160 BOTANICAL NOTES^ NOTICES, AND QUERIES. [May. 



summer, several years ago, there was a pathvvny throiio;li a park, and near 

 the path there was a shady spot where the ground was covered with the 

 husks of beech-nuts, and other half-decayed litter. Here we detected 

 about a dozen of these fetid funguses in an incipient state. Before pro- 

 ducing the t/iallns and hymeinnjii,, the entire plant is like an egg without a 

 shell, which hens occasionally lay when they are not supplied with cal- 

 careous matter to furnish the shell. Then the fungus had no smell ; it 

 was a gelatinous substance, shaped like an t^;,^, and covered with a tough 

 skin, the volca or veil. One or two were carefully talcen up and ]ilanted 

 in a pot, and placed in a brewhouse, and after some weeks one expanded, 

 and became a fair, but not fragrant object, in the course of a single night. 

 Kapidity of gi-owth is not confined to the Phallus. We have known Bo- 

 vista gigantea, one of the largest of Fungi, sometimes about a foot in dia- 

 meter, grow to an immense size in a single night. Rijricola. 



The London Market Gardener. 



The growth of London has pushed the market gardener gradually into 

 the country ; and now, instead of sending up his produce i)y his own 

 waggons, he trusts it to the railway, and is often thrown into a market ' 

 fever by a late delivery. To compensate him, however, for the altered 

 state of the times, he often sells his crops like a merchant upon 'Change, 

 without the trouble of bringing more than a few hand-samples in his 

 pockets. He is nearly seventy years of age, but looks scarcely fifty, and 

 can remember the time when there were ten thousand acres of ground 

 within four miles of Charing Cross under cultivation for vegetables, be- 

 sides about three thousand acres planted with fruit to supply the London 

 consumption. He has lived to see the Dcptford and Bermondsey gardens 

 curtailed ; the Hoxtou and Hackney gardens covered with houses ; the 

 Essex plantations pushed furtiier off; and the Brompton and Kensington 

 nurseries — the home of vegetables for centuries — dug up and sown with 

 Liternational Exhibition temples, and Italian gardens that will never 

 grow a pea or send a single cauliflower to market. He has lived to see 

 Guernsey and Jersey, Cornwall, the Scilly Islands, Holland, Belgium, and 

 Portugal, with many other more distant places, competing with the remote 

 outskirts of London, and has been staggered by seeing the market sup- 

 plied with choice early peas from such an unexpected quarter as French 

 Algeria. — Cornhill Magazine. 



Communications have been received from, 

 T. Simpson ; T. S. ; M. T. Masters ; F. Webb ; the Earl of Ilchester ; 

 James Lothian; John Sim ; A. G. More; E. Marcus Attwood; W. Pani- 

 plin ; C. J. Ashfield ; W. P. ; W. Ashley ; Sidney Beisly ; J. G. Baker ; 

 G. W. Marshall. 



RECEIVED FOR REVIEW. 



Canadian Naturalist and Geologist. 



Stenso?i's Catalogue of old and modern Engravings, containing portraits 

 of some botanists and drawings of plants. 



Vegetable Morphology, its history, and present condition. 



James Lothian s Lists of Trees, Shrubs, Agricultural and Garden seeds, etc. 



The Glasgow WeeMy Mail, etc., March l^th. 



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