186 



THE GARDENERS MONTHLY 



IJune, 



the a^ed propagator of Messrs. Veitch, had no 

 difficulty in making orchid seed grow. This 

 knowledge gained, hybridization naturally sug- 

 gested itself and great numbers of very beautiful 

 forms have been originated by him in this way. 

 Messrs. Veitch continue to bring out beautiful 

 novelties that have been raised in this manner. 

 The one we now illustrate is one of these. It was 

 raised at their nursery from Chysis bractescens 

 and C. aurea. The flowers are large and of ele- 

 gant form; the color of the sepals and petals are 

 nankeen yellow with a large rosy blotch towards 

 the apex; the lip is bright yellow, with numerou.s 

 purplish red spots and markings. The plant 

 grows freely with a habit intermediate between 

 that of the two parents. 



The Seasons in A.merica and England.— A 

 letter from the County of Kent in England, 

 May 1st, says the Hawthorn was then beauti- 

 fully in blossom, and the weather was beauti 

 fully fine. Here in Philadelphia we have Eng- 

 lish weather, though an English traveller just 

 in our ofl[ace repudiates such an execrable sug- 

 gestion, Drizzly rain for about two weeks and 

 thermometer not over 50°. 



The Hawthorn under our window as we 

 write (May 14th) looks as if it will not open by 

 midsummer, and the lilacs always open on the 

 first of May, are closed yet. 



Botany in the French Capital— We are 

 sorry to learn from a French correspondent that 

 botany is not as strongly encouraged as it ©nee 

 was. A naturalist was appointed with the 

 French expedition to Mexico to sustain Maxi 

 milian, and it was one of the incidents which 

 made an objectionable movement tolerable in 

 some quarters, that at least science would be 

 gainers. But the plants collected on that expe- 

 dition are yet in unopened bundles at the Jar- 

 din des Plantes, and an eminent botanist, like 

 Baillon, writing a history of plants, has to go to 

 Kew to study kinds, probably already at his 

 elbow in Paris, but wholly inaccessible. 



Our correspondent intimates that this shows 

 that republics are not as favorably disposed to- 

 wards science as are monarchies; but fortu- 

 nately, the experience of the United States shows 

 that this is not necessarily the case. Some of 

 the best botanical work the world has ever seen 

 has been done by the American Government in 

 connection with the national surveys and expe- 

 ditions. It is the men who happen to rule, not 

 the systems which decide these things. 



American Sights Worth Seeing. — A corres- 

 pondent of the London Garden writes that of all 

 the grand objects he saw in America during his 

 visit to the great Centennial Exhibition in Phila- 

 delphia, those which impressed him the most 

 permanently, were Niagara Falls ; a certain sun- 

 set effect on a river with floating masses of daz- 

 zling white snow on it when the water seemed 

 tlie color of the brilliantly red sky which 

 was reflected in it; and the huge trees of Magno- 

 lias conspicua with their thousands of large 

 white blossoms, which are not uncommon about 

 Philadelphia. 



Hard Botanical Names. — The wretched names 

 offered us so often as " English names," are no 

 worse, to say the least, than some of the very 

 hard words given to us by botanists, and all 

 horticulturists are pleased when a really pretty 

 " common " name becomes common enough to 

 use. The "widow's night cap," or the "red 

 hot poker plant," may be meaningless or un- 

 wieldy; but even they are merciful compared 

 with some of the terrific things with which sim- 

 ple garden folks have often to deal. Let us 

 hope to be preserved from all these extremes. A 

 good botanist, the late Dr. Lindley, pointedly 

 puts the case in the prefiice to the Vegetable 

 Kingdom (edition 1853) : 



" Since the days of Linnseus, who was the great 

 reformer of scientific nomenclature, a host of 

 strange names, inharmonious, sesquipedalian, 

 or barbarous, have found their way into botany, 

 and by the stern, but almost indispensable, laws 

 of priority are retained there. It is fuU time, 

 indeed, that some stop should be put to this tor- 

 rent of savage sounds, when we find such words 

 as Calucechinus, Oresigenesa, Finaustrina, Kra- 

 schenninikovia, Gravenhorstia, Andrzejofskya, 

 Mielichoferia, Monanctineirma, Pleuroschisraa- 

 typus, and hundreds of others like them, thrust 

 into the records of botany without even an 

 apology. If such intolerable words are to be 

 used they should surely be reserved for plants as 

 repulsive as themselves, and instead of libelling 

 races so fiiir as flowers, or so noble as trees, they 

 oiight to be confined to slimes, mildews, blights, 

 and toadstools. All should be anxious to do 

 something towards alleviating this grievous evil, 

 which, at least, need not be permitted to eat into 

 the healthy form of botany clothed in the Eng- 

 lish language. No one who has had experience 

 in the progress of botany as a science can doubt 

 that it has been more impeded in this country 

 by the repulsive appearance of the names which 

 it employs than by any other cause whatever, 

 ar\d that in fact this has proved an invincible ob- 

 stacle to its becoming the serious occupation of 

 those who are unacquainted with the learned 

 languages, or who, being acquainted with them, 



