24 



THE GARDENERS MONTHLY 



[January, 



instead of white, and the real flowers are the 

 little angular figures on the worm-like spadix. 

 The common Anthurium Scherzerianum is now 



well known. This one of Mr. Wm. Bull's intro- 

 ductions is double the size of that very popular 

 species. 



Literature, Travels I Personal Notes. 



COMMUNICA TIONS. 



NOTES AND QUERIES-NO. 30. 



BY JACQUES. 



The following scraps for the Qardener's 

 Monthly were found on a table by the death- 

 bed of Mr. John Jay Smith, after his decease. 

 It is a remarkable illustration of how the love 

 of horticulture entered even into his dying 

 thoughts : 



Goldsmith.— Wh.0 does not like Goldsmith and 

 his writings does not enjoy one of the most 

 genial and pleasant authors of the English lan- 

 guage. The series of " English men of letters," 

 small as they are, give to the present generation 

 an opportunity of enjoying the characteristics 

 and peculiarities of the persons who pleased the 

 leisure hours of our grandfathers, while they 

 taught them what literature is. The life of Dr. 

 Johnson, by Leslie Stevens, as already remarked, 

 is one of the most agreeable and informing 

 books in the language ; Goldsmith's life by Wil- 

 liam Mack, the novelist, fairly comes within the 

 list for high praise. Impecunious, careless. 

 Goldsmith was ; he adds another to those so 

 frail, so seemingly inapt, who are the instru- 

 ments through which providence works its will 

 upon the world. What a large army they make 

 coming down to our own time. What an 

 anomaly was Poe ; bis career has now been the 

 topic of many writers who agree as to his ability, 

 but do not save his habits from severe animad- 

 version ; how curious that his first biographer, 

 Griswold, should owe his name being saved from 

 oblivion by this one act of unworthy vitupera- 

 tion. Very few can have perused Goldsmith's 

 life of Beau Nash, but it is worth being over- 

 hauled. He says what was eminently true of 

 the ladies of those days and their want of edu- 

 cation : " But were we to give laws to a nursery, 

 we should make them childish laws ;" the women 

 ef that day were little more than infants in men- 



tal acquirements. "Followed your prescrip- 

 tion ? No," says the Beau, whose intellectual 

 capacity is not magnified. •' Egad, if I had, I 

 would have broken ray neck, for I flung it out 

 of a two pair of stairs window." The work con- 

 tains some excellent warnings against the vice 

 of gambling. 



The had practice of pulling flowers by children 

 and even grown people, who ought to know bet- 

 ter, continues. Let out a few city youthful 

 tramps into a new park and the chances are that 

 all the butter cups in a given space will be gath- 

 ered and almost instantly withered, leaving 

 nothing for the next comers, and so with other 

 things. The park planter will tell you that ivies 

 and all running vines are no sooner planted than 

 they are pulled up and carried home. A lady 

 was arrested the other day with her apron la- 

 dened with new ivies, and by good luck only, 

 escaped a week in jail. This tendency to theft 

 can be partially corrected by careful teaching in 

 the public schools. The police of public gar- 

 dens would be greatly more useful if they were 

 taught the difference between weeds and flowers. 



Greai attention is now very properly paid to the 

 cultivation of the. important cinchona, or qui- 

 nine bark. New specimens have been intro- 

 duced into Madras by the government, obtained 

 in South America at a distance of three hundred 

 miles from the coast ; the Santa Fe variety 

 yields, by analysis, ten per dent, of pure sulphate 

 of quinine. Jamaica, too, is growing very val- 

 uable kinds. 



Improvements in agricultural machinery feed a 

 hundred men with greater ease than at one time 

 a man could feed himself alone. — Seientifie 

 American. 



The enemy of the vine Phylloxara is declared to 

 be mightier than a German army, for the latter, 

 once satisfied, goes home, but the former stays 

 forever. Creatures, unconscious of what they 

 do, terrify whole nations and give the lie to the 

 arrogance of man. 



