208 EXTRACTS. 



In pruning roses of every kiud, the shoots are annually shortened to nine 

 inches; this process rendering tie tree highly productive of wood and flowers. 

 The operation is performed about the end of January, and all the wood of 

 four years' growth entirely cut out. To retard the blooming season, and to 

 cause roses to flower in the autumn, they are pruned back in the spring, as 

 soon as the flower-buds can be discovered ; and tliese not being renewed till 

 late in the autumn, the flowering season is considerably prolonged. 



The rose is much infested with insects, particularly the Aphis Eosm, which, 

 however, may easily be destroyed if the trees are in a house, by fumigating 

 with tobacco, or if in the open air, by making a solution of quick lime, soot, 

 and water, in the proportion of one peck of each to ten gallons of water; 

 after being well stirred together, and left standing until the water has become 

 (juite clear, take it out with a watering pot, and mix with it about one-sixth of 

 strong tobacco water, which, if applied to the roses with a syringe, will efl^ec- 

 tually destroy the Aphides, and generally the larva; of other insects, which 

 roll themselves up in the leaves and buds of the flowers. 



In conclusion, we may be permitted to advert to a question sometimes 

 asked, — What is the use of flowers? For ourselves, we envy not the mind 

 that could suggest such an interrogatory; the soul cannot sympathise with 

 one whose ideas of utility are centred all in self, and whose heart is inaccessi- 

 ble to the choicest gifts of nature. "^\'hat a desolate place," beautifully 

 observes a modern writer, " would be a world without a flower ! It would be 

 as a face without a smile, — a feast without a welcome." Think of a world 

 without flowers, — of a childhood that loves them not, — of a soul that has no 

 sense of the beautiful, — of a virtue that is driven and not attracted, founded 

 on the meanness of calculation, measuring out its obedience, grudging its 

 generosity, thinking only of its visible and tangible rewards; think of a state 

 of society in which there is no love of beauty, or elegance, or ornament, and 

 then may be seen and felt the utility of ornament, the substance of decora- 

 tion, the sublimity of beauty, the usefulness of flowers. — ManteU's 

 Floriculture, see page 24. 



On the History of the PoUanthes tuberose. By F. H. S. 



An article on the culture of that most fragrant flower the Tuberose, having 

 appeared in your Magazine, the Number for June, page 86, but no account 

 of its history being there given, I herewith send you an extract from the 

 Transactions of the London Horticultural Society, of which very useful So- 

 ciety I have been a member from the commencement. It is part of avaluable 

 paper communicated by R. A. Salisbury, Esq. 



" The first account that I find of the Tuberose, is in L'F.cldse's History of 

 Plants, where it appears that on the 1st of Decembei-, 1594, he received a 

 specimen of it, in very bad condition, from Bernard Paludanus, a physician 

 at Rome, to whom it was sent by the celebrated Simon de Tovab, of Seville. 

 It certainly had not then been many years in Europe, and Linne, in his 

 Hortus Cliffurtiamis, on this head refers us to Plumier's Genera Plantarum, 

 p. 35, who says it was first brought by Father Minuti, from the East Indies, 

 into the senator Peiresc's garden at Boisgencier, near Toulon. It is much 

 more probable, however, that it was introduced at an earlier period, and from 

 America, for no author describes it as wild in the East Indies; Loureiro 

 only found it cultivated in the gardens of Cochin China; and Rumph says it 

 was unknovfn in the Island of Amboina, till the Dutch carried it there from 

 Batavia, in 1674. On the contraiy, Kajiel informs us, that it was brought 

 to the Island of Luzone, by the Spaniards, from Mexico ; and Parkinson, in 

 l().5t), tells us, that the plants, which he describes as two species, ' both grow 

 naturally in the West Indies, from whence being brought into Spain, have 

 from thence been dispersed unto divers lovers of plants.' The senator Pei- 

 HEsr, as may be learnt from Gassendi, was only fourteen years old in 1594, 



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