220 



THE GARDENER'S MONTHLY 



[July, 



them. He appears to have little fear of wild 

 animals, though he occasionally see.-> a grizzly 

 bear. 



[This extremely interesting sketch was origi- 

 nally written by the well-known Mineralogist, 

 Mr. Willcox, for the Delaware Co. (Pa.) Republi- 

 can, and will be new to most of our readers. — 

 Ed. G. M.] 



EDITORIAL NOTES. 



Wilder's Speech ox Agricultural Educa- 

 tion. — Not long since we took occasion to note 

 the wonderful amount of good Col. Wilder was 

 doing, for one of his years, in the cause of horti- 

 culture and agriculture. He seems never to tire. 

 Before us now is a Boston paper with a long ac- 

 count of a public meeting in behalf of the Mass. 

 Agricultural College. The account says : — 



"The announcement that an Agricultural In- 

 stitute was to be held in the city of Boston, and 

 that such speakers as President Chadbourne, of 

 the Agricultural College, and the Hon. Marshall 

 P. Wilder would address the meeting, struck a 

 responsive chord everywhere among the promo- 

 ters of ' Agricultural Education.' And not- 

 withstanding the severe inclemency of the 

 weather on the day appointed for the gathering, 

 the hall of the New England Agricultural So- 

 ciety was well filled at an early hour with the 

 most remarkable collection of representative 

 men ever convened at an Agricultural Institute." 



We need scarcely say that Col. Wilder's speech 

 was full of his old-time enthusiasm, and his many 

 friends can onlj'- wish that his emphatic " once 

 more" may yet be oft repeated. 



Oldmixon. — The Country Gentleman correctly 

 notes that the name of this peach is in one word 

 and not in two, as in the incorrect Old Mixon. 

 We are all of us liable to fall into bad habits for 

 want of thought. For instance, most of us say 

 '•fungoid plants" and all sorts of things "fun- 

 goid," when we actually mean a fungus and not 

 something like one. For this correction we are 

 indebted to the kindness of Prof. C. V. Riley. 



Charles Darwin.— The whole world has 

 summed up the life of Darwin. No man has de- 

 parted more sincerely mourned, — no man's life 

 has been more useful, — few men have left the 

 world whom it will be as slow to forget. For 

 many ages the name of Darwin will be honored 

 as the one man above all others who taught us 

 how to talk with Nature. If it should prove 

 that he did not always interpret her language 



correctly, it will not be the less to his credit. No 

 one before him did what he has done. Others 

 may learn more, but only by following in his 

 footsteps. 



Introduction of the Cedar of Lebanon. — In 

 regard to the romancing narratives connected 

 with the weeping willows, some correspondents 

 wrote recently that it was a pity the editor of the 

 Gardener's Monthly disturbed them, for they 

 were " too pretty to destroy." There is no ob- 

 jection to pretty stories. We like them; and we 

 doubt whether a mere story loses any of its in- 

 terest by being given as a story, and not as the 

 very truth. Dr. Asa Gray is also of this opinion, 

 as we may judge from the following which has 

 recently appeared in the Gardener's Chronicle : 



"A paragraph in an article on the 'Travels of 

 Plants' in the Gardener's Chronicle for March 25, 

 just received here, calls up a reminiscence. 

 Here is the paragraph : ' The introduction of 

 the Cedar of Lebanon into France w-as an effort 

 of most interesting devotion on the part of Ber- 

 nard de Jussieu, who brought it from the Holy 

 Land in 1737, and kept it alive on the voyage by 

 sharing with it the very small quantity of water 

 which he received during a prolonged voj-age. 

 In the absence of a flower-pot, Jussieu is said to 

 have planted the cedar in his hat, and by giving 

 it a moiety of his daily glass of water he succeed- 

 ed in keeping it alive, and afterwards had the 

 satisfaction of planting it in the Jardin des 

 Plantes at Paris. In 1837. at the age of 100 

 years, it was cut down, having attained a height 

 80 feet.' I dimly remembered having read this 

 narrative before in a fuller version. This is to 

 be found in an article on coniferous trees in the 

 Edinburgh Review for October, 1864. That ac- 

 count enters into details — that Bernard de Jus- 

 sieu, w'hen travelling in the Holy Land, brought 

 away with him from among the Cedars of Mount 

 Lebanon a little seedling, made a flower-pot of 

 his hat, in which he planted it, got it safely on 

 board a vessel bound for Marseilles; that tem- 

 pestuous weather and contrary winds so pro- 

 longed the voyage that the passengers were 

 restricted lo half a glassful of water a day 

 all through a lengthened voyage ; that, shar- 

 ing this with his little plant, he reached 

 Marseilles at length with his own health seri- 

 ously damaged, but that of his seedling unin- 

 jured; that, after all this privation successfully 

 endured, he came near to losing the fruit of his 

 devotion through the incredulity and suspicion 



