188 



THE GARDENER'S MONTHLY 



[J«ne, 



communicated to the Linnsean Society, by Mr. 

 "W. T. Thiselton Dyer, the author avers, from 

 his own and others' observations, that plants 

 trained on a garden wall at Glyon, east end of 

 the Lake of Geneva, yield abundance of brown 

 tomentose pods annually. Xear the town of 

 Geneva, however, fruiting is of rare occurence, 

 but again more frequently at Lyons and the 

 Khone valley. Fruiting, he suggests, may be a 

 question of temperature, and not of nutrition 

 dependent on presence or absence of support to 

 the stem and branches. From the above and 

 other data Mr. Dyer fails to see the evidence of 

 the antagonism of the vegetative and reproduc- 

 tive forces as asserted to be the governing law 

 according to Mr. T. Meehan's experiments, and 

 lately quoted by the Rev. G. Henslow. If such 

 barrenness were the case witfiwts scandent habit, 

 then W. sinensis would probably already be ex- 

 tinct. — London Gardener'' s Magazine. 



[We have always to allow much for brief con- 

 densations of authors' papers ; for if a short 

 paragraph could perfectly convey an author's 

 meaning, there would be no use in a long chap- 

 ter. In the above instance Mr. Dyer's meaning 

 has probably not been correctly rendered, for if 

 one observer show that the manner of growth 

 affects nutrition, and that when nutrition is af- 

 fected fertility varies, it would be very absurd to 

 infer that he believes nothing but systems of 

 training would affect nutrition. In our climate 

 we find " questions of temperature " affect nu- 

 trition just as much as " questions of training," 

 so that granting the correctness of Mr. Dyer's 

 •observation, it is not easy to see what bearing it 

 has on the other " evidence " which Mr. Dyer 

 ^' fails to see." The logic is so weak that we 

 pi-efer to believe that Mr. Dyer's points have 

 not been cleax'ly put in the above paragraph. A 

 leading point in Mr. Meehan's communication 

 to the Linnsean Society was to show that insects 

 and cross-fertilization had nothing to do with the 

 needing of the Wistaria ; and it seems to us that 

 this note of Prof. Dyer's rather confirms than 

 antagonizes this view. If the fruiting "may be a 

 question of temperature," of course insects are 

 ""out in the cold" in the experiment. — Ed. G. M.] 



Atmospheric Currents.— It is one of the 

 misfortunes of meterology, that authors with 

 little knowledge of the related sciences are 

 among its chief leaders. Just now a -translation 

 of a work by Professor Schouw, called "Earth, 

 Plants and Man," is excittlig attention in Europe. 



It is a similar work to that of Marsh's "Man in 

 Nature." According to the English translator, 

 Schouw teaches that "Tracts destitute of woods 

 become very strongly heated, the air above them 

 ascends perpendicularly, and thus prevents the 

 clouds from sinking ;" and in this great principle 

 we have a learned essaj' on what governments 

 ought to do in the way of Forestry, and so on. 



In this part of the world heated air always 

 ascends perpendicularly whether it rises from 

 tracts destitute of wood or otherwise ; but the 

 "preventing the clouds from sinking" is very 

 funny when it is known to every gardener who 

 has watched hot water circulate, that the hot 

 "current" cannot rise without the cold current 

 sinking and taking the place of the warmer b}' 

 the return pipes to the boiler. Currents in the 

 atmosphere are under precisely the same laws as 

 currents in hot water pipes, and it is as sensible 

 to talk of hot water preventing the cold water 

 from sinking, as to say that warm air currents 

 hold up the cold clouds above them. It is not 

 to be wondered at that with such a dim percep- 

 tion of natural law the whole of the Professor's 

 book amounts to little more than nonsense. 



Botanic Garden Arrangements. — A cor- 

 respondent remarks: "What you say of Botan- 

 ical Garden arrangements is true. I have seen 

 leading ' Physic departments ' connected with 

 some of the leading Botanic gardens of Europe, 

 and they are generally so ugly, that thej^ are 

 usually found near the back gates ; and as for 

 the necessity for having ' like near like ' in a 

 systematic arrangement on the grounds, he re- 

 marks "the flowers of Xymphfea odorata and 

 Magnolia grandiflora might as well be not 

 merely ten, twenty, or even two hundred feet 

 as you might say, but as wide as the poles asun- 

 der for all that the observer could see of their 

 relationship by occular demonstration." For 

 this knowledge he must receive aid from his 

 standard text-book, and as we add, all he wants 

 with his "arboretum" or his "Botanic Garden," 

 is to have the plants so numbered and indexed 

 that in a short time as possible, he can find what 

 he needs for comparison. We are not sure the 

 letter was intended for publication, but we have 

 ventured to make these extracts, because we are 

 glad of any encouragement in our idea of the ab- 

 surdity of sacrificing beauty in Botanic Gardens 

 to "the needs of science" that have no existance. 

 It is the endeaver to carry out these absurditie.s 

 which leads j^eople to look on scientific culture 



