1897- NOTES AND COMMENTS. 301 



medium, the rise after injury is " as great, if not greater than in 

 animals." The maximum in all the plants investigated was between 

 two and three times the ordinary excess above the surrounding air. 

 Potatoes proved the most satisfactory objects for experiment, and it 

 was found that in massive tissues (such as potatoes or radishes afford) 

 the effect of injury was local, whereas in the case of leaves {e.g., onion- 

 bulbs) a much greater extent of tissue was sympathetically affected. 



Bulb-Growing. 



Daffodils and other species of Narcissus, hyacinths, tulips, and 

 other bulbous plants are so common and so cheap in the early spring 

 markets that we are prone to wonder where and how they are grown. 

 We remember noticing a statement some years ago that early potato 

 cultivation had been given up in parts of the Scilly Islands in favour 

 of the daffodil. At present, however, we are interested in a sug- 

 gestion by Mr. F. W. Burbidge, in a lecture to the Birmingham 

 Gardeners' Mutual Improvement Association, reported in the 

 Gardeners' Chronicle (March 27). " We are told " he says " by 

 politicians nowadays that thrift and home industries are essential, 

 and while some advocate milk or meat, or poultry and eggs, or 

 jam-making, or the 'Busy Bee' industry, I will advocate bulb- 

 culture." In Holland and elsewhere it is the small growers who 

 supply the wholesale growers and the merchants, and Mr. Burbidge 

 thinks that what can be done in Holland could be done by the 

 small farmer, the cottager, the allotment-holder, and even the rail- 

 way porter, in our own country. Bulb-culture, he tells us, on 

 suitable sites and soils has proved to be the most profitable of all 

 cultures in neighbouring countries, as well as in Cornwall and the 

 Scilly Islands, and if the English gardener will only have more 

 faith in himself, and in the soil and climate of his native land, the 

 day may come when our great bulb-merchants will not be obliged to 

 go abroad with their big cheque-books once or twice a year. We are 

 glad to note this suggestion in applied botany, and are seriously 

 thinking of trying to work out the hints on cultivation, &c., which 

 Mr. Burbidge supplies, and grow a few bulbs on our own account. 

 At any rate it is a point for the depressed agriculturist to note. 

 Fruit-growing for jam-making depends largely for success on the 

 cheap sugar which we buy from the Continent to the ruin of our 

 West Indian Islands. The present Sugar Commission may perhaps 

 alter this. In such a case it is reassuring to think that we can then 

 fall back on bulbs, if only they can be got cheaply enough to market. 

 Apropos of this last remark we notice in the same number of the 

 Gardeners' Chronicle (p. 206) a paragraph entitled " Pleasant for the 

 British Farmer." One steamboat, to be soon followed by two 

 others, has lately been put on the service between Antwerp and 

 London with the result that *' any package of poultry, fruit, eggs. 



