192 



THE GARDENER'S MONTHLY 



[June, 



us, and have taken to eating bugs and flies, not 

 refusing pieces of beefsteak when they get a 

 chance. There is one kind fi'om New Holland, 

 another from Java, and one wretched little fellow 

 was found in our own country, near Wilming- 

 ton, North Carolina. They are all here safely 

 guarded by the box, and in imprisonment to- 

 gether. And those oddities, the cacti, have 

 some choice representatives in this superb col- 

 lection. The visnaga, or Mexican tooth-pick 

 cactus, is among them. This one is only about 

 the size of an ordinary football, though it would 

 hardly do as a substitute, but in its own country 

 it grows to the size of a sentry-box, and the 

 writer has helped to handle one that weighed 

 over a ton. Nature must have been in a strange 

 mood when she made these things. Just beside 

 these is the table-formed house-leek, looking for 

 all the world like a cabbage rolled out flat. 

 Perhaps Nature, tired of the labor involved in 

 cactus-making, sat on these plants to rest, and 

 thus these flattened results. Across the hall, 

 in the southeast conservatory, is the Cuban con- 

 tribution of Mr. Lachaume, of Havana. The 

 good old gentleman was personally attending to 

 the placing of his pets, many of which have 

 suffered severely from the long voyage to a 

 cooler clime. Very appropriate to the Centen- 

 nial occasion is his collection of century plants, 

 embracing over forty kinds. In one corner he 

 has several blocks of plants cut from the forest 

 giving a better idea of these trojiical wood- 

 growths than all one could read about them in a 

 lifetime. Here are orchids and cactuses and 

 ferns, and " preacher in the pulpits " of a 

 decisively tropical countenance, all seemingly as 

 happy together as a bunch of soup-herbs in our 

 Eastern Market-house. Among the curious 

 plants in this collection are numerous forms 

 'of the "Dutchman's pipe-vine." The American 

 forms are shabby fellows in comparison with 

 these. They throw out a long lip-like petal, 

 veined precisely like a piece of flesh, but the 

 mimicry does not stop here. The plant has 

 become too lazy to work, and seems to have 

 studied out a plan to make insects slave for it. 

 Instead of fertilizing itself it depends on insects 

 for carrying the fertilizing pollen to the pistil, 

 and in order to lure them to this thankless task, 

 besides the flesh trick above referred to, it 

 creates a stench to which that which the fiend 

 introduced about the good Saint Anthony was 

 incense itself. The insects are enraptured with 

 the prospective carrion, rush in, and in this way f 



fertilize the flower, but find, alas! when too late, 

 that they have entered their tomb, and in a few 

 days wholly disappear in the form of food for 

 the large ants that have their home in great 

 abundance in these parts of the world. Capital 

 texts for sermons, these Centennial experiences 

 aftbrd, but these matters I shall leave to our 

 clerical friends. 



But we must not linger long in any one place 

 to-day. The Hall itself, under the diiection of 

 Chief Miller, is quite as forward as any other de- 

 partment ; but new attractions will now appear 

 every day. In a hurried look we noted the great 

 sago palm owned by Robert Morris, which has a 

 stem now, perhaps, four feet high ; and there is 

 another remarkably beautiful one from Mr. De 

 Pay, of Cuba, with the leaves so regular and 

 close that it is the envy of those having a pas- 

 sion for these things. There is a small plant of 

 the sacred fig of the Hindoos which will catch 

 many an eye when it gets a label on. Several 

 plants are here of the now famous Eucalyptus 

 globulus, a competitor in growth with Jonah's 

 gourd; with the "brave old oak" of England in 

 the solidity of its timber; with Jayne's, Helm- 

 bold's, and all other antidotes combined as a feb- 

 rifuge ; and with everything under the sini — so a 

 French professor tells us — for securing sleep to 

 one's mother-in-law, soundly in spite of dulcet 

 sounds from mosquitorial pipes. There are also 

 Acacias in great numbers, but too late in the 

 season to see them " wave their yellow hair ; " 

 a fine camphor tree, some twenty feet high, and 

 a great number of kinds of banana plants. A 

 large plant marked "Chocolate tree," is unfortu- 

 nately not that celebrated plant ; but there are 

 guavas, Japan plums, mangoes, Indian rubbers, 

 and many similar things which we often read 

 about but seldom see. Many visitors missed the 

 side rooms, but there are nice things to see from 

 Peter Henderson, H. A. Dreer, Francoise Huss, 

 who has some remarkably well-arranged skele- 

 ton leaves ; Charles H. Marot, with a set of 

 beautifully-bound volumes of the Gardeners 

 Monthly, in a beautiful case to match, and Hewes 

 & Co., of Boston, Mass., have some remarkably 

 beautiful specimens of horticultural pottery 

 ware. For Waterer's Rhododendrons, a house 

 to be covered by a muslin shade has been started, 

 in Avhich the plants are to be arranged as in a 

 tasteful piece of landscape gardening, Only for 

 the immense conservatory near it, the Rhodo- 

 dendron house would be thought a mammoth 

 structure. 



