1882.] 



AND HORTICULTURIST. 



i&r 



of some others. Our readers may remember the 

 billingsgate effusions sent to the editor, some of 

 which at the call of "justice to the cause," we 

 felt compelled to inflict on the reader. Dr. 

 Warder and Mr. Parker Earle are now feeling 

 the arm of vengeance. It appears that the Mis- 

 sissippi Valley Horticultural Society appointed 

 a committee to examine this subject. They 

 evidently found it to be surrounded by diffi- 

 culties, and instead of reporting against it at 

 once, took time to consider these difficulties. 

 One •' of our number," to wit : Mr. Jacob Moore^ 

 Samuel Miller, S. Rommel, J. H. Ricketts, Wm. 

 Culbert, wrote to Dr. Warder to know the rea- 

 son, and received the following reply : 



" Our committee on plant protection had con- 

 sultations, and reported that as yet we felt un- 

 prepared to make any recommendations for the 

 action of the Society. I think the chairman felt 

 we could do nothing." 



This civil reply was, however, enough to raise 

 the angry passions of " our number," and with 

 their names and addresses in full they have 

 issued a bill of excommunication to Mr. Parker 

 Earle, from which we take the following sweet 

 morsel : 



"We had hopes that the Society of which you 

 are President, founded as it was to promote ad- 

 vancement in horticulture, would on that ac- 

 count advocate our cause ; but thus far, we are 

 sorry to say, these hopes have not been realized. 



" Hijitory shows that truth of vital importance 

 to mankind, has often met with the strongest op- 

 position from those who should have been the 

 first to receive it. The well-known hostility of 

 Dr. Warder, if not of yourself to the protective 

 measure, which is destined to advance American 

 Horticulturp beyond, and above that of all the 

 other nations of the earth, is a recent exemplifi- 

 cation of such opposition to progress.' 



The great comfort these gentlemen must de- 

 rive from all this is, that as they seem well 

 versed in history, and familiar with its truths, 

 they were not very much surprised when they 

 found history merely repeating itself. We are 

 willing to believe that at least one of those 

 whose names are attached to this document did 

 so without weighing its scandalously abusive 

 character. 



Favors. — A correspondent kindly suggests 

 that he would be glad to communicate some in- 

 teresting facts to our magazine, only that he 

 fears he should thereby annoy some agricultural 

 journals, who think he should "give all his work 

 to them." Always glad of favors, we may say it 

 never annoys us to have our friends lend these a 



helping hand. Agriculture is the parent of Hor- 

 ticulture, and a high class horticultural maga- 

 zine would find poor encouragement did not the 

 agricultural go in advance and pave the way for it. 



Decaisne. — Mr. Harding writes : '' The Cincin- 

 nati Weekly Commercial, March 29th, says : ' M. 

 Decaisne's career, says a Paris letter, is encour- 

 aging. He entered the Garden of Plants in 1824, 

 as journeyman gardener. After hard manual 

 labor, digging, hoeing, raking for eight years, he 

 was made ' head of the sowing bed.' Adrien de 

 Jussieu, struck by his intelligence in the post, 

 made him his assistant, and he quickly became 

 known as one of the best descriptive botanists of 

 Europe. He tried to introduce the Igname to 

 French tables, a sort of potato in great favor in 

 Northern China, but failed, because the plant is 

 so deep-rooted it is dug up with difficulty. He 

 failed likewise in his attempt to introduce Ra- 

 mie into France. In 1845, the Academy of 

 Sciences elected the poor journeyman to a seat 

 in its hall ; in 1850, he was elected a Professor 

 in the Garden of Plants ; in 1864, he was elected 

 President of the Academy of Sciences ; in 1880, 

 he was elected a member of the Royal Society of 

 London.' 



" I presume the ' Igname ' mentioned, is the 

 long-tailed tuber Dioscorea sinensis, or the 

 famous Chinese Yam, whose elongated roots fre- 

 quently exceed the ordinary length of John 

 Chinaman's queue ; and in this country, seems 

 about as useful." 



The History of the Camellia. — The Camellia 

 japonica or Japan Rose, the species from which 

 nearly all of our more valued garden varieties 

 are descended, is, as we have already seen, said 

 to have been introduced in 1739; but it is not 

 mentioned in the sixth edition of Miller's "Gar- 

 deners' Dictionary," published in 1771. Notwith- 

 standing this I find it thus described in "A 

 History of Plants," by John Hill, M. D., published 

 in 1751 :—'' Camellia. — The calyx is imbricated, 

 and composed of several leaves, the interior of 

 which are the larger. It is an oriental, described 

 by Kaempfer in his ' Japan,' 850." 



In the " Garden Vade Mecum," by John Aber- 

 crombie, published in 1789, "Camellia japonica, 

 or Japan Rose," is included in his list of both 

 greenhouse and hothouse plants. In the "Prac- 

 tical Gardener," published in 1817, and in the 

 21st edition of "Every Man his Own Gardener," 

 by the same author (1818), one species (C. japo- 

 nica) and seven varieties only are enumerated^ 



