302 



JOUBNAL OF HORTICULTUEE AND COTTAGE GAEDENER. 



r May 15, 1873. 



attended the removal of some hundreds of large trees upon your system at 

 my place, LUle-iden, io Kent, and to the perfect efticiency of your machines, 

 and the intellicence and zeal of the men you send with them. The beauty 

 of my place has been increased, under your aid, in a degree which, under any 

 other plan, must have been the result of a century. — I refliain, sirs, your 

 obedient servant, Edwabd Loyd, of Lillesden, Lieut. -Col." 



All here mentioned was accomplished in one year, and, 

 according to Mr. Pearson's notion of things, it would take five 

 years. Then let anyone of taste and judgment compare the 

 two results, and I feel sure, as my friend puts it, " the ad- 

 vantage would be obvious to anyone." — Willliji Baheon. 



[With the preceding communication came a woodcut of a tree 

 on the transplanting machine employed by Mr. Barron, who 

 is the head of the firm at the Elvaston Nurseries, Borrowash, 

 near Derby. This woodcut we here reproduce, and in relation 

 to it Mr. Barron observes : — " This is not a fancy picture, but 

 is taken from a photograph which I enclose. This photograph 

 was taken of one of our machines as exhibited in the show- 

 yard of the Royal Agricultural Society at Leicester, in July, 

 1868. The tree is a Scotch Fir. It was lifted by the machine 

 on the Friday before the Show week, and removed on a 

 rough and bUly road over eight miles on the Saturday ; it 

 stood on the machine the whole of the show week, and on the 

 following Monday it was taken five miles out of Leicester and 

 planted. Hence it was ten days on the machine in the middle 

 of summer under a cloudless sky and a broiling sun the whole 

 of the time. The tree never went back, and is now growing 

 well. It was, when removed, 41 feet high."] 



THE EXCRETION OE OXYGEN FEOM ROOTLETS. 

 It was the opinion of Professor Lindley that gas did not 

 exude from the rootlets of plants, but there is no doubt about 

 this, at any rate from aquatic plants ; and in his "Theory of 

 Horticulture " we find it stated that gas, in union with sap, 

 was observed to escape rapidly from the cut end of the root of 

 a Bii'ch tree. I could never see any reason why oxygen should 

 not exude from the rootlets. It would be a clever mode of 

 conveying it to the soil where, independent of atmospheric 

 air brought down in solution with water, or any other mode, it 

 would act on carbonaceous matter, converting it into carbonic 

 acid, and on inorganic matter, rendering it soluble, and capable 

 of being absorbed by the same rootlets from which the oxygen 

 exuded. This seems feasible. Oxygen can be observed to escape 

 from the rootlets of aquatic plants, and can be collected and 

 burnt. Take a glass receptacle and place it in water of 100' 

 temperature, and in it some of the Anacharis weed ; breathe 

 into the water through a tube for five minutes, place the whole 

 in the sun, in a few minutes you can perceive by means of a 

 powerful lens very small bubbles escaping from the rootlets ; 

 these do not rise to the surface, but enter into solution with 

 the water. In order to see the gas escaping with the naked 

 eye you must cut the stem of the Anacharis across, when 

 bubbles will be seen to rise rapidly to the surface, which, if the 

 experiment be carried out on a large scale, can be collected in 

 the usual way, and a red hot wire inserted in the gas ignites. 

 The reason why I heat the water is to excite the plant to de- 

 compose more rapidly the carbonic acid breathed into it from 

 the lungs. — Obsekveb. 



THE VIENNA EXHIBITION. 



Besides, and almost beyond the Exhibition building, the 

 flower show was the point of attraction. Quite on the southern 

 outskirts of the grounds, behind the Japanese buildings and 

 garden, the grounds have been laid out with shrubs and flower 

 beds, which, however, are not yet filled, as a foreground to a 

 semi-circular combination of wood and striped canvas, consist- 

 ing of a central and two side pavilions, connected by a semi- 

 circular passage. This is intended to accommodate a perma- 

 nent flower show. The arrangement cannot be called a happy 

 one, although in outward aspect it is very pretty. Fii-st uf 

 aU, it is very questionable whether some more solid construc- 

 tion would not have answered much better. Everyone knows 

 the miseries of such canvas structures in wet weather, and 

 although on Sunday this one stood the test better than your 

 tents in the Horticultural Gardens, umbrellas were not a 

 superfluity. But the chief drawback in this first flower show 

 has been that the canvas building did not afford sufliciont 

 shelter against the cold night. The whole show has suffered 

 from it, most of the flowers looking shrivelled and sickly. The 

 semi-circular slope, too, is scarcely favourable for such a show, 

 because you can get no effective view of the whole from any 



point. In the passage there is only just room for the stands. 

 Only in the paviUon is grouping possible, and here two foreigners 

 and one Viennese make the most effective display — Linden, 

 from Belgium, in the westerly pavilion ; Abel, from Vienna, in 

 one corner of the middle paviUon ; and Seidel, from Dresden, 

 in the easterly pavilion. Azaleas predominate in each of them, 

 some of them fine specimens, no doubt, which could hold their 

 own in any flower show, but nothing that would strike as a 

 novelty in colour or variety. 



While these three have arranged more general displays, 

 others have taken to specialities. Thus the Botanical Gardens 

 and the Garden Society exhibit large plants — Palms and Coni- 

 feraj. Rodeck from Vienna shows fine Rhododendrons and 

 Begonias. The gardener of the Duke of Brunswick sends 

 choice Infants from the conservatories at Heitzing — stock 

 Fuchsias, Draca;nas, and Gloxinias ; Matzaetter, a collection 

 of Calceolarias ; Klaring, a selection of Pinks. The most in- 

 teresting among these special shows is that sent by Mr. Flatz, 

 who has collected four hundred Alpine plants, and exhibits 

 them on a table, a most interesting microcosm of the Alpine 

 Flora. 



Besides the flowers there is a show of fruit and vegetables. 

 Of course, the former shows mostly the produce of last year in 

 Apples and Pears ; one man, Runkel, of Kremsmiinster, a 

 town which has a name for fruit, exhibiting ninety varieties 

 of Apples and twenty-five of Pears. Of forced fruit there is 

 scBrcely a trace, for the few Strawberry plants scarcely deserve 

 mention. 



In vegetables the display would scarcely excite much asto- 

 nishment either in Covent Garden or at the Marche des Inno- 

 cents. — (Times.) 



Owing to the limited space placed at the disposal of the 

 British Commission, exhibitors have had a great difficulty to 

 provide a suitable and effective display. Messrs. Carter have 

 adopted a very ingenious style. At a cost of between £600 

 and £700 they exhibit a very handsome show-case containing 

 nearly eight hundred distinct samples of agricultural, vege- 

 table, and flower seeds, most of which have been grown on 

 their own seed farms in England. They also exhibit some 

 models in papier machc of then- prize roots, including Mam- 

 moth Long Red Mangel, Warden Orange Globe Mangel, Im- 

 perial Hardy Swede, Robinson's Champion Drumhead Cabbage, 

 &c., all of which are faithful representations in size, colour, 

 and form. Messrs. Carter & Co. have also supplied a large 

 quantity of their lawn grass seeds for forming the turf sur- 

 rounding the ch;ilet of H.I.M. the Crown Prince of Prussia, 

 and other portions of the Exhibition grounds. 



IS A "REGULAR" AND A "PROFESSED" 



GARDENER THE SAME? 

 Will you or any of your readers define what a " regular " 

 gardener is '? Some of the horticultural societies divide their 

 schedirles into two classes — First, gentlemen and their gar- 

 deners ; second, gentlemen not keeping a regular gardener. I 

 always construed the words to mean a gardener in constant 

 employment as opposed to a jobbing gardener ; but at one of 

 our western shows a friend of mine, who keeps more men than 

 m;[self, showed in both classes, and on inquiring I found he 

 construed the words to mean " a professed gardener," and to 

 avoid mistake he got the schedule altered the next year ; the 

 word " professed " takes the place of " regular " gardener. As 

 I do not keep a •' professed " gardener, but only men that were 

 employed previously on farms, and now look after my farm 

 also, I showed in the same class at the Sherborne Show, and 

 after winning the first prize in both classes for Roses was dis- 

 qualified for the latter (on an objection made by the man who 

 came next to me) on the ground that I kept a regular gar- 

 dene: . The Grantham Horticultural Society has just issued 

 its schedule, dividing the entries into the same classes, and as 

 I think of showing there and elsewhere, where the same 

 division is made, I should like some one of authority to decide 

 what a regular and what a professed gardener means. — John 

 B. M. Camm. 



'Wo know of no distinction between a "regular" and a 

 " professed" gardener. The only object in awarding separate 

 prizes to those who do not keep a gardener and those who do 

 keep one, is that the former may not be oi>i)03ed by those who 

 have more skilled assistance. Any gentleman who constantly 

 employs a man in cultivating his garden ought not to exhibit 



