1883.] 



AND HORTICULTURIST. 



375 



"exactly four o'clock." We rather doubt whether 

 the ant has progressed further in civilization than 

 to know how to murder and enslave each other, 

 and believe they have not yet invented time-pieces, 

 so as to get exactly the hour, and, on the whole, 

 the French account reads very much as if it were 

 in the main made up from one of Dr. McCook's 

 papers, and in the other part from the imagination. 

 An opera glass is needed to see an ant battle to 

 the best advantage. 



Progress of Plant Knowledge. — How the 

 knowledge of plants has progressed of late years 

 may be illustrated by that curious family Orchideas. 

 Linnaeus could count all his genera on his fingers ; 

 now Bentham and Hooker in their recent work 

 describe 334. — Independent. 



Poisonous Kalmia.— Now it is Dr. Zabriskie 

 mentions to the editor of the Rural New Yorker a 

 case in which a young lady ate a few leaves of the 

 Kalmia latifolia (mountain laurel or calico bush) as 

 she was passing through the woods. She died 

 that night. It has already been stated in our 

 magazine that a chemical examination of the leaves 

 has been made without a trace of poison being 

 found in them. What the young lady wanted to 

 eat "a few leaves" for is not apparent. And if 

 she did, there are plenty of people who " died in 

 the night" who never saw a kalmia leaf. 



The Holy Grass. — Amongst the curiosities in 

 Mr. Barlow's garden at Stakehill are some tufts of 

 the rare holy grass (Hierochloe borealis), which 

 may be considered a native of Britain, though 

 only met with in a few stations in Scotland ; but is 

 common in North Germany, Norway, Sweden, 

 Lapland and Russian-America. It is of short- 

 tufted and somewhat untidy growth, the leaves 

 rather broad, but short and springing from stout 

 stems, the panicle few-flowered and remotely hol- 

 cus-like, the glumes yellowish. It is the Holcus 

 odoratus of Linnaeus, Smith and Sinclair ; Hiero- 

 chloe borealis of Hooker and Greville. It obtains 

 its name of "holy grass" because of its dedica- 

 tion to the Virgin Mary by the Christians of the 

 East, being in certain places scattered at the doors 

 of churches in the same manner that Acorus cala- 

 mus is at the present day scattered at Norwich. 

 In Prussia it has some celebrity in this way, and 

 in Sweden it is hung over the beds of the wakeful 

 in the belief that it induces sleep. That it has a prop- 

 erty to justify the belief is likely, for it is powerfully 

 and delightfully aromatic, probably more so than the 

 well-known and agreeably fragrant Anthoxanthum 

 odoratum. A tiny sprig that, by Mr. Barlow's per- 



suasion, I placed in my pocket-book three weeks 

 ago is now more fragrant than when first gathered, 

 and the odor of the dry specimen resembles that 

 of woodruff, which, it may be remarked, is now at 

 its best for perfuming books and linen. It is fig- 

 ured in Lowe's "British Grasses," from a specimen 

 gathered at Thurso by the late Mr. Robert Dick, 

 and it is there recorded that Mr. G. Don met with 

 it in a mountain valley called Kella, near Glen 

 Shee, Forfarshire. — Gardeners' Magazine. 



The Curl in the Peach Leaf. — Most of the 

 readers of the Gardeners' Monthly know that 

 the curl in the peach leaf is caused by a fungus, 

 what that fungus is, how it operates and how very 

 injurious to the peach tree is its operation. But 

 it does good to repeat lessons which have been 

 taught, and especially when the lessons come from 

 varied teaching ; so we give here the latest lesson 

 given by Professor Penhallow through the columns 

 of the Country Gentleman : 



"The curl in the peach leaf is caused by the 

 growth of a fungus known as Exoascus defor- 

 mans, Freckel (Ascomyces deformans, Berk, 

 Taphrina deformans, Tul.). During its growth it 

 not only causes the leaves to curl, but to lose their 

 green color and become more or less red and yel- 

 low, and we see from this, therefore, that such 

 leaves are incapable of performing their normal 

 functions in the assimilative processes of the plant. 

 The necessary result of this is, that there is a very 

 limited formation of wood while such leaves re- 

 main on the tree. For this period, therefore, it 

 must be admitted that the curl does exert a posi- 

 tively injurious influence. It is found, however, 

 that these leaves fall off during the month of June, 

 and a new set of leaves free from curl appears. 

 LTpon these, then, the entire growth of the season 

 depends, and because, unless otherwise diseased, 

 the tree then very frequently makes a fine growth, 

 fruit-growers generally believe that the curl is of 

 no importance, and that it does not injure the tree 

 at all." 



SCRAPS AND QUERIES. 



Notes on the NovexMber Number. — "A. G.," 

 Cambridge, Massachusetts, says: "Gardeners' 

 Monthly, page 322. There is no Tropaeolum 

 Canariensis, and the contradiction of terms be- 

 tween ' Canariensis,' which in English is ' of the 

 Canaries,' and the statement that it is ' a native of 

 New Grenada and Peru ' is direct. I wonder you 

 did not see it. 



"I can venture to say with confidence that 

 the Spruce on White-Top and on Roan is not 

 ' Abies alba," as you say, on page 339, but is A. 

 nigra. 



" I hope your readers will be edified by the lucid 



