J^loi at JVotes. 317 



Many came to me for slips in preference to the greenhouses. Every two weeks all 

 the winter I would take a handful of tobacco stems and steep thein by pouring boil- 

 ing water over them until it looked like strong tea, then, when the tea cooled enough 

 to bear the hand, I poured it over the plants. Sometimes the leaves would wilt for 

 a few moments and then straighten out and have that bright fresh look they have in 

 summer after a shower. Then 1 would weaken the tea a little more and wet the 

 ground in the pots, and I have no red spider nor green fly." 



Solution for Destroy Inff Insects. 



Mr. Cloez, of the garden of the Paris Museum, gives in the Revue Horticole an 

 efficacious recipe for destroying plant-lice and other insects. Three and a half 

 ounces quassia chips, and five drachms staves-acre seeds, in powder, are placed iu 

 seven pints of water and boiled down to five pints. When cooled, the strained liquid 

 is ready for use, either in a watering-pot or syringe. 



fond Tallies linsily Cultivated, 



Phineas Field, of East Claremont, writes to The Neiv Ejigland FaTmcr as follows: 

 " If you admire pond lilies (and who does not ?) and have a springy place in your 

 mowing, by digging a hole so that the water will stand from six to twenty inches 

 deep in the same, and by setting roots in the bottom, you may have a supply of 

 fresh ones through the season of blooming. Old roots will blossom the first season. 

 One half day's digging, four years ago, has supplied me abundantly, and now I have 

 hundreds of young roots." 



Difference in Jijcposure. 



A bed about ten feet across cut in the lawn was planted with tulips and hyacinths. 

 In spading manure into this, fall and spring, it had become raised, so that when the 

 surface was rounded oflF the center was some eight inches higher than the circumfer- 

 ence. The same kinds of bulbs were planted all around, and while the hyacinths 

 upon the south and east portion were in full bloom, those upon the north side were 

 just opening, there being one and two weeks' difference caused by this slight 

 elevation. 



jI Glotvlny I'ictiire. 



A lady writer from the Isle of Singapore gives the following glowing picture of 

 tropical flowers in " Fruits and flowers of the Tropics," published in LippiyicotVs 

 Monthly : " We gathered whole handfuls of the Lotus or Water Lily, with its pale 

 blue, golden or rose-tinted blooms gleaming up from the sparkling waters. There 

 are many varieties of this exquisite flower — blue, pink, carnation, bright yellow, 

 royal purple fringed with gold, aud more beautiful than all, pure virgin white, with 

 the faintest possible rose tinge in the center of each section of the corolla, a just 

 perceptible blush, as of its own conscious loveliness. The last is the royal flower of 

 Siam ; borne before the king at weddings, funerals, and all state festivals, and the royal 

 reception rooms are always beautifully decorated with the young buds arranged in 

 costly vases of exquisite workmanship. In moist portions of the jungle were whole 

 groves of fragrant pandanus, ferns of infinite variety, a species of wild mignionette, 

 spotless japonica, fragrant tuberose, cape jessamine, wild passion flower, the calla 

 Indica, with its five long petals of heavenly blue, then the innumerable company of 

 roses, tea, moss, perpetual, cluster, climbing, variegated, and a score of others, 

 queenly still even amid snch a gorgeous array. The Victoria Regia and Rafilesia 

 Arnoldi, the two largest flowers in the world, we saw in Dr. A's garden — the flower 

 of each two feet in diameter. Karest of all was the night-blooming Cereus. There 

 were six blooms in full maturity, creamy waxen flowers of exquisite form, the leaves 

 of the corolla of a pale golden hue, and the petals intensely white. Its wondrous 

 perfume is exhaled just at nightfall, and readily discernible for a mile. The odor 

 partakes largely of that of lilies, violets, tuberose, and vanilla. It reaches perfect 

 maturity about an hour before midnight ; at three o'clock its glory is beginning to 



