128 



The Horticulturist. 



state of feeling, as far as we can learn from 

 sources outside of the Centennial City. Phila- 

 delphia has already done her utmost. It 

 hardly seems possible to do more. Either 

 the plans must be brought down within the 

 means now in hand or the great Centennial 

 must adjourn sine die. But beyond the im- 

 mediate influences of Philadelphia interests, 

 no city will contribute a dollar to help add to 

 the glory of a rival. 



Popular Science. 



Flowers in the Tropics. — Winwood 

 Reade says, that, even for a man of science, 

 there is much that is disappointing in the 

 tropics. At home we see the beautiful flow- 

 ers of the torrid zone massed together in the 

 greenhouses, but nowhere in Africa, Brazil or 

 the Indian Archipelago, can we find such a 

 luxury of color as that displayed by field and 

 forest vegetation in England and the United 

 States. And similarly with insects. The en- 

 tomologist soon discovers that fewer insects 

 are visible in the tropical woods than in Eng- 

 lish groves or meadows. He is not disap- 

 pointed in the ants, however, of which there 

 are many species, each in some way annoying 

 to man. The white ants of Africa are espe- 

 cially destructive to the woodwork of houses. 

 "It is related of a resident upon the coast 

 that, on going home for a few months, he 

 locked up his house instead of lending it to 

 an acquaintance, as is usually done. But 

 the selfish old gentleman thought that his fur- 

 niture would keep better for not being used. 

 When he returned he unlocked his front door 

 and gave a push. Hi^ hand went through. 

 Ditto with all the other doors of his house. 

 Such are the white ants." 



Transportation of Seeds. — Experi- 

 ments on the transportation of seeds by ocean 

 currents have been made recently by M. 

 Thuret, at Antibes, a town in the south of 

 France, near Nice. Only two kinds of bare 

 seeds would float, out of the two hundred and 

 fifty-one kinds which were tested. M. Thuret 

 also immersed twenty-four species of seeds in 



sea-water, to ascertain its effect upon their 

 vitality. After one year's immersion, three 

 of them germinated as well as dry seeds. 



Uses of Humble-bees — Humble-bees 

 are needed in New Zealand to fertilize the 

 red clover which has been introduced into the 

 colony. It is proposed to import nests of 

 them from England, using ice to keep them 

 dormant during the voyage. 



Number of L,epidopte7-a in the World. 



— Peter Maassen has recently read a paper in 

 which he computes the number of Lepidoptera 

 at 29,740 ; but Scientific Opinion estimates 

 it at 227,240 species. 



Preserving Cut Flowers. — In a letter 

 to the French Society of Horticulture, a chem- 

 ist, M. Fremont, mentions that a good way of 

 preserving cut fiowers in a state of freshness 

 is to dissolve sal-ammoniac, or chlorhydrate of 

 ammonia, with the water in which the stems 

 are put, in the proportion of five grammes per 

 liter of water. They will thus often be kept 

 fresh for a fortnight. The experiment is one 

 which can be easily made. 



Fertilizinff Plants Artificially. — It is 



announced from Vienna that a process indica- 

 ted by M. Hooibrenk, for facilitati/ig the fer- 

 tilization of plants, has proved successful in 

 the Botanical Gardens there. The process 

 consists simply in touching the end of the pis- 

 til — that is, the stigma — in a flower, with a 

 pencil dipped in honey, or, better, in honey 

 having mixed with it some pollen of the plant 

 operated upon. A Hibiscus Mexicanum which 

 had never yielded fruit, having undergone this 

 treatment, produced quite a large quantity of 

 good seeds. With several fruit trees the pro- 

 cess also succeeded. Further, after operating 

 on certain branches only of trees which did 

 not yield fruit, it was found that fruit devel- 

 oped and was formed on these, while the 

 branches left in the natural state gave none. 

 The effect, if real, may be explained by sup- 

 posing that the honey retains the pollen grains 

 on the stigma, and thus favors the formation 

 of a pollen tube, which is indispensable to the 

 fertilization. 



