114 Foreign Notices. 



Art. II. Foreign JVotices. 



ENGLAND. 



Growing Plants in Moss. Your correspondent, Mr. Thomas Parkins, in- 

 forms us lliat he uses moss as a draining for plants in pots, and appears to 

 tliink the practice new. I beg leave to say that I used the same thing, for 

 the same purj)ose, as long ago as the spring of 1824 ; and found it to answer, 

 in every respect, better than the common way of draining pots. Since that 

 time, 1 have struck pelargoniums in moss ; and have grown them in il witk- 

 out any mould at all, and found the plants stronger and better than such as 

 were grown in the regular compost for pelargoniums. As the moss decays 

 at the bottoms of the pots, I j)ress it down, and fill up the j)ots with fresh 

 moss. It does not signify whether the moss be live or dry, as both will 

 answer equally well. — John Sltivart, Gardener to Alexander Baring, Esq., 

 Addiscovihe Place, Croydon, Surrey, Aug. 20, 1834. — Gard. Mag. 



Effects of the prolonged Siunmer. A second crop of whortleberries ( Fac- 

 cinium Myrtillus) has ripened at Edgworth RToor in Lancashire. Fine ripe 

 figs were grown in the open air against a wall in Aberdeen. Pear trees, in 

 the gardens of Sir T. G. Cullum at Hardwicke House, in Suffolk, hiive pro- 

 duced fruit on the young spring shoots of the ))resent year, which flowered 

 at Michaelmas : the })ears are of the Passe-Colmar and Marie Louise kinds. 

 A fig tree on the same pro})erty has its second crop })erfectly ripe. At Elms- 

 well, in the same county, one tree, which has already produced two crops of 

 apples, is in bloom for the third. In York, white currants, fully ripe, were 

 gathered in a garden opposite the Pavement; and at Scarborough Parade, 

 large strawberries have fully ripened, notwithstanding the cx])osure of the 

 situation to the sea breeze. The gardens and fields near Sheffield present 

 all the api)earance of spring ; flowers and j)lants having blown and borne 

 fruit a second time. The Inverness woods have yet scarcely lost a leaf; and 

 are only here and there beginning to assume their autumnal livery. A pear 

 tree in a garden near Huddersfield, which had lost nearly all its leaves, has 

 budded forth again in freshness and full blossom. At Coleridge, in Devon- 

 shire, the apple ti'ees have ripe fruit and full flower blossoms at the same 

 time. (Morn. Chron. Oct. 17, 1834.) About London the weather was so 

 fine during the last fortnight of September and the first fortnight of October, 

 that the six and sometimes eight artists whom we h:;d employed, during the 

 whole of that period, in the Horticultural Society's garden, Messrs. Loddiges' 

 arboretum, and in various nurseries, making drawings of trees and shrubs for 

 our Arboretum Britannicum, did not meet with a single day's interruption 

 till the 15th of October, when portraits of all the deciduous trees and shrubs 

 were completed. The evergreens will probably occupy them a month or 

 two longer, as the weather can hardly be expected to continue such as to 

 allow of drawing every day in the open air. — Gard. Mag. 



Restoration of the old name Dahlia. At the exhibition of the Beverley 

 Floral and Horticultural Society, H. Reynard, Esq., the i)resident, made 

 some observations on the georgina, which, he said, oiiglit to be still called 

 dahlia. " The gemis was named Dahk'a in honor of Professor Dahl, a 

 Swedish botanist. Some objections were at first made to this name, under 

 an erroneous impression that it had already been appropriated to another 

 genus ; and a further objection was taken to it from the similarity of its sound 

 to Dilea, a genus of leguminous plants, so named after our countryman. Dr. 

 Dale. The first of these objections induced Professor Willdenow, in his 

 Species Plantarum, to apply to these plants a new name ; that of Georginrt, 

 after Georgi, an eminent Russian traveller and botanist. In this he was fol- 

 lowed by M. Decandolle : but the original name seems to be fully establish- 

 ed; and is retained in the new edition of the Hortus Ketvensis, as well as by 

 the botanists [gardeners] of France." It is certainly much to be regretted 



