276 



THE GARDENERS' MONTHLY, 



[September, 



autumn, were liberated, ready for the growth of 

 the ensuing spring. 



The whole process is readily observed by putting 

 some fine mud in an open fruit jar, filling the jar 

 with water, and placing it in a warm, sunny win- 

 dow, and then dropping a handful of the lemna in 

 to grow. 



The lecture closed by a statement showing how, 

 from the embryo, the flowering plant started in its 

 career of growth. 



EDITORIAL NOTES. 



Possible Impossibilities. — It is interesting to 

 note how many things once thought by intelligent 

 people to be impossible, have nevertheless come 

 to pass. It was once demonstrated to the entire 

 satisfaction of mechanical engineers, that no steam- 

 boat could ever cross the Atlantic, because the 

 ratio of coal to bulk w^s thought to be against the 

 distance. Now we have the impossibility of crys- 

 talizing sugar from Indian corn and other things, 

 tolerably well solved. Of this, in a recent address 

 before the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, 

 Hon. Marshall P. Wilder spoke of the possibihty 

 of producing sugar in quantity from sorghum on 

 our own soil, in which he fully believed. It has 

 been stated that sorghum sugar cannot be crystal- 

 lized, but it is now a settled fact that it can. 



Practical Diffusion of Agricultural 

 Science. — An intelligent correspondent of the St. 

 Louis Rural World remarks, that "most farmers 

 know that the persistent defoliation of a weed or a 

 tree will result in death. Did they not so believe 

 they would never strike a blow with a hoe, nor 

 persistently fight the canker worm. The trimming 

 or pruning of shade trees (and often of orchard 

 trees also) in public parks or along the highway, is 

 not done or ordered by experienced gardeners or 

 horticulturists, but by officials who know no more 

 about vegetable physiology than they do about 

 the North Pole. This ought not so to be, but, 

 unfortunately it is so." 



To our mind they hoe, because they want to 

 destroy the plants " root and branch. " If they 

 know generally that the persistent destruction of 

 young leaves before they mature will destroy the 

 most inveterate rooter among weeds, we have been 

 very unfortunate in not meeting such intelligence. 

 Not only from among "most farmers" do we find 

 comes the imploring question, "How to kill Canada 

 thistle?" and other weeds, but we have heard 



it asked in agricultural conventions and Boards of 

 agriculture, with usually the only answer, "to root 

 them out by law," — "fining the man who grows 

 them," and indeed, we have rarely heard taking 

 the young leaves off suggested — and when we 

 have, have seen the same "good farmers" come 

 back and ask the same question of the "conven- 

 tion" the next year. 



Camassia esculenta var. Leichtlinii. — 

 Our Western "Quamash," a pretty prairie bulb, 

 has presented us with a new variety from the 

 Pacific coast, of which the Botanical Magazine, 

 after figuring, says: "It was discovered by Mr. 

 John Jeffrey in British Columbia in 1853. As a 

 garden plant my first knowledge of it was derived 

 from our indefatigable correspondent, Max Leicht- 

 lin, Esq. The present sketch was taken from a 

 plant which flowered on the rockery in Kew Gar- 

 dens in May, 1873. The ordinary color of the 

 flowers of C. esculenta and of C. Fraseri, its repre- 

 sentative in the Eastern States, is blue, but in all 

 the specimens which I have seen of the present 

 plant the flowers are white." 



Bad Setting Grapes. — Self-fertihzation is com- 

 mon, but it is not universal; for any one examin- 

 ing the flowers of vines will find that when the cap 

 of petals falls off in the way described in books 

 and the pollen is dispersed, that the stigma is not 

 receptive, and so any pollen that falls upon it is 

 powerless. Again, the dispersal of the pollen is as 

 likely to produce cross-fertilization of adjacent 

 flowers when others are grown in proximity as it is 

 self-fertilization. The different times at which 

 pollen and stigma ripen, and the occasional ab- 

 sence or defective condition of the pollen, are 

 among the most usual causes of shy setting. This 

 deficiency of pollen we have noted in Dutch Ham- 

 burgh, Black Morocco, Balafault, Muscat Noir du 

 Jura, Aramon, Morocco Prince, and Chasselas 

 Musqur, but how far this is a common occurrence 

 we do not know. — Gardener s Chronicle. 



Adaptation in Nature. — Of late years it has 

 been the fashion among a class of ingenious minds, 

 to see in every variety of form in nature, some 

 reason derived from an innate necessity, why the 

 form should be just so. 



It has however seemed to the Editor of this 

 magazine, and he has presented the point from 

 time to time, that there can be no more reason 

 derived from "advantage to the plant" in one 

 class of form over others, in innumerable cases. 

 Take for instance, the various forms of leaves 



