56 



THE GARDENER'S MONTHLY 



[Februartj, 



was a boy I used to make canes of the young 

 wood, ring streaked and spotted like Jaoob's rods 

 that he set up along the gutters and water 

 troughs while tending Laban"s cattle. I have 

 frequently seen the young plants growing on old 

 rotten logs, also among the moss on rocks. 

 When I came to Kansas I gathered a few plants 

 from the forest and brought them with me, also 

 some seed, but the latter failed to grow. They 

 were likely gathered before fully ripe, as I was 

 very anxious to secure some seed. I also gath- 

 ered at different times to make sure of them. 

 The flowers hang for a long time on the trees, 

 which adds to its value as an ornamental tree. 



EARLY HISTORY OF THE CATALPA. 



The following very interesting note from Hon. 

 Eli K. Price, one of the Commissioners of Fair- 

 mount Park, regarding the early history of the 

 catalpa, has been kindly handed for publication : 



" I have your note requesting information in 

 respect to the catalpa. I have been here since 

 April, 1815, and have known the tree as com- 

 mon since that time, and trees were then grown. 

 Dr. Henry Muhlenburg read a Catalogue of the 

 Trees in Lancaster County before the Am. Phil. 

 Society, 18th February, 1791, including the ca- 

 talpa, but classed as not native to that county. 

 They naturally would be brought here first, and 

 John or William Bartram could not have failed 

 to bring them from the Southern States before 

 that time. There is one growing before my 

 office window, Walnut above Seventh Street, in 

 the northwest corner of Washington Square, 

 now of the girth of eight feet, at the height of 

 four feet, probably planted in the spring of 1816, 

 as that square was planned for improvement by 

 G. Bridport in 1^15, and improved under the 

 direction of George Vaux (Watson's Annals of 

 Philadelphia, page 407). We have in the Fair- 

 mount Park a larger catalpa, on the west side of 

 the Schuylkill, above the lower Reading railroad 

 bridge, now surrounded by a dense grove of its 

 seedlings ; and catalpas are in various other 

 places in the Park. Dr. Darlington's Flora 

 Cestrica, published in 1837, describes the catalpa 

 as an introduced tree in Chester county, growing 

 at the foot of the North Valley hill, and other 

 places. 



" We esteem your hardy catalpa as a valuable 

 acquisition, and have planted five hundred of 

 the trees in the Park, and manv of its seeds." 



CARNIVORNUS PLANTS. 



BY PROF. W. T. BEAL. LAXSING, MICH. 



In the December number of the Gardener's 

 Monthly appears a very interesting article 

 from Peter Henderson in regard to some recent 

 experiments made by him on the Venus fly-trap 

 Dionjiea muscipula. The article starts out with 

 a quotation from some journal as follows : " Mr. 

 Francis Darwin has proved very conclusively 

 the truth of his father, Charles Darwin's posi- 

 tion, that the co-called carnivorous plants do 

 make use as food of the plants they catch. A 

 large number of plants were fed on meat, and 

 as many on what they could get from the earth 

 as best the}' could, and the difference in growtli 

 and final product were very much in favor of the 

 meat-fed plants.'" 



Mr. Henderson saj'S, " Resolving to fairly test 

 the correctness of Mr. Darwin's theory, I last 

 season procured a large number of Dionsea mus- 

 cipula."' He then speaks of feeding them and 

 states that the plants fed did no better than 

 those not fed with meat, &c. There are one or 

 two points in this to which I wish to call atten- 

 tion. The quotation from the journal on the 

 start by Mr. Henderson, and the remarks which 

 follow, would indicate that he Avas experiment- 

 ing on the same species of plants experimented 

 on by Mr. Francis Darwin. Such is not the 

 case. In Nature, p. 222, Jannar3% 1878, is an 

 article by Francis Darwin, read at a meeting of 

 the Linna-an Society. Mention of this article has 

 been all through the press of this countr}-. The 

 plants used Avere 200 of Drosera rotundifolia, 

 Sun Dew, and not those used b}' Mr. Hender- 

 son. This difference in the selection of plants 

 by the two experimentors ought to have been 

 stated b}' the author or by the editor, if either 

 of them knew the name of the plants used by 

 Mr. Darwin. Let all of us treat our opponents 

 with candor and fairness, if we M'ish to win. 



l^ow as to Mr. Charles Darwin's theory, we 

 have two sets of experiments on record, one by 

 his son on one genus of plants, another by Hen- 

 derson on another genus, and no doubt there 

 are others made by other parties. I haA e 

 thought that the glandular hairs of tomatoes, 

 petunias, and martj'nias might absorb nourish- 

 ment from animal substances applied to them. 

 This season I had an assistant raise some plants 

 of the three genera named above. To one lot 

 of each wei"e applied on numerous occasions, 

 beef soup. All plants thus treated were damaged 

 more or less. The soup seemed to injure the 



