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JOURNAL OP HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



[ May 4, 1876. 



Mr. George Paul speaks of it also as being most promising ; 

 and as we have so very few good Teas I thougbt I woald name 

 it to my RoEe brethren in the hope that if they do not possess 

 the plant they will possess it, and if they have, that they will 

 let me know what they think of it. 



Ah ! when will the blest time arrive when we shall have a 

 first-class white Hybrid Perpetaal, a snow-white Charles 

 Lefebvre ? I remember once at Hereford a gentleman (aid to 

 Mr. Cranston, " Why do you go on bringing oat fresh Boses? 

 surely you have all you want now 1" looking at his wonderfal 

 stand of 1872. " All we want ! " said the Hereford giant, "why 

 we have no really good white Perpetaal yet." The best white 

 H.P. Rose I ever bloomed wa? Louise Maguan. It ia a Rose 

 which I believe has quite gone out of cultivation. " A bad 

 opener " was the fiat which ultimately condemned her to 

 oblivion, and yet I have never myself had or seen such a 

 white Rose. I bloomed it under glass, and at Easter placed 

 it on my chancel screen, and even here, in this retired place, 

 it created finite a furore. The bloom was snow-white in 

 colour, globular, built up like Pierre Notting is when very fine. 

 The oldest catalogue that I have is one of Mr. George Paul's 

 for 1871, and in this it is described as white tinged with flesh 

 colour, large and full, a bad opener, growth moderate. 



I think perhaps we do not give new Roses a long-enough 

 trial. Before we finally discard a Rose we should let it have 

 at least a three-years trial. As an instance in point, in all 

 probability Madame Marie Cointet would have been discarded 

 if Mr. Bennett had not electrified rosarians by the box of 

 blooms which he brought last year of that Rose from Staple- 

 ford to the Crystal Palace. I shall never forget Hercules' face 

 when he told me of those blooms, and how he had not one 

 plant of it. Now Cointet as a bloom ranks with Madame 

 Rothschild, though, alas! she has none of the latter's robust 

 qualities, being a wretched grower. 



The cuckoo was heard for the first time here to-day (April 

 2l8t), so that we may hope for more genial weather now. The 

 letter from Mr. Ingram in our Journal concerning the severe 

 weather was most interesting. We surely may hope now that 

 May will prove a warm month, free from night frosts, and 

 worthy of her name, " the merrie month of May."— John 

 B. M. Camm. 



May I be permitted a small space in your columns to add 

 my quota and fully endorse all that has been so ably written 

 by " T. H. G." and others on this subject? There are, of 

 course, oases where Roses are exhibited at miscellaneous two- 

 day shows in connection with agricultural meetings and such 

 like, where it is unavoidably necessary that they should stand 

 over the second day. But anyone accustomed to exhibit at 

 or visit such shows on a hot June or July day knows full well 

 what miserable objects they very frequently are long before 

 the close of the first day ; and a cut-Rose show pure and simple 

 continued more than one day is in my humble opinion a inost 

 ridiculous absurdity, and in these days of strikes and unions 

 I think a few of our leading nurserymen and amateurs would 

 do well to unite and at once oppose such a growing evil, first 

 by memorialising the managers of shows that have already 

 made such arrangements and announcements ; failing redress 

 to retrain from exhibiting at all such meetings, which are 

 neither more tor less than pecuniary speculations, carried out 

 to a certain ixtent at the expense and great inconvenience 

 of exhibitors.— An Exhibitor. 



leaves apparently uninjured. I then again filled the frame 

 with sulphur vapour, and kept it close all night, expecting to 

 find both plants and spider killed, but neither was so. The 

 plants had suffered a little, but not the enemy; a few young 

 Docks and wild Sorrel that had come up amongst them were 

 singed. 



I then placed a pan of baming sulphur inside, and left it 

 for several hours. I found that the old Melons were entirely 

 barnt up, but the spider still remained rampant on the dead 

 foliage. That concluded my experiments for that time, and 

 also ended my hopes of destroying the spider by means of 

 sulphur. 



I intend trying the sulphur and lime recommended by a 

 correspondent, and will state the results. I hope some other 

 readers will contribute their experience, as in my own opinion 

 this is a subject that still requires much consideration. I am 

 aware that vigorous healthy growth is an excellent fortifier of 

 plants against attacks of the red spider ; but plants or Vines 

 are frequently not found so, nor can they be put in that con- 

 dition in a magical space of time. I am also cognisant of tho 

 fact that abundant syringing is beneficial, but is a very trouble- 

 some process, and cannot at all times be practised. The great 

 desideratum is a process which will banish red spider as tfffctu- 

 ally as fumigation does the aphis tribe. I have recently heard 

 it asserted that the house being well fiUed with steam will 

 destroy this pest, but I am very sceptical about it. Informa- 

 tion from some who have practised what tbey state would be 

 valuable. — Lancashire Reader. 



DESTRUCTION OF RED SPIDER. 



1 AGREE with one of your correspondents that painting the 

 pipes is useless as an antidote, and so far as my experience 

 teaches sulphur used in any form is not fatal to the red spider. 



Some twelve months ago Mr. Douglas stated the result of 

 an experiment on a vinery, when by heating the sulphur- 

 painted pipes to an extent so as to cause a thin vapour in the 

 house, he found all the spiders killed. I can hardly doubt 

 that a gardener of his experience could have been mistaken, 

 but it would appear from an experiment tried on a Melon 

 frame by myself that sulphur vapour has no effect. It was a 

 two-light wood frame, badly infested with spider. After the 

 fruit was cut I had iron plates heated to nearly a red heat 

 placed inside the frame, and flowers of sulphur cast over 

 some, and others painted with sulphur paste, until the frame 

 was nearly full of vapour. I admitted a slight chmk of air 

 during the whole process. An hour afterwards I examined 

 the plants, and found the spider as lively as ever, and the 



INFLUENCE OF LIGHT ON THE COLOURS OF 

 FLOWERS. 

 While the green colour of leaves absolutely requires for 

 its formation the action of light, there is by no means such a 

 dependence in the colour of flowers on light. From experi- 

 ments made many years ago by Sachs, it appeared that not 

 merely bulbous and tuberous plants took quite a normal form 

 in perfectly dark chambers and gave coloured flowers, but 

 that other plants also produced normal flowers when the 

 flowers only were kept in a dark space and the green leaves 

 exposed to light. At the same time differences were now 

 and again observed in the various plants between the illuminated 

 and the darkened flowers, and they seemed to call for further 

 experiment. The matter has been investigated by M. Askenasy, 

 who has described his results in the Botanishe Zeitunrf. 



It was found that Tulipa Gesueriana gave in darkness 

 quite the same flowers as in light, and the flowers of tbe 

 plants grown in darkness were in no wise altered when they 

 were afterwards brought to light, and the etiolated stems and 

 leaves became green. The same result was obtained from Crocus 

 vernuB. On the other hand, Hyacinthus orientalis showed a 

 distinct influence of light, and that in two ways : first, the 

 light accelerated the development of the flowers about fourteen 

 days ; then the flowers which grew in the dark were not in- 

 deed colourless, but the intensity of the colour was less and 

 its distribution was different from that in normal flowers. If 

 the upper part of a cluster of flowers grown in darkness were 

 cut off and exposed to light there was, even after one day's 

 action, a decided increase in the intensity of the colour, and 

 in three days the flowers were nearly as deeply coloured 

 as the normal flowers. " It is not without significance," 

 M. Askenasy remarks, " that the change of colour which the 

 light here produces is independent of the previous formation 

 of chlorophyll. The older flowers, which had been earlier 

 produced in the darkness, did not first become green, then 

 blue ; they rather at once took a dark blue colour, and only 

 tbe younger flower buds formed at first chlorophyll in the 

 light, so that they became at first as green as the buds of the 

 same age grown in light and afterwards developed in the 

 same way as these." 



Scilla campanulata developed in the dark normal flowers, 

 in which the blue colour of the corolla was somewhat weaker 

 than the uncovered specimens, while the reddish colour of the 

 inflorescence of the normal plants was absent in the darkened 

 ones. Pulmonaria officinalis, on the other hand, developed 

 its flowers in darkness from the flower buds quite normally ; 

 and also in the darkness the change of colour proper to this 

 flower passed from red to blue, but the flowers that were 

 developed later were more weakly coloured. 



Further experiments were made with Arohis ustulata, Silene 

 pendula, Antirrhinum majus, and Prunella grandiflora, and 



