192 BRIEF NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE. 



Tropaeolums which have ceased blooming, and the tops withered, must 

 be taken out of the soil, or be kept in a bag, &c., or the pot must be put 

 aside, where it may have the soil kept dry till potting time. Green- 

 house plants placed in the open air in pots sliould have frequent 

 syringing at the under side of the foliage, to destroy, or keep down 

 insects, &c. The shoots of many of the stove Orchideae will now be 

 far advanced in growth ; they will, in consequence, require a larger 

 supply of moisture in the atmosphere and at the roots than at any otlier 

 season ; this will render syringing and pouring water over the flues, 

 floor, &c., twice or more every day. 



THE EFFECTS OF GUANO ON THE FUCHSIA. 



Br DAHL, OF MANCHESTER. 



It is now a long time since I sent you any communication, having 

 some time since removed from the south to tliis smoky, damp, and 

 cold atmosphere, where there is but little excitement for floricultural 

 exertions. 



Having seventy or eighty pots of the Fuchsia, some good sized 

 plants, they had all been potted in good stuff, rich and light, and 

 mostly from small pots to large ones. As I much prefer the one-sliift 

 system, they were kept in cold frames, with the lights off, to harden 

 them for the open ground. When my Tulips were taken up, each pot 

 was put in the ground up to the rim, and watered two or three times 

 in the week with guajio water, thus prepared ; about three table- 

 spoonfulls put into a quart of boiling water, which was allowed to 

 stand twelve hours, and then mixed with two gallons of rain-water ; 

 with this water the earth in the pots was well saturated, and every 

 night the foliage was well watered with rain-water ; and such was the 

 effect on the plants, that the growth was immense, the bloom profuse, 

 and the plants became fine specimens. The plan will well repay for 

 the little extiu trouble. 



BRIEF NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE. 



' Nature of Pi.ants. — J. Austen. — You will derive much pleasure and instruction 

 in this matter from the perusal of Liebig's excellent treatises on Vegetable Che- 

 mistry. It appears in reality that plants have some power of accommodating their 

 functions to the nature of the gaseous elements by which they are surrounded ; solar 

 light nndoubtedl}- has a very powerful etfect on them, as, under its influence, they 

 exhale large portions of oxygen and moisture ; and the experiments of M. CondoUe 

 demonstrated its effects to be so great, that plants were wholly uninjured by the 

 action of gases whilst subject to its influence, but which immediatelj- destroyed 

 them at night ; even the application of chlorine, and other deleterious substances, to 

 the roots of plants is proved to be innocuous during the day, though they are at 

 once destroyed by similar treatment at night. Muriatic acid gas, nitrous acid gas, 

 and sulphuretted hydrogen, were each tried in this manner with the same result. 

 The notion that plants exhale carbonic acid gas during the night is open to much 

 doubt ; because, from numerous analyses that have been made, the air of the house 

 ■was always found to contain the same proportions of this gas during the day as well 

 as during the night. 



