for Juniiury, 1920 



395 



detailed workiiia: plan he would absoluteh' have no use 

 for. 



I am fully aware of the fact that the brook and natural 

 stream traversing- public parks or country home 

 grounds is the exception. Sojourns within refined sub- 



m^: 



Fuukiii Ovata ami .IstUbc Arcndm,"Subnon Queen," Alo]iii tlir Brookliiw 



urban and country sections of New York, Philadelphia, 

 and Boston however have convinced me of the excep- 

 tion being by no means a rare one. Evidently what 

 should have been recognized by the owner as a priceless 

 gift, he still remains prone to look at as a troublesome 

 object. Instead of providing for a brimful measure of 

 enjoyment by having a natural stream of water: 



Brightly sparkling on its way. 



O'er yclloic pebbles dancing, 



riirougli the flowers and foliage glancing — 



we continue building straight lined 

 cement canals for them and at the bot- 

 toms have a sadlj^ chastised meaning- 

 less flow of water run through our 

 premises. Exploiting of brook prob- 

 lems for landscape architects endowed 

 with the faculty of becoming expo- 

 nents of poetry ofifers splendid oppor- 

 tunities for satisfying their ambition. 

 In Europe the subject of late has been 

 given considerable attention and special 

 chapters on landscape architecture in 

 connection with brook and stream ap- 

 pear now in their current literature. To 

 my knowledge very little has been done 

 so far in this direction in this country. 

 The nature of the work itself, however. 

 is so enchanting and the prospects for 

 beautiful results on a highly enjoyable 

 order are so obvious that we can ill af- 

 ford to further remain disinterested 

 and inactive. 



FROST AND THE PLANTS' AWAKENING 



:\luch experimental work has been done of recent 

 years on the Continent and in America with the object 

 of discovering practicable means of forcing plants to 

 come out of their resting state, and to develop and 

 blossom before their proper season. Among 

 the means which have proved effective are : 

 Etherization, warm baths (submerging the 

 shoots for some hours in tepid water), inject- 

 ing drops of water into the stem beneath a 

 bud, watering the plants with a weak solution 

 of nutritive salts (nitrates, phosphates and 

 salts of potash), drying, keeping plants in 

 darkness, and exposing the plants to frost. In 

 the case of many plants it has been found pos- 

 sible to awaken them only by a combination of 

 several of these methods. 



It seems reasonable to conclude from such 

 facts as these that the resting state of plants 

 in winter is a complex business, and that this 

 state may be disturbed and growth awakened 

 by attacking it at several different points. 



Let us endeavor to form a mental picture of 

 the conditions which obtain in a plant in its 

 state of so-called winter rest ! There is reason 

 to believe that in the resting state the living 

 [irotoplasm of each cell forms a resistent outer 

 layer or skin, through which water and gases 

 pass with great difficulty, if at all. In this 

 condition the protoplasm is said to be im- 

 permeable. There is also reason to believe that 

 owing to the layers of cork in the stem, car 

 bun dioxide, produced by the cells themselves 

 when they were finishing oft' their active life in autumn, 

 is imprisoned in the spaces between the cells of the 

 deep tissues, and acts as a narcotic ; drugging the tis- 

 sues as it were. And, furthermore, there is ground for 

 the belief that this same carbon dioxide prevents the 

 ferment or enzyme, diastase, from doing its normal 

 work of changing solid starch into soluble sugar, and 

 if it exert this paralyzing power on this enzyme, may 

 it not also exercise a like eft'ect on other enzj'Uies, the 

 activity of which is necessarj- for the growth of the 



luiiiy J i:,iu- l:li,-il in l>r,<,ii; {,,niii-nii:ii f" ''''' . iicii.^r s (,>•,»' 



I ,leiisidc. Pa. 



"My dear Mrs. Croesus, may I not put your name 

 down for tickets to Professor Pundit's course of lectures 

 on Piuddhism?'' 



"Oh, by all means ! You know how ]iassionatcly fon-.i 

 I am of flowers." 



tissues? In accepting these statements we must pic- 

 ture the cells of a dormant ])Iant as cut off from water 

 sujiplies by reason of the impermeable outer layer of 

 protoplasm, as drugged by the heavy charge of carbon 

 dioxide in and around the tissues, and as starved bv 



