526 THE PLEASURE, OR [SEPT. 



GRASS AND GRAVEL WALKS, AND LAWNS. 



Continue to treat your grass and gravel-walks, and lawns as directed 

 on page 415, and let the rough edges of all grass lawns, &c., adjoin- 

 ing gravel-walks and principal borders, be cut close and neat with a 

 very sharp edging iron, &c., which will give an additional neatness 

 and becoming appearance to the whole. 



PREPARING FOR PLANTING. 



Prepare now, at all leisure hours, the different beds, borders, and 

 composts for your plantations of choice tulips, hyacinths, anemones, 

 ranunculuses, and other flower roots which are to be planted next 

 month; also for the various flowering shrubs, &c., that the hurry of 

 business may not press upon you too much at once, and that you 

 may be the better able to do everything in its proper season. 



TRANSPLANTING EVERGREENS. 



In the last week of this month, should necessity require, you may 

 transplant such evergreens as seem to have ceased growing, provided 

 you can remove them with balls of earth, or that they are to be 

 planted in shaded places ; but in either case it will be necessary to 

 water them occasionally in dry weather for three or four weeks after 

 planting; however, if the season proves hot and dry, it will be better 

 to defer that work till October. 



THE VALLISNERIA AMERICANA. 



Some account of the Vallisneria Americana may not prove unac- 

 ceptable to the curious, the more especially as it tends to cast some 

 light on the " loves" and sexes of plants ; and it is also the best 

 subject to place under a microscope to exhibit the circulation of the 

 sap. 



This extraordinary vegetable production grows in the river Dela- 

 ware, not far from Philadelphia, and may, with care, be introduced 

 by means of seeds or roots, into rivers, ponds, and canals, &c. 

 Another species, the Spiralis, is found in the East Indies, in Nor- 

 way, and various parts of Italy. The American species flowers 

 generally in the latter part of August or in September. 



The Vallisneria belongs to the class Dioecia, and order Diandria, 

 bearing male and female flowers on separate plants. The female 

 plant produces long, tubular, purple flowers, which stand singly on 

 the top of a stalk, curiously twisted in the form of a screw, which is 

 common to both species; when the flowers are about to expand, this 

 screw or spiral stalk relaxes more or less according to the depth of 

 the water, and suffers the flowers to rise up to the surface, where 

 they float in expectation of a visit from their husbands. 



The flowers of the male plant are very numerous, small, and of a 

 white color ; they are contained within a spathe or sheath, which 

 stands on a short footstalk that never rises to the top of the water ; 



