor took him into a little study, and 

 pointing to an old tea-tray on the table, with a few watch-glasses, test-papers, a small 

 balance, and a blow-pipe on it, said, "There is all the laboratory that I have." Again : is 



music any better'for emanating from expensive rosewood or mahogany ? The prodigal 



son desired to eat of husks given to swine. This is supposed to allude to the fruit of the 

 locust-tree, part of the diet of the Baptists in the desert. The ancients made wine of this 

 locust, and gave the husks to pigs ; being by no means a tasteless or unsatisfying offal, it 



might well be desired by the prodigal, in his hunger. Jewish tradition considers the 



citron, and not the apple, to have been the fruit which our first parents tasted in Paradise. 



When the dove sent out of the ark returned with a green olive leaf, it had remained, 



after ten months, green ; this has puzzled some simple writers who did not reflect upon its 

 nature ; the leaves are of a bitter taste, and of a lasting substance, keeping a very long time. 



Cosmo de Medicis delighted most in his Apennine villa, because all that he commanded 



from its windows was exclusively his own. How unlike the wise Athenian, who, when he 

 had a farm to sell, directed the cryer to proclaim, as its best recommendation, that it had a 



good neighborhood. A few friends are all that a wise man would wish to assemble ; " for 



a crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk hut a tinkling 

 cymbal, where there is no love." 



Two New Varieties of Fruit are mentioned in the Gardener^s Chronicle, as follows : " The 

 first is a black grape, of most excellent quality, thin skinned, not a Muscat, earlier than 

 the Black Hamburg, and having the valuable property of hanging late without shrivelling. 

 Its leaves are middle-sized, thick, and capable of bearing even such a sun as we experienced 

 last July, when the foliage of so many other vines suffered seriously. Its origin is unknown. 

 In appearance, it somewhat resembles the Black Prince, but the flavor is much more deli- 

 cate, and the berries are longer. The two diameters are as twenty to fourteen in this 

 as seventeen to fourteen in the Black Prince, a very great difference. Mr. Rivers, who 



